Hiring discrimination is pervasive within temporary employment agencies that serve warehouses and factories, Chicago-area workers’ rights organizations said Tuesday in releasing a study documenting practices that allegedly hurt Black or Latino applicants.

Activists looking to eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped employees — a practice that they say keeps workers in poverty, encourages sexual harassment and leads to racial discrimination — are taking a new approach in their campaign to end the two-tiered wage system in America: They’re arguing the lower tipped wage, sometimes as little as $2.13 an hour, violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While restaurant owners around the country beg lawmakers to offer them financial relief and assistance to comply with legally mandated orders to temporarily close their dining rooms in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus, only a few national chains are doing anything to ensure all of their hourly workers physically and economically survive the pandemic.

An overhanging sign still reads “Bizarre” and the first two vowels are still flipped quixotically, but the rolling gate has remained shut since early June. The bartenders are now suing the shuttered bar. “I don’t know how they’ve been able to get away with it, but they never paid their employees,” one bartender told Bushwick Daily wishing to stay anonymous. They had joined five other coworkers in a lawsuit, filed in federal court earlier in August, demanding over $100,000 in unpaid wages. “The owners made it a living hell to work there,” they said.