CHAPTER 32

• Jurisdiction: United States

CHAPTER 32

Not on the Menu: Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Restaurant Industry

Saru Jayaraman¹

I grew up here in California but spent a lot of time on the East Coast for law school and graduate school. Right after law school and graduate school, I ended up working at an immigrant worker organizing center out in Long Island, New York. I was there representing immigrant workers when 9/11 happened. On 9/11 there was a restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center Tower 1 called "Windows on the World." On that morning, seventy-three workers died at the restaurant; they were almost all immigrants. They either jumped to their deaths or they were evaporated inside the restaurant because the plane hit below them, and the heat rose so quickly that they were literally evaporated. About 13,000 restaurant workers lost their jobs in the months and weeks following the tragedy. I was asked at the time as a young organizer and an attorney to start a relief center in the aftermath of the tragedy for the workers from Windows on the World and all of the restaurant workers that had been displaced as a result of the tragedy.

What had started as a relief center, post-9/11 has grown into a national organization. ROC grew to include 130,000 restaurant workers and restaurant owners, 770 restaurant companies working to promote better wages, working conditions, and an end to sexual violence in the restaurant industry, and 30,000 consumer members. All of these parties are working together for better wages and working conditions and, as I said, an end to segregation, harassment, and violence in our industry.

Our growth as an organization really has paralleled the explosion in the restaurant industry. We just surpassed the 13-million-worker mark in the restaurant industry in the United States, and we are getting close to the 14-million-worker mark. One in eleven, going on one in ten, a tenth of our workforce, works in one industry, the restaurant industry. It just continues to explode because we have made world history—for those of you from out of the United States and are wondering "why are we so crazy like this?"—in 2017, we became the first nation on Earth in which we now spend more money on eating food outside of the home than we do on food eaten inside of the home.

We eat out like crazy! We eat out in ever increasing numbers even during economic recessions and depressions and crises. This is the only industry that continues to grow, even when other industries stagnate or decline. It is like we eat out and we drink out even more, so when we are depressed, economically depressed, we just keep eating out. Restaurants in our country are not only the backbone of our economy as one-tenth of the American workforce, they are also a central location of our culture. It is where we, as Americans, are often proposed to; in terms of a wedding, it's where we have very special moments of our lives. We celebrate, as opposed to many other countries, at least that I have traveled to and experienced, our culture and important moments of our lives in restaurants more often than those in other parts of the world.

Thus, you would think that, restaurants, as a space of important moments of our lives, and ever incessant growth and importance in our culture, would not be the absolute bottom of the barrel, lowest paying employer in the United States. Every year, the United States Department of Labor lists the ten lowest paying jobs in America, and every year, seven of the ten lowest paid occupations in the United States are all in one industry. The restaurant industry.

So, before we even think about the implications of that, in terms of the restaurant industry, let's just talk about the implications of that for the United States. For the United States, you're talking about the largest and fastest growing industry in America, creating the absolute bottom of the barrel lowest paying jobs. All new entrants into the economy, these are the jobs that are available, for young people, formerly incarcerated individuals, or immigrants, or, frankly, for people actually being laid off from other sectors. This is the industry that is capturing everybody, and it is the absolute lowest paying industry in America, which is why we are just above one-in-three working Americans working full-time and living in poverty, and we are inching our way very soon to being a nation of one-in-two—one-in-two—working Americans working full-time and living in poverty; an absolute disgrace for what is supposed to be one of the wealthiest nations in the world. An absolute disgrace. That is mostly due to the growth of very low wage sectors of mostly women and that is epitomized by the restaurant industry.

How is it that we have gotten to the place where we have the largest and fastest growing industry with the absolute lowest paying jobs? Our research shows that it is due to the money, power, and influence of a trade lobby called the National Restaurant Association, or the "other NRA", and for people in other countries, please watch out because they have now developed the Multinational Hospitality and Restaurant Association, the MHRA—they're coming for you! The NRA, here in the United States, sadly, has been around for a long time. I thought before I first did research for my last book Forked, that they couldn't have been around more than thirty, forty, fifty years because they represent the restaurant chains in America—the IHOPs, the Applebee's, the Olive Gardens, the McDonald's—and these chains haven't been around very long. So, I thought that the trade association couldn't have around very long, but I was wrong. The restaurant trade lobby has been around in various forms since emancipation of slaves.

It turns out that tipping, a practice that is so embraced by us in America now, did not originate in the United States. It originated in feudal Europe. It was something that aristocrats and nobles gave to serfs and vassals but always on...