Episode 210: Labor Shortage Developing Into Political Challenge For Industry

The labor shortage continues to challenge the industry and operators are struggling to keep doors open. Data continues to emerge putting more and more context around the complexity of the issue and what challenges are short-term and which are likely chronic. We’ll take a look at some polling data from a leading university-based restaurant and hospitality management program that examines worker attitudes which could provide meaningful clues to the industry. And the Congressional dialogue around a federal minimum wage hike is slowly becoming clearer and it looks like there is emerging agreement on some broad concepts, namely wage levels and the treatment of tips. We’ll take a look at that as well as the subsequent political calculations facing many industry leaders. We’ll also discuss a new report out this week claiming wide scale abuse by employers regarding compliance with wage and hour law and how new leadership at the Wage & Hour division may take advantage of those allegations.