No worker should be used to pad a profit margin and then discarded. In Houston, immigrant and working-class hospitality workers carry the weight of the city’s economic success. They serve tourists, fuel downtown businesses, and keep restaurants running. Yet they are paid poverty wages, denied protections, and funneled into the lowest-paid roles where they are routinely denied upward mobility within the industry and locked out of prosperity. They return home to neighborhoods neglected by the same system they keep afloat. This isn’t just unfair—it’s strategic exploitation.

TILT isn’t here to nibble at reform. We’re here to shift power.

Key Priorities:

1. Tie Labor Standards to City Contracts and Permits

TILT will push the Houston City Council to adopt measures that require businesses receiving city funds or contracts to meet higher labor standards. While Texas preemption laws (e.g., HB 2127) block blanket ordinances, the city can still influence standards through contracting.

We support:

  • 7 days of guaranteed paid sick leave

  • Enforceable rest breaks

2. Close the $2.13 Loophole

Texas allows employers to pay tipped workers just $2.13/hour, assuming tips will raise them to $7.25. In practice, employers often:

  • Fail to cover the difference when tips fall short.

  • Pressure workers to misreport tips to avoid paying.

We demand:

  • A substantial increase to the tipped minimum wage.

  • Strict enforcement and penalties for wage violations.

  • A path toward eliminating the subminimum wage while protecting workers’ right to receive tips.

3. Prevent Exploitative Over-Hiring

Restaurants often hire excess staff to offset turnover or spread out scheduling, resulting in low hours and lower earnings for everyone.

We support:

  • Scheduling protections to prevent abusive under-houring.

  • Minimum-hour guarantees for "on-call" workers.

  • Oversight mechanisms linked to city permits and contracts.

4. Safer Working Conditions & Enforceable Rest Breaks

Hospitality workers regularly face injuries from burns, cuts, heat exposure, and toxic cleaning chemicals—all while lacking protections.

We demand:

  • Mandatory rest breaks.

  • Transparency on workplace injury rates.

  • Legal safeguards against retaliation.

5. Push for neighborhood investment and accountability

Districts B, H, and J have routinely been neglected. The infrastructure is dilapidated, parks are none existent or abysmal at best. The community is forced to rely on school parks that become open to the public after school hours yet, with no oversight or enforcement, these grounds used by children are vandalized and littered with items kids stumble over and find during recess, like lighters, shards of glass, and empty beer cans. There are no safety rails, crime runs rampant, and the communities are left to rally and rely on each other without governmental netting to provide basic infrastructure and sustainability for living. The city has yet to shake out funds for real upkeep of greenspace, provide grocery stores, shell out community centers accessible in all of these districts in addition to the centers that do exist and provide vital reprieve and communal space for families.

We will push for:

  • Real investment in parks in these three key districts

  • An end to having school grounds (especially elementary schools) be open to the public after hours

  • Construction of community centers that are funded and operational

  • Real public safety provided to these communities

  • Youth centers that provide after school programs for youth and safe places for kids to go and be in community.