Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke to the Center for American Progress yesterday about the connection between expanding economic opportunity for minimum wage/tipped workers and stimulating the economy.
The video can be viewed in the link above.
And as it is my fervent belief that unfiltered Clinton is the best Clinton, I've typed up a full transcript below:
Transcript:
Because we do not have full participation by women in our labor force in the United States, we don't have as strong an economy as we would if we did.
In fact, if we had been able to close the gap between men and women participating in the workforce, our gross domestic product would be ten percent higher.
Now, when people are talking about how important it is to get growth growing again, get jobs that are good jobs being created again, why are we leaving ten percent on the table? Because we don't do enough to give women the support they need to be empowered, to take care of themselves and their families?
Now, even as we work to create a broader based economic growth platform that provides inclusive prosperity for people, there are things that we could be doing right now that would make a difference.
Because what I see when I travel around our country, just as I saw when I traveled around the world as Secretary of State, is where women are left out, where women are not given the opportunity to pursue their economic well-being, their children suffer. Their communities suffer. Indeed, their countries suffer.
Now in our own country, women hold two-thirds of all minimum wage jobs. And that's bad enough, because if you work full time on a minimum wage job and you have a family of three, you are still below the poverty line.
But think about this: women hold nearly three-quarters of the jobs that are reliant on tips, and in fact, they don't get the minimum wage with the tips on top of it. These are jobs like being waitresses, or bartenders, or hair stylists. They don't get that. They get, in many states, about two dollars and twelve or thirteen cents.
And then they're at the mercy not only of customers who can decide or not to tip. They're at the mercy of their employers, who may collect the tips and not turn them back, or may harass the women in these positions because they are so dependent on making customers happy so that we, the customers, will tip them.
So think about what it's like trying to succeed at work and give your children the support they need if you have a minimum wage job or if you have one of these "minimum tip" jobs that are so prevalent among working women.
Without equal pay, without flexibility or predictability at work, without access to quality, affordable child care, or without the ability to take a day off if your child or aging parent is sick, without paid family and medical leave, this woman is really on the brink. And that's what the latest CAP Shriver report made clear.
And the floor is collapsing. We talk about a glass ceiling? These women don't even have a secure floor under them.