For a lot of Southerners, Waffle House is where the night ends or the morning begins. For the workers keeping the coffee poured and the grills hot, though, Clark Atlanta University researchers say the reality is far less cozy. A new study from the school spotlights what life looks like behind the counter for Waffle House employees and other low-wage service workers across the South, finding unstable schedules, tight pay and widespread financial strain. Built from worker surveys and dozens of interviews, the project sketches out jobs that leave many servers and cooks juggling unpredictable hours, safety worries and housing or food insecurity. Local researchers say those conditions help explain why organizing and labor campaigns are gaining fresh momentum in the region.
HBCU-led project gathered surveys and interviews
The findings come out of a broader HBCU research initiative summarized in a working paper by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which pulled together data from five Southern sites in partnership with unions and community groups. According to CEPR, researchers from Clark Atlanta and partner HBCUs collected 131 complete worker surveys and conducted dozens of qualitative interviews that dug into scheduling, pay and workplace discrimination. The report was backed by grants from WorkRise and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and produced in collaboration with Jobs With Justice along with several unions.
What workers reported
The numbers were blunt. More than half of surveyed workers said they received less than one week of notice for their schedules, about 45 percent reported last-minute changes, and roughly a third said they struggled to afford rent or groceries, according to a summary from Cornell's ILR School. The ILR write-up also reports strong pro-union sentiment: roughly three-quarters of respondents saw unions as a way to give workers a voice, and many expected better pay and improved safety under union representation. Researchers say the survey ran from late 2024 through summer 2025 and was supplemented by 48 interviews that captured how organizing campaigns and employer responses play out day to day.
Waffle House in context
The report singles out Waffle House, a family-owned chain with roughly 2,000 restaurants nationally and about 400 in Georgia, as a major local employer where union drives and worker complaints have converged. CEPR notes that the United Southern Service Workers and other organizers have pressed Waffle House on pay, safety and meal-deduction practices, and that the company has recently taken steps to raise base pay for tipped staff. The Associated Press reported last year that Waffle House said it would increase base pay to at least $3 an hour in June, then to a minimum of $5.25 by June 2026, a move tied to higher menu prices and other operational changes.
Dr. Joseph Jones, who led the Clark Atlanta portion of the research, discussed the findings on local television this week and said the project aims to show how routine instability and racial disparities shape workers’ choices about organizing and staying in these jobs. In his interview with 11Alive, Jones linked the survey results to the university’s new Labor Institute and to ongoing studies of service-industry organizing. Community organizers and worker-leaders say the report arms local campaigns with fresh data as they push for scheduling protections and higher pay.
Researchers and advocates behind the project argue that the data point to concrete policy fixes, including fair-scheduling laws, stronger protections for organizing and higher minimum wages, that could ease the financial precarity facing thousands of Southern workers. The Cornell's ILR summary lays out many of those recommendations and calls for more HBCU-led research that centers Black workers’ experiences in the region. For Atlanta, the report effectively turns the city into a real-time case study, with Clark Atlanta’s Labor Institute and a dense network of organizers making it a place to watch as worker campaigns and corporate responses continue to unfold.
