Saru Jayaraman, founder of Restaurant Opportunities Centers, will present Carleton College’s weekly convocation on Friday, Feb. 27 from 10:50 to 11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. Entitled “Behind the Kitchen Door,” her presentation draws attention to servers, bussers, runners, cooks, and dishwashers across the country struggling to support themselves and their families under the shockingly exploitative conditions that exist in most restaurants.
This event is free and open to the public. Carleton convocations are also recorded and archived online at go.carleton.edu/convo/.
Jayaraman founded Restaurant Opportunities Centers New York after September 11, 2001, to provide support to restaurant workers displaced as a result of the World Trade Center tragedy. The organization soon grew to support restaurant workers all over New York City and to advocate for improved working conditions.
Since its founding, ROC-NY has successfully conducted restaurant workplace justice campaigns, provided job training and placement, opened its own cooperative restaurant, and conducted research and policy work. As a result of these successful efforts in New York City, Jayaraman was approached by restaurant workers in several other cities. In response, Jayaraman organized the country’s first national restaurant workers’ convening in Chicago in August 2007 and subsequently launched Restaurant Opportunities Centers United in January 2008.
The mission of ROC is to improve wages and working conditions for the nation’s restaurant workforce. Over the last five years, ROC has won 13 workplace justice campaigns against exploitative high-profile restaurant companies, obtaining more than $10 million and improvements in workplace policies for restaurant workers. They have also trained more than 1,000 restaurant workers to find good jobs and advance within the industry, published several ground-breaking reports on the restaurant industry, played an instrumental role in winning a statewide minimum wage increase for tipped workers, organized 40 restaurant workers to open their own cooperatively-owned restaurant, and grown to include more than 13,000 restaurant workers in our membership from at least 26 states.
More at www.rocunited.org.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Convocations Committee, with support from the Thomas M. Crosby, Sr. Lectureship Fund and the M.H. Wright Family Fund. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4308. The Skinner Memorial Chapel is located on First Street, between College and Nevada Streets, in Northfield.
