Small talk. It is the great pleasure of life whether it is across the dinner table with old and new friends or with the server at your favorite place. It can start with a simple question, “What’s good tonight?” By the end of the evening, we are all chatting about our families.
Small talk enables us to see ourselves in others. It allows us to create a sense of belonging, to recognize how we rely on each other. Restaurants can be what one social analyst describes as a pillar of the ‘empathic civilization’.
Nationwide protests by service workers against poverty wages demonstrate this lofty promise of understanding how we are connected to each other has been unfilled. Each of us is to blame. These workers deserve to be paid a living wage for their work. After all, it is their work that makes, for example, our wonderful restaurant experience possible.
Too often we turn a blind eye to this profound truth. In the words of Pope Francis, “[b]ecause all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another.”
This past Friday night, April 8th, was busy in San Francisco’s Mission District. Local kids are at McDonalds, sharing fries, talking on and on. Immigrant Latinos, weary after a long week’s work, are crowded at tables at their taqueria. The affluent techies, are celebrating “the next great thing”, at the new trendy place.
The swanky restaurants are in unassuming buildings. Local zoning laws ensure they are convenient to get to, near residences, along bus routes and BART. The fancy interior décor was paid for by loans from family, from crowdsourcing, and from you and me via our banks and government.
The food is a testament to our desire to make connections. We seek to enjoy diverse cultures from across the United States and around the world. Yes, we often re-invent the dishes to our own tastes. Nonetheless, we nobly imagine the culture of others adds something to who we are.
Despite the potential to be grown locally, our food comes from everywhere. Vegetables grown across the Golden Gate Bridge; the fruit from inland California’s heartland; poultry, beef, pork, and fish from around the world. It is easier to imagine the work of those we see transport the food—the truck drivers, the loaders of cargo ships and planes, their captains and pilots.
It’s a little harder to think of the far off farm workers who often can not eat well despite the bounty they tend to. They live in struggling regions like the Central Valley. Home to prospering ag-firms, cities and towns in the Central Valley are starved of the revenues to build public structures that make life better—from clean water to quality schools.
We trust with good reason that the food is good to eat. The city’s health department regularly inspects the restaurant. And don’t forget the state and federal food inspectors who followed the food on its journey to our plates from close by and across the globe. They all ensure no one is taking short cuts.
We don’t see so much of this - the array of government laws, regulations and programs. We are however more likely to have heard the powerful industry trade association issue dire warnings—yet again—if the government that benefits them so much, dare raise the wage standards for their workers.
Perhaps it is because so many restaurant workers are immigrants, or people of color, or younger folks. It may be our implicit bias— unconscious prejudices we do not recognize that shape our misdeeds. And many of us deride the work they do. “They’re just flipping burgers”. It is an odd refrain, in our San Francisco foodie culture.
We accept without thinking this antiquated “leave us alone” sentiment. Though none of us go it alone in life—thank God. We rely on each other in a myriad of ways. We garner support from each other—from neighbors, from our faith communities, from family, professional and trade associations and from labor unions.
Given all that, we should at the very least appreciate, if not, admire these food workers. We rely on them for happiness—they too should be happy. They should not be struggling to get by. Yet they do.
They’re part of the reason we are all stuck. Seven in ten are paid wages so low—under $14 per hour—even two full time jobs could not afford to provide the basics for their families anywhere in California. They earn too little to spend enough—at local stores and on big ticket items—to drive our economy forward.
Yes, no doubt in struggling neighborhoods restaurant profits are more modest. That’s a smaller part of the industry. That part of the industry needs their customers to have more money in their pockets. They need increased wage standards.
Most restaurants can afford to do better. They are making plenty. Industry profits continue to rise—in California this year sales are expected to exceed $72 billion.
And their customers are well off. The more people make, the more people go out to eat—working people spend about a third of their very modest income on eating out, the best off spend almost half of their considerable incomes.
Restaurants are a part of our connected economy. To prosper, they rely on an active smart government, and dedicated workers and loyal hungry customers. It is up to us customers to make these restaurants better places for everyone.
The first week of April 2016 was amazing for service workers. In Albany and Sacramento they stood with community activists, labor leaders, and their state legislators while their governors signed bills establishing a $15 living wage standard. No doubt this past Friday night, in the Mission District restaurants these workers celebrated like their better off tech brethren more often do—at last their hard work has been recognized with a more decent wage
Mark Gomez is the founder of The Leap Forward Project at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. He is a long-time community and labor activist in California. Co-author Anika Fassia is the Director of Outreach at Public Works: the Center for the Public Sector and Indivisible.
The ideas expressed on the Haas Institute blog are not necessarily those of UC Berkeley or the Division of Equity & Inclusion, where the Haas Institute website is hosted. They are not official and not of one mind. Thoughts here are those of individual authors. We are committed to academic freedom, free speech and civil liberties.
