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. 

Working Poor article in Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/working-poor_n_4463606.html

Huffington Post article on raising minimum wage:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/minimum-wage-poll_n_4466009.html