1. CLEARINGHOUSE ARTICLEJUNE 2016
T
he pace of modern life being
quick and fast food and dining out
being prevalent, the restaurant
industry unsurprisingly is one of the largest
employers in the United States.1
What
should be shocking is that the practice
of tipping restaurant servers is rooted in
this country’s legacy of slavery.2
The logic
of tipping—that servers make their wages
based on the generosity of their customers
rather than based on the duty of their
employers to compensate them fairly—is
at the core of the systemic exploitation of
workers in this industry.3
The Restaurant
Opportunities Centers United (ROC United)
aims to refashion the restaurant industry
into one in which working conditions are
1 See Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC
United) et al., Tipped Over the Edge: Gender Inequity in
the Restaurant Industry 5 (Feb. 13, 2012) (“According to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of the ten lowest-
paid occupations—and the two absolute lowest-paying
occupations—are jobs in the restaurant industry.”).
2 See Food Labor Research Center et al., Working
Below the Line: How the Subminimum Wage for Tipped
Restaurant Workers Violates International Human Rights
Standards 9 (Dec. 2015) (George Pullman, owner of Pullman
Train Company, largest employer of African Americans
in the 1920s, “purposely fostered the ‘servile relations’
characteristic of the anti-bellum [sic] South in train travel
and almost exclusively employed black men as porters and
black women as maids”) (internal citations omitted). See
also Saru Jayaraman, Forked: A New Standard for American Dining
33–34 (2016) (“In the late 1800s, [American hospitality and
railway companies] argued that they should not have to
pay wages to their employees—many of whom were former
African-American slaves …—because these workers were
earning tips. In other words, the impetus for these industries
to be able to hire workers and not pay them a wage at all,
arguing that their income could come entirely from customer
tips, arose in part from [this] nation’s history of subjugation
based on race.”).
3 See Jayaraman, supra note 2, at 35 (“In the United States,
the practice of tipping has been institutionalized through
a wage system that not only created a justification for the
restaurant industry to not have to raise wages for its own
workers, but has also very nearly led to the industry arguing
that they should not have to pay their workers at all.”).
conducive to a life with dignity for workers.
Through an unorthodox approach, ROC
United has built a national food justice
movement centered on worker justice.4
Building Power for Poor Restaurant
Workers in the United States
Saru Jayaraman and Fekkak Mamdouh
founded ROC as a worker center after 9/11
to support the workers from Windows on
the World, the restaurant atop the North
Tower of the World Trade Center.5
Since
then, ROC has expanded to become a
network of chapters tied into a national
organization, ROC United, operating in
major cities throughout the country.6
In the
last 15 years, ROC United has won at least
12 workplace justice campaigns, securing
$10 million in back pay for workers,
4 See generally Rinku Sen, The Accidental American: Immigration
and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization 176 (2008) (“There
were two important reasons for expanding [ROC United
nationally]. First, there was tremendous demand—workers
from all over the country had been calling them almost since
the beginning, seeking advice about how to get control of
their own abusive industries. People needed help everywhere
because of the second reason: national policies affected
local restaurants, but restaurant workers themselves had
little ability to shape these policies.”).
5 ROC United, Our History (n.d.).
6 See ROC United, About Us (n.d.). ROC United operates in
Albuquerque, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Chicago,
Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Southeast Michigan, New
Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington,
D.C.
and has improved workplace policies in
high-profile restaurants owned by celebrity
chefs such as Mario Batali and Daniel
Boulud.7
ROC United has also created
job training and placement programs,
conducted worker-centered research and
policy work, and opened model restaurants
in New York City and New Orleans.8
ROC United is structured as an “indus-
try-based worker center,” and its social
change methods focus on transforming
7 See ROC United, supra note 5. See, e.g., Adam B. Ellick,
Boulud Settling Suit Alleging Bias at a French Restaurant,
New York Times (July 31, 2007); ROC United, Worker and ROC-
NY Dispute at Del Posto Resolved, Star Chef Mario Batali to
Become “High Road Employer” (Sept. 24, 2012).
8 See ROC United, supra note 5. ROC United is projected
to open two additional restaurants in Washington, D.C., and
Oakland, California, in 2017.
1
BY EVELYN RANGEL-MEDINA AND SARU JAYARAMAN
Advancing a Living Wage and
Human Rights for Restaurant
Workers in the United States
The practice of tipping restaurant servers is rooted in this
country’s legacy of slavery.

2. CLEARINGHOUSE ARTICLEJUNE 2016
the restaurant industry. Unlike traditional
union organizing, ROC United does not
seek collective bargaining agreements
with employers. Instead the organization
focuses on improving industrywide working
conditions by engaging workers and
employers based on a mutual understand-
ing and commitment to just wages and
adequate working conditions. For example,
ROC United has created a network of
“high-road employers” who are committed
to adopting just labor practices of fair
wages, giving workers benefits such as paid
sick leave, and offering opportunities for
professional advancement, particularly for
low-wage immigrant workers of color and
women. ROC United’s high-road employer
network is an antidote to the National
Restaurant Association, the powerful
restaurant lobby that has succeeded in
keeping frozen at $2.13 an hour for 20
years the federal minimum wage for tipped
workers.9
Today ROC United has 18,000
restaurant worker members, 150 high-road
employers, and thousands of consumer
members throughout the country.10
Yet it takes more than a voluntary network
of employers to transform the restaurant
industry. A key component of ROC United’s
strategy is to dismantle the heart of ex-
ploitation in the restaurant industry: inade-
quate wages that lock workers into poverty
and perpetuate vulnerabilities to discrim-
ination.11
To do so, ROC United is looking
to harness international human rights
to support its domestic One Fair Wage
campaign.12
International human rights
establish affirmative duties of the state to
9 See Saru Jayaraman, Behind the Kitchen Door 42 (2013).
10 ROC United, supra note 6.
11 Food Labor Research Center et al., supra note 2, at 14
(“The general poverty pattern for tipped workers employed
in states with the subminimum wage reveals high rates of
poverty.”).
12 One Fair Wage, About (n.d.).
guarantee individuals a life with dignity.13
International law secures these basic guar-
antees through the rights to just remunera-
tion, health, food, protections for the family,
and protection from discrimination on the
basis of race and gender.14
ROC United’s
One Fair Wage campaign is essentially a
human rights campaign. It seeks to raise
wages in the restaurant industry to alleviate
poverty among its workers and facilitate
worker access to all their human rights.
Worker Justice = Food Justice
Alma Gonzalez (not her real name) has
worked in restaurants in California’s San
Francisco Bay Area for over a decade.
An indigenous woman from Oaxaca,
Mexico, Alma immigrated to the United
States in the 1980s to support her two
children. Like most restaurant workers in
this country, she has endured a series of
labor rights abuses, sexual harassment
by managers and coworkers, wage theft,
and discrimination as she watched her
white colleagues with less tenure and
experience receive raises and promotions
while her career stood still. Most recently
her employer fired her after she reported
to him that the chef had kicked a worker
for accidentally dropping a box of onions.
13 See Food Labor Research Center et al., supra note 2, at
13 (“These international standards flow from several sources,
including: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),
the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (ICEDAW), and the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (ICERD).”) (internal citations omitted).
See generally Katherine L. Caldwell, With Great Power Comes
Great Responsibility: Grassroots Corporate Campaigns for
Workers’ Human Rights, 45 Clearinghouse Review 225 (Sept.–
Oct. 2011).
14 See generally Food Labor Research Center et al., supra
note 2, at 13–25.
Abuses such as these are commonplace.
The people who serve and prepare our
food in restaurants across the country too
frequently toil in sweatshoplike working
conditions and are expected to endure
such treatment silently.15
Workers such
as Alma—low-income immigrant women
of color—are profoundly vulnerable to this
exploitation.16
Alma’s story illustrates the
interconnected nature of the multiple
human rights violations that restaurant
workers endure. The poverty wages that
lock Alma and others into exploitation
are a key feature of this system.
The United States operates under a
two-tiered wage structure in which tipped
restaurant workers earn below the
minimum wage in an overwhelming majority
of states.17
With intense lobbying from
15 See Jayaraman, Behind the Kitchen Door, supra note 9, at
16 (“The people I write about in this book demonstrate not
only how we can significantly improve the lives of workers
in the restaurant industry, but also how the quality of our
food depends on the conditions behind the kitchen door.
Their stories may seem dramatic or depressing, but they
are true and, in my experience, representative. Over the
last decade I’ve heard stories similar to those related in this
book dozens of times.”); Saru Jayaraman, From Triangle
Shirtwaist to Windows on the World: Restaurants as the New
Sweatshops, 14 New York University Journal of Legislation and
Public Policy 625 (2011). See also Heidi Shierholz, Economic
Policy Institute, Low Wages and Few Benefits Mean Many
Restaurant Workers Can’t Make Ends Meet (Aug. 21, 2014).
16 See Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Ending
Jim Crow in America’s Restaurants: Racial and Gender
Occupational Segregation in the Restaurant Industry 17 (Oct.
20, 2015) (“In terms of gender segregation and inequality,
the lowest wage states have substantially greater levels
of occupational segregation, but inequality in wage levels
are [sic] pretty consistent across all states. In terms of
racial segregation and inequality, there is little difference
in occupational segregation across states, but there are
substantial differences in the levels of racial wage inequality.
In all states, women and people of color clearly have lower
wages, regardless of the occupational category they are in.”)
(emphasis added).
17 Food Labor Research Center et al., supra note 2, at 1
(tipping “has become codified in a two-tiered minimum wage
system that denies tipped restaurant workers fair wages and
basic labor protections”).
ADVANCING A LIVING WAGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR RESTAURANT WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES
2
Restaurant servers suffer from three times the poverty rate
and use food stamps at twice the rate of the rest of the
national workforce.

3. CLEARINGHOUSE ARTICLEJUNE 2016
the National Restaurant Association, the
federal subminimum wage has been kept at
$2.13 since 1991.18
Only seven states pay
tipped and nontipped workers the same
minimum wage.19
The remaining states are
tied to a wage system developed after the
abolition of slavery and premised on the
notion that newly freed slaves should not
be compensated for their labor.20
Of the 52
states and territories, 45 operate in a two-
wage system that pays tipped workers be-
tween $2.13 and $7 an hour, a rate below
the federal and state minimum wages.
ROC United partnered with the International
Human Rights Law Clinic and the Food
Labor Center, both housed at the University
of California, Berkeley, to study the effects
of the subminimum wage on restaurant
workers. The two-wage structure consti-
tutes a human rights violation because it
perpetuates exploitative working conditions
for low-wage workers, particularly women
and people of color, the yearlong study
found.21
Restaurant servers suffer from
three times the poverty rate and use food
stamps at twice the rate of the rest of the
national workforce.22
However, restaurant
workers are not the only ones who pay the
18 Sylvia A. Allegretto & David Cooper, Economic Policy
Institute, Twenty-Three Years and Still Waiting for Change:
Why It’s Time to Give Tipped Workers the Regular Minimum
Wage 2 (July 10, 2014).
19 U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division,
Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees (Jan. 1, 2016) (these
states pay same minimum wage to tipped and nontipped
workers: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada,
Oregon, and Washington).
20 Food Labor Research Center et al., supra note 2, at 9.
21 See id. at 3 (“The subminimum wage structure violates
the human rights to an adequate standard of living and
to just and favorable remuneration of tipped restaurant
workers.”).
22 Id. at 14, 17.
price for low wages; higher poverty rates
lead to higher use of social services. In fact,
these poverty wages essentially equate to
a subsidy from taxpayers to employers.23
Lifting the Floor and Sealing
the Cracks: Eliminating the
Subminimum Wage and Advancing
a Human Rights Framework
Domestically
Alma began working in the restaurant in-
dustry because of limited job opportunities
available to her as an undocumented immi-
grant. In fact, the restaurant industry over-
whelmingly relies on a vulnerable immigrant
workforce to get away with paying chron-
ically poverty wages.24
To Alma, preparing
food is deeply connected to her memory of
home. However, she soon realized not only
that her role in the kitchen was subjugated
but also that she was expected to become
invisible and not question the exploitation
she and her coworkers endured. She
worked 10- to 12-hour shifts, without
breaks, while bearing with mounting sexual
harassment and discrimination. When she
did speak up, it was in defense of her male
23 Patricia Cohen, Working, but Needing Public Assistance
Anyway, New York Times (April 12, 2015) (“taxpayers are
providing not only support to the poor but also, in effect,
a huge subsidy for employers of low-wage workers”). See
Hannah Levintova, Who Subsidizes Restaurant Workers’
Pitiful Wages? You Do, Mother Jones (April 20, 2015); Khushbu
Shah, 52 Percent of Fast Food Workers Need Government
Assistance to Make Ends Meet, Eater (April 13, 2015).
24 See Jayaraman, From Triangle Shirtwaist to Windows
on the World, supra note 15, at 633 (“The industry also
provides employment opportunities for new immigrants. In
New York City, almost seventy percent of restaurant workers
are foreign-born. Like the garment-manufacturing industry
at the turn of the twentieth century, the restaurant industry
includes a mix of immigrants, young workers, and other
marginalized populations.”) (internal citations omitted).
coworker, whom the chef had physically
abused. For her bravery, she was fired.25
Alma’s experience is the norm for many
restaurant workers in the United States,
especially for those who work in states
that operate under the subminimum wage.
Living off tips is economically unstable
since tips fluctuate daily; it also puts
these workers in vulnerable positions that
exacerbate exploitation—such as sexual
harassment.26
Thus the two-tiered wage
system ensures the subordination and
continued exploitation in the restaurant
industry of low-wage workers, particu-
larly women and workers of color.27
The right to work is a universal human right
enshrined in both the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the International
Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social
25 Alma’s coworker was a worker of color, and the owner
was white. This racial dynamic is endemic in the restaurant
industry (see Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, supra
note 16, at 1–3 (“Workers of color are concentrated in lower-
level busser and kitchen positions in fine-dining restaurants,
and overall in segments of the industry in which earnings
are lower. A canvass of 133 fine-dining establishments
found that 81% of management and 78% of higher-level
non-management positions such as captain, manager, and
bartender are occupied by white workers, a disproportionate
amount of these male. Mobility for workers of color is limited;
of workers that have been denied a promotion, 28% cited
race as the primary reason for their lack of opportunities.
Overall, after adjusting for education and language
proficiency, workers of color receive 56% lower earnings
when compared to equally qualified white workers.”) (internal
citations omitted)).
26 See Restaurant Opportunities Centers United &
Forward Together, The Glass Floor: Sexual Harassment in
the Restaurant Industry 1 (Oct. 7, 2014) (“Since women
restaurant workers living off tips are forced to rely on
customers for their income rather than their employer,
these workers must often tolerate inappropriate behavior
from customers, co-workers, and management.”). See also
Jayaraman, supra note 9, at 130 (“One woman told me that
when she’d asked her manager for a promotion from server
to bartender, he’d asked her what she’d be willing to do for a
promotion. Several woman servers reported being forced to
flash their managers before they punched in to work. Others
described how aggressive men, mostly executive chefs,
threw dishes, screamed racial epithets, and encouraged
fights among workers. Since most of the men executive
chefs ran hostile, testosterone-driven kitchens, women in
the kitchen were constantly being ghettoized, pushed into
pastry positions where they earned less money and had no
opportunity for advancement in the restaurant.”).
27 Food Labor Research Center et al., supra note 2, at 1.
ADVANCING A LIVING WAGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR RESTAURANT WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES
3
The two-tiered wage system ensures the subordination and
continued exploitation in the restaurant industry of low-wage
workers, particularly women and workers of color.

4. CLEARINGHOUSE ARTICLEJUNE 2016
Rights.28
The right to work means that
countries have an obligation to “ensure
that all workers are paid a wage sufficient
to enable them and their family to have
access to an adequate standard of living.”29
The right to work is key in that it ties wages
to workers’ standard of welfare and pre-
vents a race to the bottom for employers of
low-wage workers. The International Labor
Organization promotes minimum wages
as “one element in a policy designed to
overcome poverty and to ensure the satis-
faction of the needs of all workers and their
families, [and its] fundamental purpose …
should be to give wage earners necessary
social protection as regards minimum
28 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and
Cultural Rights, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), U.N. GAOR 21st Sess.,
Supp. No. 16, at 49, arts. 6–7, 11, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966),
993 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into force Jan. 3, 1976); Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217A (III), U.N. GAOR,
3d Sess., art. 23(3), U.N. Doc. A/810 (Dec. 10, 1948).
29 Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human
Rights, Final Draft of the Guiding Principles on Extreme
Poverty and Human Rights, Human Rights Council, 84(b),
U.N. GAOR, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/21/39 (July 18, 2012) (by
Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona).
permissible levels of wages.”30
The Univer-
sal Declaration of Human Rights is not a
binding agreement, but it is recognized as
the international consensus on fundamen-
tal rights. The United States has signed
but not ratified the International Covenant
on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights,
and this means that the United States
recognizes the right to work and is bound
to the fundamental aims of the treaty.
Not only does the subminimum wage
structure violate the right to work, but
also because of its disproportionate
impact on workers of color it violates
international human rights standards
prohibiting discrimination.31
The submini-
mum wage is the cornerstone of a system
of exploitation that violates numerous
human rights of workers such as Alma.32
International human rights standards give
advocates the frameworks and a vision to
advocate beyond a minimum wage and to
make substantive new demands for low-
wage workers in the United States. The con-
sistent human rights violations that workers
experience throughout the country can be
alleviated by an industrywide shift to raise
the minimum wage and create a unitary
wage for tipped and nontipped workers—a
unitary wage which would approach a living
30 International Labour Organization, Minimum Wage
Fixing Recommendation, ILO No. 135 (June 22, 1970).
31 Food Labor Research Center et al., supra note 2, at
19 (“The prohibition against discrimination is incorporated
into every international human rights treaty and States
acknowledge it as a fundamental, universally recognized
right. Two international treaties are dedicated to the topic
of discrimination: ICERD on race discrimination and ICEDAW
[International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women] on discrimination against
women.”) (internal citations omitted).
32 See generally id.
wage in the restaurant industry. Success
in this effort could provide a model for
transforming the U.S. economy as a whole.
ROC United’s Human Rights
Advocacy: Advancing a Right to a
Life with Dignity
Through its One Fair Wage campaign, ROC
United seeks to eliminate the submini-
mum wage and raise the minimum wage
nationally by targeting key states and
localities.33
Raising the minimum wage
to a living wage is a human rights issue
that can have profound effects on the
lives of low-wage workers.34
Eliminating
the subminimum wage is critical to
tackling poverty in a majority of states
operating under the two-tiered system.
The restaurant industry is one of the
most vibrant in California. Although
restaurant owners stand to benefit from
the growing economy, low-wage immigrant
workers of color have historically endured
increased levels of exploitation through
industry booms—from low wages and lack
of benefits to persistent occupational
segregation and discrimination, racial
and gender discrimination, and sexual
33 One Fair Wage, supra note 12 (“Through our ONE FAIR
WAGE campaign, we will be advancing campaigns across
the country to pass legislation in cities and states that will
require the restaurant industry to pay all its employees at
least the regular minimum wage.”).
34 Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Georgetown Center on Poverty and
Inequality, Improving Wages, Improving Lives: Why Raising
the Minimum Wage Is a Civil and Human Rights Issue 9 (Oct.
2014) (“A higher minimum wage is fundamental to achieving
civil and human rights. Raising the minimum wage―—including
the tipped minimum wage――—will help people of color, women,
LGBT individuals, and other disadvantaged individuals
disproportionately, as these groups are disproportionately
represented in low-wage jobs. Since the mid-20th century
through today, an adequate minimum wage has been
understood as core to the struggle for civil rights.”).
ADVANCING A LIVING WAGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR RESTAURANT WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES
4
Raising the minimum wage to a living wage is a human
rights issue that can have profound effects on the lives of
low-wage workers.

5. CLEARINGHOUSE ARTICLEJUNE 2016
harassment. Women workers of color are
precariously situated in the restaurant
industry because of the intersectional
layers of discrimination they face.35
In California most restaurant workers are
Latino or Latina, and over one-third of
them are immigrants. They work under
“the highest levels of directly observable
occupational segregation” in the restau-
rant industry, “while African Americans
are largely absent from [higher-paying]
full service restaurant occupations and
overrepresented in limited-service fast food
occupations.”36
Furthermore, California just
enacted the highest-minimum-wage law
of any state; the law raises the minimum
wage to $15 an hour.37
Because California
does not have a two-tiered wage structure,
the new law includes tipped workers.
However, immigrant low-wage restaurant
workers of color in California suffer from the
highest poverty levels and face significant
barriers to accessing this higher minimum
wage.38
ROC United has found that
employers frequently do not inform workers
that the minimum wage has increased, and
even when workers become aware of the
new minimum-wage law, they are unlikely to
demand an increase for fear of retaliation.
35 See id.
36 See Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, supra
note 16, at 3–4 (this form of segregation results, after
adjusting for education and language proficiency, in workers
of color receiving 56 percent lower earnings than equally
qualified white workers; women of color, on average, earn 71
percent of what white men earn in restaurant industry).
37 S.B. 3, 2015–2016 Reg. Sess. (Cal. 2016). See Christine
Mai-Due, California Now Has Highest Minimum Wage in the
Country (Just Don’t Tell New York), Los Angeles Times (April 4,
2016).
38 See, e.g., Kate Williams, Ex-employees File Suit Against
Calavera Restaurant, Berkeleyside (April 4, 2016).
These workers have few employment
opportunities; this limitation forces them
to stay in these jobs and earn subminimum
wages. Their vulnerability especially
increases if they lack a documented status.
By organizing workers and advocating
higher labor protection for workers, ROC
United is advancing a human rights advo-
cacy framework to ensure that low-wage
restaurant workers can access a living
wage. One of the biggest fights in Cali-
fornia will be the enforcement of the new
minimum wage. Two California chapters
of ROC United are engaged in mobilizing
workers to hold employers accountable
and will embark on popular education
workshops to inform workers of their rights.
Workers are already leading in mobilizing
against wage theft and have been using
human rights discourse to do so.
ROC United plans to help professionalize
the restaurant industry to remove the
stigma that working in the industry is
not respectable. The lack of respect
leads to a lack of urgency and lack of
demanded rights. ROC United seeks to
implement existing laws in a meaningful
way and wants restaurant workers to
have the same dignity that people in
other industries have and the ability to
maintain a prosperous quality of life.
EVELYN RANGEL-MEDINA
Director, Bay Area Chapter of
Restaurant Opportunities Centers
Intern, Berkeley Law’s Internation-
al Human Rights Law Clinic
900 Alice St. #300
Oakland, CA 94607
702.534.9115
evelyn@rocunited.org
SARU JAYARAMAN
Co-Founder and Co-Director,
Restaurant Opportunities Centers
(ROC United)
Director, Food Labor Center,
University of California, Berkeley
275 Seventh Ave. Suite 1703
New York, NY 10001
210.243.6900
saru@rocunited.org
ADVANCING A LIVING WAGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR RESTAURANT WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES
5
Eliminating the subminimum wage is critical to tackling poverty
in a majority of states operating under the two-tiered system.