{"id":15713,"date":"2013-06-19T11:40:08","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T17:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=15713"},"modified":"2013-06-19T11:40:08","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T17:40:08","slug":"food-workers-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/food-workers-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvesting Justice 18: Meet Up, Eat Up, Act Up – Consumers Join the Movement for Food Workers\u2019 Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"banquet<\/a><\/p>\n

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part 18 of the Harvesting Justice series<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a muddler,\u201d said Danielle, grinding mint into the bottom of a metal cup. With the straightforward demeanor of a good bartender, Danielle was explaining how to make a mojito<\/a>. But this was not just a fancy drink demo. After the cocktail, she talked with the audience about her working life at an upscale steakhouse chain restaurant, including the steady sexual harassment and the uneasy feeling of being viewed by management as a number more than a person.<\/p>\n

The two dozen folks listening to Danielle were part of a trial run \u201ceat-up,\u201d an event that some food movement organizers hope will soon crop up in homes, restaurants, and bars around the country. The events are part of a new push by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC)<\/a>, the Food Chain Workers Alliance<\/a>, and others. (See our previous article<\/a> for more about these organizations.) The goal is to bring awareness and action for workers\u2019 rights, wages, and conditions into the heart of the food movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are trying to have workers<\/a> become as trendy as local and organic has become in the industry,\u201d Saru Jayaraman, co-director and co-founder of ROC, told us. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take the three stakeholders – workers, good employers, and consumers – working together to actually change things. Any one of those things, if it\u2019s missing, it\u2019s not going to work. Which is why the consumer piece is so critical, and it\u2019s been missing. We\u2019ve actually organized the workers and we\u2019ve organized the employers. We\u2019ve never organized the consumers. There\u2019s a diners\u2019 club that\u2019s basically a credit card, but there\u2019s no organized voice of restaurant consumers demanding change.\u201d<\/p>\n

ROC\u2019s efforts to change conditions in the restaurant industry include campaigns to get basic benefits such as paid sick days, and to increase the minimum wage for tipped workers. The group and their allies are gathering signatures and raising support for the Miller-Harkin Fair Minimum Wage Act<\/a>. If passed, the law would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 and the tipped minimum wage from $2.13 to 70% of the regular minimum wage.<\/p>\n

ROC also aims to fundamentally shift the power structures that allow the inequities to exist in the first place. \u201cIn the long run, it\u2019s really about having a powerful voice of restaurant workers that can counterbalance the power of the National Restaurant Association,\u201d said Jayaraman. \u201cBecause these two issues, low wages and lack of paid sick days, are symptoms of the bigger problem of an imbalance of power between this huge powerful industry lobby and restaurant workers. The long-term vision is an industry where workers have an equal voice to employers, have dignity and respect on the job, and have the ability to move up to livable wage jobs regardless of the color of their skin or their gender.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to shift this power, ROC says, consumers must join forces with workers. Throughout the country, ROC is helping restaurant diners understand the reality behind their meals. \u201cSay you\u2019re a waitress at an IHOP in Texas, and you\u2019re working a graveyard shift,\u201d Jayaraman said. \u201cMaybe sometimes you get tips, maybe sometimes you don\u2019t. Which means you may be earning $2.13 per hour, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means maybe sometimes you can pay the rent, maybe sometimes you can\u2019t. And 70% of the people earning this wage are women. They\u2019re not these wealthy steakhouse servers you might think about in a large urban city. They\u2019re women with children working at Denny\u2019s, Applebee\u2019s, Olive Garden. And a lot of times they struggle to put food on the table. The people who put food on our tables cannot afford to feed themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s super important for us to expand the definition of sustainability and sustainable food,\u201d she said. \u201cSustainability has to include taking care of everybody who is a part of the food system, who picks, plants, processes, prepares it, and the people who consume it. We all need to be connected and understand our interconnectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jayaraman has just published a book Behind the Kitchen Door<\/i><\/a>, which follows the lives of more than a dozen restaurant workers. The book exposes conditions in the industry, such as the facts that 90% of restaurant workers don\u2019t have paid sick leave, restaurant jobs make up seven of the 10 lowest paying occupations in the US, and restaurant workers are twice as likely as the rest of the workforce to be on food stamps.<\/p>\n

Behind the Kitchen Door<\/i> also exposes the racism and sexism pervasive in the industry. White workers are more likely to get the \u201cgood jobs\u201d in the front of the house, making better tips or salaries, while workers of color have the lower-paying jobs in the kitchen. In many restaurants, there is a wage gap of nearly $4.00 between white workers and workers of color.<\/p>\n

The eat-ups, together with other education and organizing tactics, are part of a larger project called the \u201cWelcome Table,\u201d an association of workers and consumers who are committed to food workers\u2019 rights. The Welcome Table website<\/a> is a multi-media hub with short films, a photo exhibit, books, news, and ways to take action. Soon the website will also be the place to go to learn about hosting eat-ups, with examples and resources to help with the planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are three things right now we are asking people to do,\u201d Jayaraman said. \u201cOne is to buy Behind the Kitchen Door<\/i> and help us get it out there as a national best seller. Two is to join the Welcome Table, because that is the place where we are gathering the people power, the numbers to show Congress that enough is enough. We need consumers to sign petitions, to say to Congress \u2018we need to raise the wage.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the third thing is to speak up every time people eat out. We created a diners\u2019 guide and smart phone app<\/a>. It wasn\u2019t meant to tell people where to eat and where not to eat. It was actually meant to give people a tool that wherever they ate, whenever they ate, they could speak up at the end of their meal and say \u2018loved the food, loved the service, but I see in this guide you don\u2019t provide paid sick days,\u2019 or \u2018I see in this guide you don\u2019t pay a livable wage and as a consumer I\u2019d really like you to know that\u2019s important to me and I\u2019d like to see you do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

To get involved, you can: <\/b><\/p>\n