Detroit restaurants serve up low wages, discrimination

On Feb. 9 the Restaurant Opportunities Center — United of Michigan issued the most comprehensive report on the metro Detroit restaurant industry to date.

Restaurant workers’ children protest at Andiamo restaurant. WW photo: Bryan G. Pfeifer

“It is more common for employers in the industry to break the law than to follow it,” said Minsu Longiaru, coordinator of ROC-Michigan, to a packed forum of ROC members, allies and media at Slow’s Bar-B-Q restaurant in Detroit.

The report, “Behind the Kitchen Door: Inequality and Opportunity in Metro Detroit’s Growing Restaurant Industry,” is the result of seven months of analysis in 2008-09 of industry and government data, academic literature and 501 worker surveys, 32 one-hour interviews with restaurant workers and 37 one-hour interviews with restaurant employers in metro Detroit.

On Feb. 9 similar reports by ROC, a national workers’ center based in New York City with nationwide affiliates, were issued in Chicago, New Orleans and Portland, Maine.

The growing restaurant industry in Michigan accounted for over $12 billion of the state’s revenues in 2008. A significant portion of this is generated in metro Detroit, which has 7,700 food service and drinking places currently employing 134,000 workers, many of whom are people of color, women and students. Only 1 percent of the workers in the metro Detroit restaurant industry are unionized.

The ROC report states, “Presently, most of the jobs being generated by the industry are ‘bad jobs’ — characterized by low wages, few benefits, few options for upward mobility and illegal workplace conditions.”

The report concludes that there is systemic discriminatory hiring, promotion and disciplinary practices in the metro Detroit restaurant industry. Seventy-nine percent of all white workers surveyed worked in “the front of the house,” while just 51 percent of all African-American workers and 36 percent of Latino/a employees worked in the front. Workers also reported being disciplined more often or more severely based on their race, gender or sexual orientation.

Workers of color are concentrated in “back-of-the-house” positions in the kitchen and as bussers. Undocumented workers, particularly those of Latino/a descent, are almost exclusively found working in the kitchen only. These workers are often superexploited because of racism and immigration status.

Only 12.9 percent of jobs in the industry are living wage jobs and the majority of these are held by white workers. Eighty percent of the workers in the metro Detroit restaurant industry make less than $10 per hour. For those who make only the $2.13 federal tipped minimum wage, tips are supposed to fill the gap between this wage and the federally mandated $7.40 minimum wage, but many times servers are robbed by management who steal the tips, or the servers are forced to “share” the tips with other workers already making the minimum wage or higher.

Health and safety conditions are abysmal. Over half of the workers interviewed had suffered work-related cuts on at least one occasion and had been burned on the job. Since 81.4 percent of restaurant industry employers don’t provide health insurance, workers are often forced to work while sick, posing dangers to the public and co-workers. Ninety-five percent of restaurant workers don’t get sick days. Sixty percent of workers reported working while sick and those who can’t are often fired. There is little or no OSHA or other government-certified health and safety training in the majority of restaurants in the industry.

The report states that 68.2 percent of workers in the metro Detroit restaurant industry do not receive regular raises; 31.7 percent worked off the clock without pay; and 51 percent were robbed of overtime pay. Many workers interviewed are paid “off the books” in cash, have had their bosses’ checks bounce and/or experienced other forms of theft.

Since the majority of “fine-dining” restaurants that pay living-wage jobs are in the suburbs, those workers who live in Detroit and lack transportation often don’t have access to those jobs unless they are willing to spend hours accessing public transportation to and from work. When they do live in the suburbs and have access to transportation, many workers of color find themselves being “occupationally segregated” in “the back of the house,” despite many times having the skills for “front-of-the-house” positions such as servers, bartenders, managers, etc.

ROC’s recommendations for improving conditions include the enforcement of employment laws in the restaurant industry; the providing of paid sick days and increasing the tipped minimum wage; the promotion of opportunity and penalization of discrimination; support for further industry research; and a demand for the right of workers to unionize.

ROC also promotes the use of direct action when necessary, such as their weekly protests at the Andiamo restaurant in Dearborn, Mich., against which ROC has filed wage claims and a discrimination lawsuit.

For more information on ROC Michigan visit www.rocunited.org/affiliates/michigan.