Restaurant Opportunities Centers co-founder Saru Jayaraman, appearing this weekend on
Bill Moyers:
“If consumers asked, every time they ate out, or said to the management, ‘Love the food, love the service, I would love to see you provide paid sick days, as a consumer that’s important to me,’ or ‘I would love to see you do better on your wages, not pay $2.13,’ just before leaving, we feel like that could make a tremendous difference in moving the industry,”
And more:
- Workers at the Castlewood country club in Pleasanton, California, were locked out for more than two and a half years before the lockout was declared illegal and workers let back on the job last October. But it's only now that they have a new contract:
Under the new contract, workers will pay $225 per month for family health care, the same amount the union proposed before the lockout began. The workers’ payment will go down to $150 in the last year of the contract. The deal also includes raises, strong seniority rights and protections against subcontracting – which Castlewood proposed eliminating during the lockout – and a signing bonus.
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BOOM! "Paycheck Deception" goes down in AZ RT @ArizonaAFLCIO: Anti-Union SB 1182 defeated in the Arizona State Senate. #1u #p2
— @chuckwestover via Twitter for iPhone
- Panera calls its bakers "artisans," but that's not how it treats them:
VonEitzen, who has worked at her Panera franchise for two years, said she earns $10.45 per hour, or about $21,000 per year, putting her earnings at roughly 140 percent of the federal poverty line for a couple. The median pay for a baker in the U.S. is just a touch higher, at $11.27 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the cost of VonEitzen's employer health insurance plan for a couple would swallow nearly half her earnings, so she and her husband, who's had two heart attacks, go without it. Her paycheck brings in just enough to cover the mortgage payment and utilities, but the money is so tight that they often have to forgo her husband's costly heart medications, she said.
Some Panera bakers are fighting to organize.