LIVING FOR CHANGE

TURNING GRIEF INTO OPPORTUNITY

By Grace Lee Boggs

Michigan Citizen, May 20-26, 2007

I am often asked what keeps me so hopeful after all these years. In part, it is because I learned early on that the Chinese ideogram for “crisis” is made up of two characters. One, wei, means danger; the other, jee, opportunity.

A recent example is the Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC) created after 9/11 by workers at Windows on the World, an elegant restaurant which once drew diners to the top of the World Trade Center. I was introduced to ROC and its executive director, Saru Jarayaman, by the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary.

New York restaurants, numbering over 20,000 and employing over 165,000 workers, are a vital part of the city’s cosmopolitan economy. The largest private sector employer in the state, they are also extremely exploitative. A few workers in high-level restaurants, especially those up front, enjoy good jobs. The majority, mostly people of color, who prepare food, wash dishes and clean up behind the kitchen door, work long hours at low wages, under unhealthy, dangerous and often unlawful conditions. Yet only about 1% of restaurant workers are union members.

Many restaurant workers are immigrants, disproportionately Hispanic and Asian; 13% are without legal status. Nationally, restaurants are the largest employers of immigrants.

Most Windows on the World workers were told not to show up on 9/11 because a large affair had been cancelled. After 9/11 they came together to grieve for their co-workers, 73 of whom had been killed. As they grieved, they also talked about their working conditions which often seemed worse than death.

Out of their discussions came a research project and a new approach to the struggle for justice for restaurant workers.

The research project disclosed how denying a living wage and benefits to restaurant workers also endangers the health of diners and is costly to the public because workers come to work even when they are ill, rely on the emergency room for sickness and accidents, and are forced to go on welfare when they lose their jobs.

The research project also uncovered successful owners who reported that providing good working conditions and wages meant less turnover, more loyal employees and also more satisfied customers. Many restaurant owners said they would like to provide better working conditions and benefits but were afraid that if they did so, they would lose out in this highly competitive industry.

In January 2005 New York held its first Restaurant Summit to discuss the research results published in Behind the Kitchen Door: Pervasive Inequality in New York City’s Thriving Restaurant Industry. Participants included workers, employers and representatives of the Mayor, the State Attorney General and elected officials.

Based on the Summit dialogue, ROC workers decided that the best way to better their own lives was to convince both restaurant owners and diners that their well-being depended upon the well-being of the workers.

Through litigation, picketing and news articles they informed diners that it was much healthier to eat out at restaurants where workers were paid enough so that they cared about their workplace and did not feel they had to work even when they were ill.

Restaurant owners were also persuaded that they could attract more customers and make more profit by treating their workers better. For publicity purposes ROC focussed on “high end” restaurants, but it also made guidelines available for organizing by workers at smaller restaurants.

As a result of this more holistic approach, which grew out of 9/11, there are now more New York restaurant workers involved in ROC than in the city’s restaurant unions.

The ROC board consists of restaurant workers and is 50% female, even though the industry is 70% male. A lot of effort also goes into developing the workers as leaders, including, for example, a trip to Italy to study coops.

ROC is now working on City Council members to introduce legislation that will make it more difficult for restaurants with wage violations to renew their operating permits.

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