Behind the Kitchen Door - Book Details
The following are the notes I picked out while reading the book "Behind the Kitchen Door"
Objective of the book is “to ensure that dining out is a
pleasant experience on both sides of the kitchen door.”
Forward:
But the food movement thus far
has shown a much greater interest in assuring animal welfare than in protecting
human rights.
Paying them poverty wages,
denying them medical benefits and sick pay, and tolerating racism and sexism on
the job
While the dishwashers and
bussers in their kitchens get a wage of $2.13 an hour, plus a meager share of
the tips. The typical restaurant worker
makes about $15,000 a year – roughly one-third the annual income of the average
American worker
Since the late 1960’s, the value
of the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has declined by about 20
percent. For the poorest workers in the
United States, that has meant an hourly pay cut of about $1.50.
Enforce the nation’s labor laws
and increase the minimum wage.
And tells stories about
individual workers that convey, more powerfully than any statistics.
Chapter 1: The
Hands on Your Plate
13,000 other restaurant workers
in New York City who had lost their jobs after the 9/11 tragedy
Restaurant industry employs more
than 10 million people
It includes 7 of the 11 lowest
paying occupations in America
Only 20 percent of restaurant
jobs pay a livable wage
Approximately 40 percent of New
York City restaurant workers are undocumented immigrants
Although the industry continues
to grow, restaurant workers’ wages have been stagnant over the last 20 years.
The federal minimum wage for
tipped workers has been frozen at $2.13 an hour.
17 years in the industry he had
never seen a white dishwasher in New York City
That poverty-level wages, wage
theft, discrimination, and lack of benefits were not sustainable for anyone
The restaurants that mistreated
their workers were more likely to engage in unsafe food-handling practices that
sicken customers.
For the first time, I saw every
kitchen worker, every restaurant worker, as a human being with a unique story,
family, dreams, and desires.
It’s the frequency with which
Americans eat out, and the way we choose to mark so many of our major life
events – birthdays, anniversaries, marriage proposals – in restaurants.
I’ve educated and organized
responsible employers to promote sustainable business practices.
In the words of Lanston Hughes,
that’s millions of “dreams deferred”
But I saw a very easy avenue for
consumers to act and change the industry:
if multiple diners told that manager that they appreciated seeing
diversity and responsible labor practices in the restaurant – and if there were
accessible resources to explain to owners and managers how other employers have
successfully created these opportunities for their workers – it would certainly
encourage him to consider training and promoting more of his bussers
The tipped minimum wage was
raised to $4.65 an hour (New York City)
Americans are increasingly concerned about
what they eat – where their food comes from, how it is grown and harvested, and
how it is prepared.
Most Americans are totally unaware
of the horribly exploitative working conditions in restaurants which affect the
quality of our food and, ultimately, our health.
Restaurants that force employees
to work while sick are also usually careless when it comes to food safety and
customers’ health
What it means to be a
responsible diner
Chapter 2: Real Susainability, Please!
What’s a sustainable
restaurant? It’s one in which as the
restaurant grows, the people grow with it
Slow Food Movement … promotes “ethical
consumption”, a commitment to organic, sustainable, locally sourced food.
We have become so removed from
this cycle of life [seeing real pigs as pets] and from the values associated
with it
It’s almost impossible for any
restaurant to source a majority of its menu items from local, organic famers
However, “sustainable food” also
needs to embody fair and equitable labor practices.
“ How can I make it an affordable restaurant
and still have living wages and organic food?” – Answer – Figure out which
items can reasonably be organic on your budget, instead of having 100% of your
menu items certified organic.
A definition of a sustainable
restaurant is one where as the business grows, the people grow with it.
Sustainability is about
contributing to a society that everybody benefits from, not just going organic
because you don’t want to die from cancer or have a difficult pregnancy
ROC [Restaurant Opportunities
Center] has also produced a
National
Diners’ Guide to help consumers identify which restaurants have sustainable
labor practices. This is online at
www.rocunited.org/dinersguide
ROC’s National Diners’ Guide comes with “tip cards” that consumers can
hand to an employer to say, “I noticed that you don’t pay a livable tipped minimum
wage. As a consyumer, that’s
unacceptable to me and part of the criteria I use when considering where to
eat.”
Chapter 3: Serving
While Sick
Chart showing percentages
of: Workers did not receive health and
safety training from employer; Workers had to work when restaurant was
understaffed; Workers had to do a job for which he/she was not rained; Worker
had to perform several jobs at once; Worker had to cut corners, because of time
pressure, that might have harmed the health or safety of customers; and Workers
did something to put her/his own safety at risk.
The industry puts workers at
high risk of injury and illness without providing them with the income or
health benefits to deal with either
Third highest in total number of
nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses
Survey showed 49% of workers had
suffered work-related cuts and 45.8% had been burned on the job
A median wage nationally of
$9.02 an hour [for 40 hours? Or is the median of this survey less than 40
hours per week?]
Imagine this: more than 1 in 10 times that you eat out,
your server takes your order, goes to the bathroom to vomit like Kinni did, and
then brings you your food. [BAD
statistic. The 10% mentioned is annually]
“Typhoid Mary” likely infected
53 people, 3 of whom died, between 1900 and 1907. May worked in seven different restaurant
kitchens before authorities discovered that she was spreading typhoid to diners
citywide.
CDC has cited restaurants as the
third most frequent setting for outbreaks of foodborne illnesses
Restaurant workers without
health benefits were three times as likely as those with health benefits to use
the emergency room [at hospitals]
One simple path to getting there
is to win paid sick days for every restaurant worker in the United States
[No description of sample “sick
time” plan. How much? How often?
How determined?]
Chapter 4: $2.13
– The Tipping Point
The federal government permits
restaurants nationwide to pay tipped workers an hourly wage of only $2.13, as
long as the workers’ tips make up the difference between $2.13 and the federal
minimum hourly wage of $7.25.
As long as these restaurants
bring in less than $500,000 in revenue annually (and therefore don’t fall under
the purview of federal law), they can force their workers to live entirely off
their tips.
Some workers don’t receive the
minimum wage, some don’t get proper overtime payments, some don’t receive pay
for all the hours they’ve worked, and some get paid late or not at all. Some are even charged for things that aren’t
their fault, like a guest walking out of the restaurant.
Restaurant workers hold 7 of the
lowest-paying occupations in the United States, earning less, on average, than
farm workers and all other domestic workers.
“I had to eat less than $6.50
for the employee meal,” says Claudia.
“If I wanted an omelette, I went over $6.50. I could only afford
pancakes. If you were on the schedule
for only five hours, you couldn’t get a meal.
There were days when I wouldn’t eat all day.”
Food service workers in the United States need food stamps! In fact, servers in the restaurant industry
use food stamps at almost double the rate of the rest of the U.S.
workforce. [This means the food industry
is being subsidized by the government and taxes.]
The average restaurant worker,
earning the national restaurant median wage of $8.90 an hour, would have to
work approximately 107 hours per week to rent a two-bedroom unit at the fair
market price.
Some white men who are servers
in fine-dining restaurants are the only restaurant workers in the US who
eneratlly do earn a living wage; they hold the second-highest paying position
the restaurant industry.
It is possible that the whole
tipped minimum wage structure is just as confusing to employers as it is to
workers and customers.
Chapter 5: Race
in the Kitchen
Today I believe that racial
segregation is one of the restaurant industry’s most pressing deep-seated
problems, and part and parcel of every other pattern of injustice in the
industry.
Darden Group, which claims to be
the world’s largest full-service restaurant company. Besides the Capital Grille, Darden owns Olive
Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, and other
restaurant brands, employing almost 180,000 workers in 1,900 restaurants
worldwide.
Although it raked in profits of
over $7 Billion in 2011 and has a CEO who earns $8.5 Million annually and holds
$22 Million in company stock, Darden pays its owrkers as little as $2.13 an
hour (before tips) and does not provide paid sick days to any nonmanagement
employee.
A server at an Olive Garden in
Fayetteville, North Carolina, felt compelled to work with hepatitis A because
she could not get paid sick days. While
Darden was proudly announcing a new partnership between the Olive Garden and
First Lady Michelle Obama to provide healthy food for kids at the Olive Garden,
3,000 people in Fayetteville had to get tested for hepatitis after eating at
the restaurant.
Restaurant workers are, of
course, among the 99 percent who serve the 1 percent
People are segregated in the
restaurant industry by position within the restaurant (server, busser,
dishwasher), segment of the restaurant industry (fine-dining, family-style, or
fast-food), and location (poor, middle-class, or upper-class neighborhoods).
In our national survey of over
4,300 restaurant workers, white workers reported a median wage of $14.00 an
hour, while people of color reported a median wage of $9.88 an hour. Ninety-six percent of workers who reported
that they earned less than the minimum wage were people of color
A black woman joked about
needing a “tall white man’s suit” in order to get promoted
Segregation in the industry is not
just a matter of employers having discriminatory hiring practices; it Is also
about people of color not having access to more affluent neightborhoods, which
are home to more affluent establishments
White workers living in the
suburbs are twice as likely to earn a living wage as black workers living in
the city of Detroit. This is true even
though the two populations are similar in terms of other demographic variables
– gender, age, place of birth, and educational attainment
One of the main reasons
discriminatory practices fly under the radar in restaurants is the lack of
transparency with regard to job openings and what it takes to get a promotion.
We tend not to realize that
diversity is not the same as equity – that simply seeing a lot of restaurant
workers from different backgrounds doesn’t mean that restaurant workers have
equal opportunities to advance to jobs that will allow them to support
themselves and their families
As consumers, we should ask
managers: “Do you have promotion and
training opportunities in your restaurant?
How diverse is your waitstaff?”
Chapter 6: Women
Waiting on Equality
Women get less than preferential
treatment across the board… whether you’re management, whether you’re a
hostess, whether you’re a waitress … whether you’re a bartender … That less-than-preferential treatment is from
the client, that’s from the management, that’s from the owners, that’s from the
bussers, that’s from the porters who are cleaning … across the board, women get
less.
Few women could survive in “a
man’s kitchen” so get stuck, if chefs, in pastry positions where they get paid
less
The median weekly wage for women
servers in the restaurant industry is $387; the median weekly wage for men
servers is $423.
Students at culinary schools
often have to work as interns which mean that there are thousands of culinary
students who work in America’s restaurant kitchens for free
[Several personal stories of
people in restaurant business because they have to take care of one or more
family members.]
Most of the black women with
whom she’d gone to school had become cake makers in local supermarkets
The only other students who
became chefs in nice restaurants were white men
Women in the restaurant industry
earn less than men for four reasons: 1)
they are the majority of tipped workers who only earn $2.13 plus tips; 2) women
are concentrated in lower-level segments of the industry (few in fine-dining
establishments); 3) they typically have lower-level positions; and 4) earn less
even when they work in the same positions
Environments dominated by men
that often encourage sexual harassment
37 percent of the sexual
harassment complaints received by the EEOC were filed by women restaurant
workers, even though only 7 percent of women in the US work in restaurants
A General Manager is generally
considered to be “untouchable’ so he can get away with irresponsible behavior
Most of us can agree that
reality TV cooking shows sensationalize events behind the kitchen door
Chapter 7: Recipes
for Change
Employers have really succeeded
in making workers feel a sense of inevititability
I hope these stories can inspire
you, as they’ve inspired me, to tak small steps to improve your dining
experience and help extend opportunities and a living wage to workers on the
second-largest private-sector industry in the United States.
Stakeholders – workers,
employers, and consummers. First, we
fight against exploitation in high-profile restaurant companies to send a
signal to the whole industry. Second we
promote the “high road” to profitability by partnering with responsible
employers and running our own worker-owned restaurants, which put oru
principles into practice. Third, we
conduct worker-led research and advocate for policy changes to llft standards
industry-wide.
We show the restaurant industry
the negative consequences of irresponsible business practices and the benefits
of responsible, sustainable practices.
What can be done by ordinary
consumers? 1) Adopt a definition of
“sustainable food” that includes sustainable labor practices; 2) Talk to the
workers when you eat in a restaurant; 3) Engage restaurant managers in a
conversation about labor practices; 4) Help raise the federal minimum wage for
tipped workers! Tell policymakers and
restaurant manager that you think $2.13 is unacceptable; 5) Vote for paid sick
days for restaurant workers. And tell
restaurant managers you consider workers’ health when choosing where to eat; 6)
Picket with your wallet – don’t eat in restaurants segregated by race and
gender; and 7) Join our campaign to support workers all along the food
chain.
