Labor organizer Saru Jayaraman says that restaurants are the next front in the fight for food justice
By Mike Wold, Contributing writer
Fair trade, farm-to-table, locally sourced: Restaurant menus
are replete with politically correct terms, but the kitchen door conceals
another struggle. Labor organizer Saru Jayaraman reveals why the treatment of
restaurant workers ought to be the next front in our fight for food justice.
What really goes on behind the kitchen door in a restaurant?
In her book by that same title, Saru Jayaraman, co-founder and organizer for
the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROCU), points out that people in
the food movement, which has been effective in advocating for changes in the
way we produce and consume food, have missed a critical part of the path from
grower to consumer: the people who prepare our food.
Mike Wold: Tell me what’s going on behind the
kitchen door.
Saru Jayaraman: What’s happening is the largest and
fastest-growing industry in the United States — over 10 million workers. It’s also the lowest-paying employer in the
U.S. Seven of the 10 lowest-paid jobs in America and the two lowest-paid jobs
in America are restaurant jobs —dishwashers and fast-food cooks. That means the
largest and fastest-growing sector of the economy is proliferating poverty-wage
jobs in the U.S.
I argue that there’s at least one person in every restaurant
in America who is homeless or verging on homelessness or in a home-insecure
situation because the wages are so low they’re not enough for somebody to
survive on.
The real cause of all this is an industry lobby called the
National Restaurant Association, which we call the other NRA, that has made a
deal with Congress that tipped-workers’ wages will never go up ever. So it’s been stuck at $2.15 an hour for the
last 22 years.
M.W.: We’ve already got some of what you want here
in Seattle, right?
S.J.: Washington is one of seven states in the
country that has no difference between tipped wages and non-tipped wages, but
the fact that the industry sets the floor so low nationally drives down wages
even in Washington state.
The other issue workers face is 90 percent of these workers
don’t have paid sick days. Two-thirds cook, prepare and serve food when they’re
sick. And 90 percent of food-borne illnesses can be traced back to sick
restaurant workers.
M.W.: In Seattle we have paid sick days; there was
an attempt at the state level to repeal that.
S.J.: The Restaurant Association’s behind that.
M.W.: You want people to speak to restaurant
management — you even provide a restaurant guide and an instructional video on
your website (rocunited.org/dinersguide/) on how to do it. But you suggest consumers be really nonconfrontational.
S.J.: We organize workers to stand up when there’s
exploitation on the job. And that sometimes has to be confrontational. But the
role of consumers is not to scream and yell.
As consumers we have incredible power every time we speak
up. We’ve seen the change happen with local and organic. People did change
restaurant menus to provide locally sourced organic menu items. So it is
possible to speak up on paid sick days and minimum wage and see the same kind
of impact.
We don’t recommend that you talk to your waiter; you can get
your waiter in trouble. We recommend that you talk to the management at the end
of your meal. We did create a smartphone app for people who are afraid to speak
up. In the back of our diners’ guide there are tip cards that you can just
leave with your check, or you can just tweet a message with your
smartphone.
Please don’t think that just tipping better is enough;
tipping better is great, but we need people to actually speak up.
M.W.: Why isn’t tipping the solution?
S.J.: People think that the tip is something you put
on top of a wage, when in fact in most of the country the tip is actually the
wage. This industry is the only industry that’s won exemptions so they don’t
have to pay their own workers’ wages. We’re just feeding the industry’s
subsidy, which is the expectation that consumers will pay their workers’ wages
for them. It’s great to tip well, because the workers rely on it, but at the
same time we need to be fighting (for a fair wage).
The food movement in general, the solutions have been very individual
— “grow local, go to your farmers market, grow local gardens, that’s what
change is all about.” When, in fact, we need to have some collective voice and
power.
We’re asking people to do three things: One, help build a
buzz around the books, so we can lift these issues up to the national stage.
Two, join The Welcome Table and become part of a consumer movement for change,
and three, speak up every time you eat out, the way that instructional video
shows.
The Welcome Table can be found at TheWelcomeTable.net, an
on-line consumer organization of people coming together and demanding that
Congress raise the minimum wage. That’s the first issue, but later it could be
about paid sick days, it could be about GMOs. The tag line is “gathering for a
responsible food system.”
M.W.: What about unions?
S.J.: (One thousandth of a) percent of restaurant
workers are unionized. This industry’s exploding so fast, and it’s so different
from traditional manufacturing that new models are needed. If we really want to
think about transforming this industry in our lifetime, it can’t just be about
going after individual restaurants. We need to think about lifting standards
across the board. These workers have been waiting for two decades for their
tipped wage to go up.
In June we got George Miller (D-Calif.) in the House and Tom
Harkin (D-Iowa) in the Senate to introduce the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2012.
It was the first time in two decades that congressional leadership introduced a
bill that included tipped workers. We need to move this bill. We need to move it fast. It has a good chance — as good as ACA
(Affordable Care Act) had. The challenge will be that the Restaurant
Association is going to push hard for the tipped workers to be left out. Even
our allies on the Hill sometimes in the last minute will say, “Oh, well, we can
get rid of this opposition if we just raise everybody else’s wages but not the
tipped workers.”
M.W.: What are some of the challenges of
organizing restaurant workers?
S.J.: Extreme fear of being fired. Also just how busy
people are. People are working 70-to 80-hour work weeks. There’s a lot of
turnover. We’ve managed to organize workers despite all of these things.
M.W.: Are there divisions that show up between
different groups?
S.J.: There’s severe racial segregation. In fine
dining and casual restaurants, white workers in the front, and workers of color
in lower-paid busser, runner, back-of-the-house positions. A waiter generally
considers himself to be better than people in the back. I think we’re able to
overcome that by having people come together and see how they can work.
M.W.: Restaurants seem to have become the first
point of arrival for immigrants, like sweatshops used to be.
S.J.: We very much think of ourselves in this century
as the manufacturing sector of a hundred years ago. It’s the most visible
industry, setting standards for the rest of the economy, and it will be
intervention in this industry that will ultimately lift standards for the rest
of the economy, same as manufacturing a hundred years ago. Those manufacturing
jobs were bad jobs a hundred years ago. It was union efforts that lifted them.
The unions of a hundred years ago looked very much like what Restaurant Opportunities
Center is today, using all kinds of different innovative strategies, organizing
consumers. You’ve heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire — there was a
march in New York City of very wealthy women who used the shirtwaists (a
popular button-down blouse) that were produced in these factories. So there’s
plenty of examples of consumers standing by workers.
Right now we have a campaign against Darden, which is the
world’s largest full-service restaurant company. It owns all of Darden
restaurants including Red Lobster, Capitol Grille steak houses. A few months ago when ACA was ruled
constitutional, they announced that they were going to reduce all of their
workers’ hours to part-time to evade ACA. We were part of organizing consumer
outrage on the issue. Their Standard & Poor’s rating went down because
consumers were outraged and Darden clarified their stance. They said they’re
not reducing anybody’s hours. It was a big victory, and it showed consumers
have tremendous power.
M.W.: Did you ever work a restaurant job?
S.J.: Only in Colors (Restaurant Opportunities
Center’s cooperative and training restaurant).
M.W.: Did you like restaurant work?
S.J.: Yeah. It’s hard, hard work. That’s what people
don’t realize. People take great pride in it. There are people who are much
better at it than me. It’s not a job that people are in because they just can’t
find anything else. People take great pride in hospitality, and we want to make
it a profession, not just a job.
M.W.: Were there experiences that contributed to
your passion for social justice?
S.J.: My parents are immigrants. I grew up in a
working-class community in East L.A. My parents struggled a lot as immigrants,
faced a lot of discrimination. I had a lot of anger as a child and tried to
channel it into something positive.
M.W.: What made you angry?
S.J.: During the first Gulf War being screamed at by
kids, “go back to Iraq,” and we’re not Iraqi. Even if we were ... Driving
through Utah, and our car broke down, there were seven different mechanics, and
nobody would help us.
The thing that’s so infuriating is the mythology about being
this country where anybody’s welcome and anybody can make it, everybody has
opportunity, when it’s just, in my experience, so not true. It boggles the mind
how there are some things that are true for half the country that are just
completely not true for the other half. So, restaurant workers, people have no
idea what’s happening behind the kitchen door.
Before I helped found ROC, I was organizing factory workers
and custodial workers. But it’s funny, even as a labor organizer I would go out
to eat every evening and never think about the people touching my food. So it
wasn’t until I really got to know restaurant workers and their lives that my
dining experience changed, which is why I decided to write the book.
Reprinted from Real Change News, Seattle, Wash.
