Monday, February 22, 2016
An Outspoken Force to Give Food Workers a Seat at the Table (Ford Foundation)
One afternoon in late January, prominent New York restaurateurs, including Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio, took the stage at the Ford Foundation to celebrate the release of a new book by Saru Jayaraman, an outspoken leader in the food labor movement.
It was not an obvious pairing. “Forked: A New Standard for American Dining,” paints a grim picture of the food business today: Millions of service industry employees live in poverty, most big restaurants are not great employers, and many still pay servers $2.13 an hour, the federal minimum for workers who receive tips. But the book also makes the case that restaurants can survive and even prosper while paying workers well and offering them generous benefits.
Mr. Meyer, the entrepreneur behind Shake Shack, the Modern and Blue Smoke, has recently embraced this cause, pledging to do away with tipping at his restaurants, as a means to combat income inequality. He contends that paying workers well is not only the right thing to do, but is also good for business — well-compensated employees, the thinking goes, will be happy, loyal and hard-working. . .