Restaurant Workers Launch Multi-City Campaign to Transform Low-Wage Industry

[Omaha Steve]

http://labornotes.org/2010/01/restaurant-workers-launch-multi-city-campaign-transform-low-wage-industry

Paul Abowd | February 4, 2010


Servers and busers at the Detroit-area Andiamo chain complain of a raft of wage violations as well as racial and gender discrimination on the job. Their campaign is part of a nationwide push by the Restaurant Opportunities Center to raise wages and working conditions inside the expanding industry. Photo: ROC.


The restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest growing private employers in the country. But just as swinging doors often separate patrons from the kitchen, the working lives of 13.5 million restaurant workers—a largely non-union workforce—remain out of sight.

In four cities, cooks, dishwashers, servers, hosts, and busers are organizing workplace justice campaigns with the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), bringing their aspirations to overhaul a low-wage, high-discrimination industry out onto the streets.

ROC got its start when workers at New York’s “Windows on the World” restaurant in the World Trade Center lost 73 of their co-workers—and their jobs—on 9/11. The worker advocacy group began organizing, training workers, and conducting research and policy work, and now has 3,200 members and its own restaurant.

Through coordinated legal and direct action campaigns, ROC-NY has notched several wins garnering millions in wage and hour claims, as well as legal settlements with restaurants that mimic collective bargaining agreements. ROC formed a national organization in 2008—ROC United—and chapters in seven cities formed soon after.

While ROC is not a union, its organizing work could be a path to unionization. UNITE HERE Local 100, New York’s food service local, has struggled to build density among the fragmented but growing ranks of restaurant workers. Only a small fraction of the city’s restaurant workers are Local 100 members. But the local was instrumental in helping set up ROC.

Union card or not, ROC members have found winning collective strategies capable of raising the bar.

FULL story at link.

[MineralMan]

1. I wish them every success.

[Oregone]

2. Does that mean we wont have to tip anymore?

Tips basically subsidize wages and allow cheap labor for restaurants.

[virgogal]

3. The restaurant industry is a fast growing industry in this economy? I don't get it.

[pleah]

4. K&R