President Biden Says Restaurants Need to Pay Staff More

With restaurants across the US struggling to survive after the trials of lockdown, they are now faced with another existential crisis: staff shortages. It seems even US President Joe Biden understands that the issue is restaurant workers need to be paid more.

Many restaurants furloughed their workers during the pandemic, which meant a lot of young hospitality workers left the big cities, some to go home, some just looking for a safer place to stay. It gave chefs, bar staff and front-of-house workers time to think about what they wanted from their careers, and it seems many of them have decided that it’s not worth it.

Some claim that the benefits some workers are receiving are disincentivising people from returning to full-time work, but Biden seems to think the problem lies with the salary.

At a CNN Town Hall on Wednesday, restaurant owner John Lanni asked the administration how they intended to “incentivise those that haven’t returned to work yet”.

A lot of restaurant workers have “decided that they don’t want to do that anymore because there’s other opportunities at higher wages, because there’s a lot of openings now, jobs,” said Biden.

“God love you for doing what you do, but all kidding aside, I think it really is a matter of people deciding now that they have opportunities to do other things,” he said, before describing why.

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“My guess is that people paying seven, eight dollars an hour plus tips, that’s — I think, John, you’re going to be finding 15 bucks an hour or more now. You may pay that already,” said Biden.

The President clearly thinks that the traditional 7 or 8 dollars plus tips is not enough to entice workers back into the kitchen.