Restaurant horror show: How waitstaffs are mistreated

[Teamster Jeff]

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/restaurant_horror_show_how_waitstaffs_are_mistreated/

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Almost 10 percent of the U.S. workforce is in the restaurant industry. Why is it legal to treat them so poorly?

Nearly one in 10 U.S. workers is employed in the restaurant industry, a total of 13.1 million people, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Yet of all employment categories tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, restaurant employees receive the lowest wages.

According to a ROC report, nearly 90 percent of restaurant workers don’t receive paid sick days, vacation or health insurance.

In this sense, restaurant workers are increasingly representative of the situation of American labor in the early 21st century: employed at-will, without benefits, for a wage that’s constantly shrinking in buying power.

Union representation for food service workers is very rare, except in hotels and casinos.
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[Wellstone ruled]

1. One only has to watch the Food Channel.

Notice the out right hostility that is allowed in their kitchens. It's a top down management style,with the head Chef on a major ego trip,and everyone else is he or she's little peons and serfs. BTW,the hours really suck,no bennies or vacations,horseshit insurance if it's available. Had two sons that were chefs at one time in their careers,both walled away because of the inherent abuse by owners and managers. Tell you what,the wait staff really gets abuse and we heard it all. Wage and Hour people are the most distrusted people in that industry.

[jeffrey_pdx]

2. I think they play that up.

I've worked in the industry off and on for almost 20 years. With the exception of one head chef (who was just completely fuckin' bi-polar), most of the kitchen staff are friendly to the wait staff. Sometimes, when it got completely slammed, there was a little yelling, but at the end of the night the 2 people who were yelling at each other were sitting next to each other at a bar somewhere laughing about it. People do raise their voices in the kitchen, usually because its kinda loud back there, or it's just quicker to yell down the line if you need something rather than walk down and ask at a polite voice level. Among the cooks, insults are usually meant as jokes and are taken as such.

But the hours do suck, no benefits or paid sick leave sucks, and it seems like you can get written up or fired over any little customer complaint. But I can't imagine anyone I've worked with putting up with the shit chefs on the Food Network or other cooking shows dish out. I think the network, producers, etc.. tell them to be dicks to make the shows more exciting or something.