ASHEVILLE – From textile and carpenter strikes of 19th-century America to the postwar nationwide labor strikes of the 1920s, labor movements are nothing new.
But in a world where food activism is on the rise, so, too, is the call for restaurant workers’ rights, a relatively new phenomenon, said Alia Todd, one of the organizers for the Asheville Sustainable Restaurant Workforce.
Like labor-movement activists of years past, Todd and other restaurant workers say it’s more important to effect change in the workplace than it is to quietly find a better fit.
“When you leave a business because you don’t like it, that doesn’t do anything to correct a wrong, and that’s what this is about,” she said. “I believe in being better than that. It’s not about me, personally, it’s about everyone.”
Kennard Ray, national policy director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a group working to improve conditions for the nation’s restaurant workforce, said the incrrease in the restaurant labor movement fills a vacuum left by industries past.
With the fall of manufacturing jobs and the housing bust eliminating construction jobs, yesterday’s textile and construction worker is today’s line cook and server.
“That work has dissipated to a degree where many of the low-wage jobs that existed in that sector no longer exist,” he said. “The restaurant industry as a whole is the single-most low-paying employer of all industries.”
But Asheville may be unique in its level of food-service activism for a city its size, with restaurant jobs representing a significant share of the workforce.
In Buncombe County, one in seven jobs belongs to the tourism industry, with an estimated 25 percent of those in the food-and-beverage sector.
Tourism in Buncombe County grew by 12.6 percent from 2009-14, sustaining 24,856 jobs with a total annual income of $714 million.
That’s an average of nearly $29,000 per person working in tourism, but that multimillion dollar pie isn’t distributed equally, leaving plenty of workers struggling on the bottom rung of the workforce ladder.
“Wages are stagnant for everybody, but the people at the bottom really suffer,” Todd said.
Income inequity drives restaurant workers to speak up for better pay and perks that most other industries enjoy, including paid vacation and sick days.
At the recent White House Summit for Worker Voice Town Hall, President Barack Obama addressed a question submitted by Todd asking what more can be done at a federal level to help restaurant workers raise standards in their industry.
With the absence of unions, which he said provided enormous muscle and lift to get federal, state and local legislation for workers passed, there have been gaps.
“I think the restaurant industry is an example where a lot of federal law did not reach into restaurants the way they should,” he said, according to White House transcripts. “Which is why, for example, waiters and waitresses and how tips were treated was oftentimes substandard.”
Obama said it was unlikely Congress would pass laws to raise standards for restaurant workers during the remainder of his presidency.
“So, I think the work that Alia is doing — Asheville, by the way, is a great town (with) great restaurants,” Obama said. “But the kind of work that Alia is doing … of creating new norms and social pressures at the local level with employers and with customers is a really powerful tool.”
Using an online megaphone
The fight for restaurant worker rights is not a purely local phenomenon. That seemed particularly evident this year, with the Fight for $15 movement spurring cooks and cashiers to walk off their jobs.
The protests weren’t limited to restaurant workers, drawing also adjunct teachers and retail workers, all demanding $15 an hour.
But fast-food workers, many of whom make $7.25 an hour, were among the loudest.
Those voices were further amplified by a tool the 19th-century labor movements didn’t have: social media.
“I could walk downtown with a petition and a clipboard for five hours and not get 20 people,” Todd said. “But you bring these things to a large scale, and it’s signed and shared. I think that’s been essential.”
In 2013, campaign-generating platform Coworker.org launched as a way to organize workers behind a common cause.
For Starbucks workers, that came in the form of fighting for the right to bare tattooed arms. Starbucks did revise its dress code, allowing workers to display their ink.
Publix workers are also asking for dress-code tweaks, namely to a facial-hair policy which forbids any growth beyond a mustache. The campaign, Free the Beard, has more than 12,000 signatures.
Locally, Tupelo Honey is the subject of another Coworker.org campaign.
The petition, started by Tupelo Honey employees with support from ASRW, states that in the past year, the restaurant has reduced wages for support staff by more than $3 per hour to the federal minimum meant for servers, $2.13 per hour.
“This base wage for support staff is below local and national industry standards,” the petition, which has more than 1,150 signatures, asserts.
The restaurant recently released a response to local media denying that wages had been cut, stating that wages in Asheville stores have, in fact, risen 6 percent since last year.
Tupelo also took a hit for dropping its Living Wage certification. But owner Steve Frabitore said that certification shouldn’t matter, adding that his company pays well above the 95th percentile of the industry.
“We’re not looking for validation of who we are and how we run our company from any third party,” he said.
But Frabitore said employees have the right to petition. “(We’re) doing the best we can for our employees, and I think the facts will bear that out,” he said.
Frabitore thinks well-known businesses in general invite scrutiny. “I just think that we’ve got so many fans and had a modicum of success through our hard work and efforts, and I feel as though we’re becoming a target,” he said.
But in an information age, every restaurant is subject to scrutiny, Ray said.
“Social media gives you a broader lens into some of the labor practices we weren’t able to see in the past,” he said. “It’s been incredible for organizing, and we’re just at the tip of the iceberg.”
Cool to be kind
To recognize worker-friendly restaurants, the ASRW introduced the Better Business Practice Bandwagon, bestowing the first business award to the owners of Blue Dream Curry House in downtown Asheville.
Chris Cunningham, one of the owners of the restaurant, said Blue Dream prioritizes workplace rights in part because of the owners’ extensive restaurant background.
“We are the restaurant workers who spent our lives in the front of the house making $2.13 an hour and depending on the kindness of strangers to pay our bills,” he said.
He said, $8 an hour isn’t enough compensation for kitchen work. “As we have grown into business owners, we share that same sensibility.”
To that end, kitchen employees at his restaurant make $12.50, while servers’ tips are supplemented to reach the same amount as needed.
As inflation grows, the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with what it takes to survive in modern society, he said. “Who feels that more so than someone who makes $2.13 an hour and walks with $20 at the end of their shift?”
Asking for improvements in the worker-pay system is a common cause many industry activists fight for. And, according to Ray, it’s a fight worth having.
“The workers are the power,” he said. “For far too long, low-wage workers have been made to feel like they’re expendable.”
In his labor summit, Obama said that, too often, the worker debate gets framed as “a business-versus-labor thing,” rather than a debate between businesses doing the right thing and businesses “trapped in a bad relationship with their workers (and) relying on outdated models of rapid turnover and low wages and no benefits.”
Good employer standards begin with shining a spotlight on good practices and those effective companies and to help those companies share their own best practices, Obama said.
“That can make a really powerful difference over the long term,” he said. “And it sounds like Alia is doing that in her local level, and that’s something that I think we all have to learn from.”
Leave a Reply