Bruce Horovitz

USA TODAY

Some 90% of women in restaurant jobs that depend on tips report being bothered at work by some form of sexual harassment, according to a scathing report on the restaurant industry out Tuesday.

It is particularly a problem, the report says, for women restaurant workers in states where tipped jobs have the lower federal minimum wage of $2.13. The federal minimum for non-tipped workers is $7.25. Both are higher in many states.

"We need to eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers in the United States," says Saru Jayaraman, co-director and co-founder of the non-profit restaurant worker's group, Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) United, which oversaw the 34-page report, "The Glass Floor: Sexual Harassment in the Restaurant Industry."

"Women who have to live off of tips are subjected to the worst kind of sexual harassment," says Jayaraman in a phone interview. She says all states should require that a full minimum wage be paid to all tipped, restaurant workers.

The report, which calls sexual harassment "endemic to the restaurant industry," comes as low-wage restaurant workers increasingly are pushing for better pay and improved rights in an industry that employs about 11 million workers.

Over the past year, worker and union organizer momentum has grown for a $15 minimum wage for fast-food workers.

Executives from the National Restaurant Association dismiss the report and its findings.

"These recycled attacks are part of a national, multimillion-dollar campaign engineered, organized and funded by national labor unions and their allies seeking to disparage an industry that has no barrier to entry and no limit to what employees can achieve," said Katie Laning Niebaum, vice president of communications NRA, in a statement.

The report, compiled in cooperation with nearly a dozen women's and workers' rights organizations, included in-person and online interviews with 688 restaurant workers in 39 states. It was conducted May through August, 2014. Only seven states, the report says, require the same wage for jobs that get tips and those that do not.

Female tipped restaurant workers, in particular, are subject to "very high rates of unwanted, scary sexual behavior in the workplace," says Jayaraman. In order to get tips, workers in states with the lower minimum wage, she says, "are forced to dress and act certain ways that make them vulnerable to customer, co-worker and manager harassment."

Among the report's key findings:

• Women living off tips in states with a $2.13-per-hour tipped minimum wage are twice as likely to be sexually harassed as women in states that require the full minimum wage to for workers.

• Tipped workers in states with a $2.13 tipped minimum wage were three times more likely to be told by managers to wear "sexier" clothing than in states where the same minimum wage is paid to all workers.

• Two-thirds of women and half of men surveyed experienced some form of sexual harassment by a restaurant manager, owner or supervisor.