Forked: Women in the Restaurant Industry

By Elaine T. Cicora

Do you eat ethically? If so, the plight of women in the restaurant industry should be of great concern to you, as you plan your next night out.

Cleveland Dames (left to right): Paula Hershman,
Carol Hacker, Bev Shaffer, Elaine Cicora, Shara Bohach

I was honored to be chosen as one of two Cleveland Chapter delegates to the 2017 LDEI Conference, held in Newport Beach, California, Oct. 26 to 28. As a first-time attendee, I was eager to dive into all the conference had to offer: a chapter leadership forum, a tour of an urban eco-farm, numerous workshops on topics ranging from “The Story of California Olive Oil” to “Laying a Foundation for Collaborative Problem Solving,” as well as soaking up the inspiration provided by our newest Grand Dame, Lidia Bastianich.

In addition, the opportunities for networking, interpersonal learning, and just plain making new friends was remarkable. (The pool was very nice, too … or so I heard.)

However, for me, the most compelling moments of the conference came during the Saturday-morning Green Tables breakfast session, featuring the activist attorney, author, co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Center United and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, Saru Jayaraman.

Saru Jayaraman

As a fiery advocate for better wages and working conditions for women in the service sector, Jayaraman offered these provocative facts:

• With more than 12 million workers, the restaurant industry is the fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy
• One in eleven Americans work in the restaurant industry
• These are jobs that can’t be outsourced and are here to stay
• And yet, seven of the ten lowest paying jobs in the U.S. economy are in the restaurant industry.
• This is particularly pronounced in mid-level chain restaurants

What does this mean for us as a country, Jayaraman asks? Well, for one thing, one in three people who work in the restaurant industry full time, or MORE than full time, live in poverty – and that figure is quickly approaching one in two!

Who will be patronizing our restaurants if so many members of our economy can’t afford to dine out, she asks.

More than anywhere else, she claims, American culture – and our special moments – happen in restaurants. So clearly, preserving restaurants and their workers should be important to us all. Which leads to the topic of tipping, a practice that allows employers to pay workers a reduced minimum wage with the expectation that they can make up the difference in tips. But rarely, she says, does this come to pass.

Historically, Jayaraman explains, tipping is a vestige of the feudal system, a sort of extension of noblesse oblige. It came to the U.S. from Europe in the 1850s and was roundly condemned as un-American and undemocratic.

But ironically, while Europe soon dropped the practice, the U.S. did not. And suddenly, the country was filled with emancipated blacks who were accustomed to laboring for free: the notion of paying them in tips, instead of wages, quickly caught on.

Today, seven states including Washington, Nevada, California, Montana, Minnesota and Alaska have rejected the practice of tipping. With laws that stipulate tipped and non-tipped workers must be paid the same minimum wage, tips are simply a bonus. And, she claims, the restaurant industry remains robust in those states, despite initial fears to the contrary.

In the rest of the country, however, restaurant owners continue to claim that tipped workers make lots of money in tips, and there is no need to pay them a living wage. “This is just not true,” Jayaraman says.

• Of the 12 million workers in the industry, 70 percent are women working in mid-level chains and 40 percent of them are single moms
• For one out of every two women, restaurant work is their first job
• While these women work in restaurants, many of them can’t afford to put food on their own tables, she says
• Just as appalling, the restaurant industry has the worst rate of sexual harassment of any industry in the U.S.
• “When you work in a state where your wages are $2 or $3 an hour, you will put up with anything from your customers to get that tip,” she explains. “You must tolerate anything and everything to walk away with anything at all.”
• In addition, management may even instruct their female staffers to act or dress in more overtly sexual ways in order to maximize tips – and reduce the owners’ guilt over paying less than a living wage.
• “Your work is literally determined by your willingness to tolerate, to even encourage, sexual harassment,” she says.

Yet many employers don’t actually realize this is sexual harassment, she says. “They claim this is just the way the industry works!”

But even if that is so, it doesn’t mean it is right, Jayaraman claims. And she is a vocal advocate of changing the current system.

“The future of the industry is professionalization,” she told us. “Pay and treat your workers as the professionals they are. We must move away from the old system that isn’t working, that encourages sexual harassment, and is a holdover from slavery.

“As women in the industry, you must realize that the fact that these conditions exist diminishes us all as women.

“Women like us must step up and say, ‘we can change that system!’’’

It was a powerful speech, on a topic we will undoubtedly be hearing much about in coming months. To learn more about Jayaraman, the movement, and her book, “Forked: A New Standard for American Dining,” please click here.