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Saru Jayaraman

lines on the record
62
first
2016-02-20
most recent
2016-02-20
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “That's right. Well, actually, making nine, which is the California state minimum wage, plus tips. And California actually has the largest and fastest scoring restaurant industry in the country. LA has a larger restaurant industry than New York City, believe it or not. They have higher restaurant sales per capita, higher job growth in the restaurant industry, higher job growth among servers, even higher rates of tipping. We tip better on the West Coast than in New York or the 43 states with lower wages for tipped workers. So the opposite can actually be said to be true, that if you have a standard that's set for a whole state or hopefully the whole country that requires every restaurant, like every other industry, to pay the full minimum wage, you will follow that business model and make it work.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “The thing is that that's the traditional model, the old model, and that's why the book is called Forked, because there actually is another way of doing things. California and six other states actually require that this industry pay a full minimum wage to their workers and let tips be on top of that.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Fancy fine dining steakhouse when, in fact, 70% of these workers are women who work at iHop and Applebee's and suffer from three times the poverty rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce make very little money in tips and suffer from the worst sexual harassment of any industry. I've read some horror.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It was gone. I mean, that was the turn of the 19th century. And that movement that started in the States spread to Europe and succeeded in Europe, which is why there's no tipping in Europe or very little. Here in the States, the restaurant industry actually squashed that movement and demanded the right to hire newly freed slaves. This is right around the time of emancipation and not pay them anything and let them live on customer tips. And that's actually how the very first minimum wage law in the United States, which was part of the New Deal in 1938, said you can get the minimum wage as a tipped worker either through your wages or through tips, which gave tipped workers the right to a zero dollar minimum wage. And we've gone from a zero dollar minimum wage in 1938 to a whopping $2.13 an hour, which is the current federal minimum wage for workers who earn tips. And over that 100-year period, the restaurant association has said it's okay. We don't need to pay these workers. They make a ton of money and tips. We don't have to actually give them a wage. They describe a white guy working out a...”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “It's actually not the problem with tipping, it's the fact that this industry, the restaurant industry, has used tipping as a way to not pay their own workers. So it turns out tipping didn't originate in the States. It originated in the feudal homes of Europe. And when it came to the States, there was actually a massive anti-tipping movement so strong that six states passed bans on tipping. Really? That's fast.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, they really don't like us. Why am I surprised? They represent the Fortune 500 chains, the olive gardens, and the Taco Bells, and McDonald's. And they've been lobbying to keep wages as low as $2.13 an hour for decades and decades. In fact, that is the current federal minimum wage for tipped workers. And in doing research for this book, come to find that their power doesn't date back 20 or 30 years. It date back 150 years to the Emancipation of the Slave.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, actually, when we first put it out, Mark Bittman wrote about it in The New York Times, you know, a great food writer, and several hundred thousand people downloaded it in the first day when he wrote about it. And it's because people, I think, really want to know how is this restaurant treating its workers? Do they offer paid sick days, which, by the way, 90% of these workers don't have a single paid sick day? So most of these.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So, for years, people would say, Well, we know that things are so bad. Where can we eat? What can we do? How can we support? And so we started actually doing research and doing research on the 150 most popular chains in America and every year giving them ratings on issues of wages and benefits and promotions. And then also rating restaurants that were trying to work with us to do better. And so now the app includes ratings of the 150 most popular restaurants in America, mostly chains and also 150 other restaurants that are doing it right. And we give awards to restaurants that provide good wages and good working conditions. So it uses a geolocator to see where you are.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Of the U.S. economy. That's amazing. It's amazing. It's 11 million workers, one in 12 Americans works in this industry, one in two of us have worked in this industry in our lifetime. Sure. So it's not like it's an industry that's going anywhere or is tiny or small. And there are plenty of restaurants, many of whom I profile in the book that have shown that you actually can treat your workers well, pay them well, and stay in business for a really long time”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Well, the truth is that, yes, it is true that lots of new restaurants fail, but the numbers show that actually the number of new restaurants that succeed and stay open far exceeds that because it is still the second largest and absolute fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy in terms of large-scale.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I actually didn't that's kind of one of the incredible discoveries actually in doing research for the book, I went back and traced my family's origins in the restaurant industry and my family actually were owners of a restaurant, worked in restaurants? Great-grandfather in South India owned a restaurant for decades and decades and decades and employed lots and lots of people. But I never worked in a restaurant until we actually opened our own restaurants through rock. So learned a lot from the workers the minute after 9-11 was thrown together with these workers and really tried to do something to change this.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, so on that morning, 73 workers actually died at Windows on the World and about 250 workers lost their jobs and about 13,000 restaurant workers lost their jobs in the months and weeks that followed the tragedy. And so I worked with one of the former waiters at Windows on the World, a guy named Fekak Mamdu, and we started the organization initially as a relief center to help all of these thousands of restaurant workers in New York get back on their feet, especially the windows workers. But because this isn't one of the largest and fastest growing industries and because actually there is no union in this industry, there's very little support for these workers. The minute we opened our doors, we started getting cries for help from workers all over the city and then all over the country. And it just kept growing.”

    2016-02-20 · Masters in Business · Interview With Saru Jayaraman: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source