The National Restaurant Association’s Leading Role in Weakening Child Labor Laws

The National Restaurant Association was founded in 1919 with the express purpose of suppressing food workers’ wages, both in the agricultural and restaurant sector, and especially to maintain the subminimum wage for tipped workers. After Emancipation, the NRA sought to hire newly-freed Black people, not pay them, and force them to live on tips. 

For the last 100 years, the NRA has lobbied consistently to maintain the subminimum wage for tipped workers, and to maintain the lowest possible minimum wage for all other restaurant workers.