Dive Brief:

• Waffle House CEO Joe Rogers III announced what he called “the single largest additional investment in our workforce in the entire 68-year history of Waffle House,” last month in a video shared with the company’s workers.
• The chain will raise its base hourly rates from $2.92 to $5.25 in two years across most markets, with some other markets seeing increases to $6.25 and $7.25 over somewhat longer timelines, depending on the chain’s ability to take pricing in those markets, Rogers said in the video.
• Katie Giede, a Waffle House worker and member of the Union of Southern Service Workers, said the union’s activism, including strikes, pushed the chain to raise wages. 

Dive Insight:

Giede said the company’s leadership was out of touch and that the union would continue to organize committees at new stores and stage workplace actions until Waffle House meets the unions core demands: The end of mandatory meal deductions and the implementation of a $25 hourly wage and 24-hour security.

“Any pay raise is a win,” Giede said. “It's definitely not what we're asking for. But it shows that this is what organizing does.” Giede said that at current wage levels she sometimes doesn’t make enough to afford food for herself after feeding her son.

Rogers said the raises were part of a process that lasted more than five years and was interrupted by COVID-19 and inflation. Waffle House did not respond to a request to clarify why macro-economic phenomenon that have driven nominal restaurant wages up by more than $5 an hour in four years would delay the implementation of this higher wage scheme.

The changes to front-of-house pay also include premium pay for some shifts, which will start rolling out in October. Waffle House will also implement small seniority increases, beginning with a 50 cent raise for workers who have received 156 paychecks, equal to three years of work, at Waffle House. The per hour seniority pay increases by 10 cent per year, topping out at an addition $3.20 per hour for workers who have stayed with the chain for more than 30 years, or 1,560 paychecks, according to the Rogers video. The tenure pay is expected to be fully rolled out by January, Rogers said.

While tipped workers must legally be paid minimum wage if tips do not bring the subminimum wage up, Giede said that she has earned less than minimum wage during some shifts.

The USSW, which is an affiliate of the Service Employee’s International Union, has largely eschewed NLRB-overseen elections in favor of a combination of regulatory and shopfloor pressure tactics. According to a press release from the USSW, the union has organized committees in at least 30 of Waffle House’s 1,900 units. Store-level committees are the basic constitutive unit of unions that are not NLRB certified bargaining representatives. USSW members have also petitioned the Department of Labor to investigate the company’s meal credit deduction.

Meal credits are automatically taken out of workers checks, Giede said, regardless of whether they eat or not. She said she does not usually eat Waffle House’s food and that the meal deduction generally takes about $3 out of her check each day. Giede works five days a week, which means the meal deduction would cost her up to $780 a year.

“We need that money on our checks. It would make a big difference,” Giede said “On some of those nights I don't have enough food for both [myself and my son], that money back on my check would allow for me to eat also.”

Giede said that as a union member she and several co-workers went on strike for four days earlier this year. She doesn’t see the wage increases as the end, but said that she’s proud of this change.

“We’re all working together to try to make [Waffle House] better, not only for us, but for the future generations that come after us,” she said. “My son's going to be able to say ‘my mom was the one of those voices [for workers].’ I just feels great.”

Waffle House did not respond to a request for comment.