La’Randa Jackson, shown here, supports her mother and her younger brothers by working at the Walmart store in Cincinnati, Ohio. “I skip a lot of meals,” she says. “The most important thing is food for the babies, then my younger brothers. Then, if there’s enough, my mom and I eat.”

La’Randa works for the nation’s largest private employer, and she is not alone in her struggle to afford enough food.

On $10.10 an hour and an unpredictable part-time schedule, Cantare Davunt – a Walmart customer service manager from Apple Valley, Minnesota – winds up digging into her cabinets for older, non-perishable foods like Ramen so she can have a hot meal. Diana Tigon, a cashier at the Walmart store in Arlington, Texas, often finds she is strapped for cash and during rough weeks goes full days without eating meals.

These tragic stories are all too common among workers at America’s largest retailer, which enjoys $16 billion in annual profits. The Walton family, which owns Walmart, has assets valued at an obscene $150 billion.

My latest report shows the direct connection between the unfair working conditions that Walmart perpetuates and the key factors that contribute to hunger in America. For example, 88 percent of households receiving food bank assistance have incomes of less than $25,000 a year; as many as 825,000 Walmart workers are paid than $25,000 a year. Also, more than 57 percent of employed recipients of food assistance work part-time; there are an estimated 600,000 part-time workers at Walmart, though many want to work full-time.

Because Walmart workers must rely on federal assistance programs to fill in the gaps, American taxpayers are subsidizing the retailer’s business model of exploitation. One report from Americans for Tax Fairness estimated the cost to taxpayers of Walmart workers’ reliance on public assistance is $6.2 billion a year.

In a twisted closed loop system, Walmart is also the largest retailer for food stamp spending in the nation, capturing about 18 percent of all food stamp revenue, estimated at $13.5 billion. If Walmart paid its workers a living wage they wouldn’t need to rely on public assistance.

Walmart has the ability – more than any other business – to lift hundreds of thousands of working families out of poverty by improving jobs at its stores, which would, in turn, reduce hunger across the nation.

You can download the complete report here.

Thanks to Anna Lappe’ for inspiring the report’s title with her excellent 2013 article at TakePart.

Food movement leaders tend to stick to their specific issues, whether it’s advocating for healthy food, fighting for workers’ rights or curbing marketing to children. For each of these issues, there are numerous food corporations that need to change. But there is one organization that conveniently provides us with one giant target for all of them: the National Restaurant Association.

The “other NRA” employs 750 staffers and spent nearly $4 million on lobbying and campaign donations in 2012 alone. The trade group representing some 52,000 members was named a “Heavy Hitter” by the Center for Responsive Politics for being a top corporate player in Washington, D.C. No wonder, with board members that include the nation’s largest chains such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Starbucks, and Darden (the restaurant conglomerate that owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster), among others.

NRA Hates Public Health

The National Restaurant Association has had a negative impact on a wide range of issues that foodies tend to care about. Do you think chain restaurants should provide basic nutrition information to their customers? Is it really too much to ask to disclose the calorie count for dishes like the “Five Cheese Ziti” or the “Steak Gorgonzola-Alfredo” at Olive Garden? The NRA thinks so, as the group lobbied against menu labeling laws for decades, until they “gave in” by stripping states of their right to enact such laws. The NRA hated New York City’s menu labeling rules so much that the group filed a lawsuit to stop implementation. They lost.

But that didn’t stop NRA lawyers from filing another lawsuit against New York City when lobbyists didn’t get their way again, this time to oppose limiting the size of sugary soft drinks. (That case is still pending.) Science and plain common sense tells us that consuming sodas out of bucket-size containers is probably not good for you. Yet the NRA and its members demand their right to keep selling these disease-inducing beverages by waging an aggressive astroturf and media campaign in cahoots with the soda industry to manipulate public opinion.

Other public health policies the NRA has vigorously opposed include soda taxes, trans fat bans and lowering sodium levels, which are sky-high in chain restaurants. But there are a few policies the NRA is actually in favor of, such as expanding the use of food stamps for fast food. They also led the charge for “cheeseburger bills”, which aim to shut the courtroom door to customers harmed by unhealthy fare.

NRA Hates Children

An especially important issue on the NRA’s menu of obstruction is marketing to children. Despite decades of advocacy efforts aimed at getting the food industry to stop targeting children as young as age two, we’ve come up mostly empty. A few years ago, the NRA helped kill an effort by four federal agencies to improve the industry’s notoriously lax voluntary guidelines on food marketing to children. The NRA also lobbies to make sure that children continue to be targeted with toys in unhealthy meals. All the while, the NRA pretends to care about kids by inventing a public relations scheme it calls “Kids LiveWell” purporting to help parents find healthy food for their children when dining out. Too bad the evidence shows almost all of such meals are of poor nutritional quality.

NRA Hates Animals

Not content just to be an enemy of public health, the restaurant lobby also takes aim at those advocating for sustainable food and farm animal welfare. One of the NRA’s favorite mouthpieces is the notorious lobbyist Rick Berman, who revels in his nickname “Dr. Evil,” and mounts aggressive campaigns against labor organizations, nutrition groups, and animal welfare advocates while his clients keep their noses clean. Berman has penned articles published in the industry trade paper, the Nation’s Restaurant News, for example, criticizing recent restaurant industry pledges to raise pigs humanely and calling on restaurants to fight back against animal activists, warning: “Operators need to roll up their sleeves before it’s too late.” Berman also loves pink slime and mercury-laden fish. Berman misses no opportunity to slam advocates of sustainable food, touting “modern technology for maximizing the efficiency of [food] processing.” He’s even attacked Michelle Obama for calling on restaurants to serve healthier options for children and families.

NRA Hates Workers

If all of that isn’t enough evil-doing, the NRA’s main agenda is to keep workers down by spreading fear about the alleged economic doom that would bestow the restaurant industry by meager increases in worker wages and paid sick days. The federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 an hour. Can you live on that? Today is February 13, a reminder that the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is only $2.13 an hour – it’s been stuck there since 1991 – or, more accurately, the NRA and its members have kept it there. The NRA wants the restaurant industry to stand alone in not having to pay its own workers – claiming that we, the customers, pay their workers’ wages for them through our tips.

The restaurant industry loves to whine about how it cannot possibly afford to raise worker wages. But as author Anna Lappé recently pointed out, Darden (the leading sit-down restaurant chain) pays its top five executives more than $16 million a year. McDonald’s paid its CEO more than $13.8 million in 2012, even with declining sales. With that kind of money to throw around, leading restaurants can more than afford to pay their workers a living wage.

NRA members would still have plenty of money left over for other business improvements, such as sourcing more sustainable food and insisting their meat suppliers stop engaging in cruelty. Some changes wouldn’t even cost them money, like no longer exploiting children. That change would save restaurants money; money better spent on workers’ wages and paid sick days. It’s time for the food movement to come together and fight this common enemy.

Saru Jayaraman is co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Center United and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. See ROC’s latest video and #LivingOffTips campaign here.

Originally posted at Corporate Accountability International.

It seems both ironic and fitting that while most Americans are obsessed with food for the Thanksgiving holiday, this week also marks International Food Workers Week, organized by the Food Chain Workers Alliance.

While many large restaurant chains and other sectors of the food industry bear responsibility for mistreating their workers, recently, McDonald’s has engaged in a series of jaw-dropping and idiotic communications with its workforce. Each one is a painful reminder of how impossible it is to live on fast-food wages.

For example:

•  In July, McDonald’s shared a budget planning guide that included a line-item for a second job, which would sadly be needed on the typical hourly wage of $8.25 (compared to the CEO’s annual salary of $8.75 million). But as CNN demonstrated, McDonald’s attempt to help its workers with a sample budget was way out of touch with the realities they face. (Like paying for such luxuries as heat, which McDonald’s budgeted at zero.)

•  Last month, a representative from the corporation’s phone helpline dubbed “McResource” told a worker in Chicago that she “definitely should be able to qualify for both food stamps and heating assistance” and pointed her to other local resources such as food pantries. A corporate spokesperson said the helpline was a “confidential service.”

• Then just last week McDonald’s got caught once again giving workers not just unhelpful financial advice, but also inane and insulting “tips.” To stretch their food dollars, hungry workers were told that “breaking food into pieces often results in eating less and still feeling full.” Over-shopped? Just get refunds on any unopened holiday purchases. Feeling stressed out? McDonald’s has it covered: Just “quit complaining” since “stress hormone levels rise by 15 percent after ten minutes of complaining.” And if that doesn’t work, taking “at least two vacations a year can cut heart attack risk by 50 percent.” (I wonder where CEO Don Thompson vacations.)

While it’s easy to make fun of these incredibly stupid and insensitive corporate missteps, for most of McDonald’s 700,000 workers (four million in the fast-food industry), it’s no laughing matter; instead, it’s a reality they live every single day.

A staggering 20 million people in the U.S. alone work in the food system, with almost one-third of them getting paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour or the “tipped minimum wage” of $2.13 per hour in restaurants. (Yes, you read that right: 2 dollars and 13 cents.) As a result, food workers are more likely to rely on food stamps to make ends meet, among other indignities.

As I described in my recent report about McDonald’s charity (or lack thereof) with Corporate Accountability International and Anna Lappé’s Small Planet Institute, the fast-food corporation consistently obstructs policy efforts to raise the minimum wage. For example, McDonald’s is a member of the National Restaurant Association, which spent close to $4 million in campaign donations and lobbying in 2012 and staunchly opposes raising the minimum wage.

According to Bloomberg, in the wake of national protests by workers for higher wages and paid sick days, McDonald’s “helped pay for lobbying against minimum-wage increases and sought to quash the kind of unionization efforts that erupted recently on the streets of Chicago and New York.” It may be cheaper to put up a website and staff a helpline, but that won’t help workers.

Making matters worse, a recent study showed that 52 percent of the families of fast-food workers need to rely on public assistance programs, costing taxpayers nearly $7 billion a year. Moreover, a related report from the National Employment Law Project found that McDonald’s topped the list of fast-food corporations whose workers rely on government programs, which essentially subsidize the industry’s low wages. As Forbes put it, McDonald’s costs “the taxpayer $1.2 billion annually in public assistance programs for their low-paid workers.”

For my report, “Clowning Around with Charity,” I closely examined McDonald’s claims of giving generously, but found that in contrast, the corporation donates relatively little, even to its namesake cause, the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Given how badly the corporation treats its workers, McDonald’s stinginess should come as no surprise. But before giving away any of its billions of dollars in annual profits, McDonald’s should first pay its workers a living wage.

Joann Lo, executive director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, told me she is “disgusted by the hypocrisy of multinational corporations like McDonald’s that pay minimum wage to their employees but then tout how they give back to the ‘community’ through donations and sponsorships.” She added: “The best way that McDonald’s can give back to the community is to pay its employees a living wage.”

Now is a good time to add your voice to this growing chorus. It’s not enough to just not eat at McDonald’s, or to ask McDonald’s to serve healthier food, or even to try and get the fast-food giant to stop marketing to children. Everyone in the food movement (and everyone else too) has a responsibility to ensure our fellow human beings are treated with the respect they deserve, starting with being paid enough money to live on. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Here are few ways to support International Food Workers Week:

• Change your Facebook profile picture to the poster above to show you stand with workers this Thanksgiving week – click here to download.
• Sign the petition to raise the minimum wage.
• Join the #raisethewage Twitterstorm on today! (Tuesday, 11/26)
• Participate in an event or action in your city.
• Watch and share the new video “Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast?”

Additional Resources:

- Food Chain Workers Alliance
- Restaurant Opportunities Center United
- Low Pay is Not OK
- Fast Food Forward

Originally posted at Corporate Accountability International.

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama called for a much-needed increase to the federal minimum wage. Almost four million American workers are paid at or below the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour for their work, adding up to about $15,000 per year, per person for a full-time, 40 hour per week job. This doesn’t come close to covering the cost of living for a single person, let alone a family.

In the food retail sector, unfortunately, raising the minimum wage might not make much of a difference to those employees that are most vulnerable. Grocery stores and other food retail outlets are already avoiding minimum wage and benefit requirements for many workers by keeping them in part-time jobs. Realistically, if a worker can’t get scheduled for 40 hours per week of work, then minimum wage requirements cease to be effective in ensuring an annual income floor.

With support from federal and state governments as well as private foundations and businesses, communities across the country are beginning to engage in efforts to increase the number of food retail outlets in low-income “food deserts.” This is tremendously important work – according to USDA statistics, almost 40 percent of low-income Americans lack adequate access to a full-service grocery store. But as a growing body of evidence shows, there is a great deal of variation in the quality of food retail jobs, and food retail outlets focused on customer-service and sustainability are more likely to pay higher wages and provide full-time jobs than are other retailers that are narrowly focused on cost cutting.

You might wonder, why do employers want to keep workers part-time? Can’t a business case be made for investing in employees? The answer is simple: because they can get away with it. With high unemployment rates concentrated in low-income communities (to give one example, unemployment in parts of West Oakland is over 40 percent), employers are free to treat workers as expendable commodities. Employers know that these workers will take whatever hours they can get, even if it means waiting by the phone to hear whether they are on the schedule for that very day.

In some states, California included, the most egregiously exploitative practices are formally prohibited. If an employer sends a California worker home two hours into an eight hour shift because business is slower than usual, the employer must pay the worker for at least half (or four hours) of the hours that were originally scheduled. But perhaps unsurprisingly, research has shown that violations of the law are widespread, particularly in lower-income communities where workers are more desperate for work and have less access to legal representation and resources.

As we think about using tax credits, public investment funds, and other public resources to bring full-service grocery stores to low-income, under-served communities, we need to think creatively about how to hold these businesses accountable for providing good, sustainable jobs:

1. Tax Giveaways. We should support efforts to reform California’s state enterprise zone tax giveaway program. The program costs taxpayers over $700 million a year, and it is so broad that it competes with efforts to bring retailers to under-served areas. It also ties tax credits to all new hires, regardless of whether these represent real jobs, and provides no incentives to compensate workers above the required minimum wage and benefits. The California Labor Federation and partner groups are leading efforts to reform enterprise zones in California – support their work by attending public hearings and responding to other calls for action.

2. Local Incentives. In designing loan, grant, tax credit, or zoning incentives to draw full-service grocery stores to otherwise under-served areas we should consider including a “good jobs” provision. This could be as simple as requiring benefits parity for full-time and part-time workers. This is a regulation used in Europe to avoid a disparity in fixed-costs between workers classified as full-time versus part-time. Another option would be to levy a fine when businesses go above a certain cap on the proportion of workers who are part-time.

3. Enforcement. We need to engage as community members to help with the enforcement of existing labor laws. This means providing workers with access to essential legal resources, as well as acting as citizen investigators ourselves. As shoppers, we should be asking managers and workers about the store’s practices, making it known that we care about the quality of jobs for all workers in our community.

Access to full-service grocery stores and good, sustainable jobs in food retail will not solve all of the problems faced by low-income Americans. But as more of us begin to understand the link between these two important goals, and to work for solutions that encompass them both, we will start to see progress.

Originally posted at the UFCW Western States Council blog.

Get Informed

In addition to buying the book, Behind the Kitchen Door, the following books and reports will help arm you with the information you need.

American Way Eating: This book by Tracie McMillan opened my eyes to the plight of workers in the three settings where she went undercover for a first-hand experience: the farm fields of California, a Walmart in Michigan, and an Applebee’s in New York City.

Fast Food Nation: This 2001 best-selling book by Eric Schlosser still resonates today, especially the description of the horrific dangers workers face in meat slaughterhouses, as well the exploitation of fast food workers.

Hands that Feed Us: This report by the Food Chain Workers Alliance is the best overview I’ve seen on workers in every sector of the food industry: 1) production – farmworkers; 2) processing – slaughterhouse and other facilities; 3) distribution – warehouse workers; 4) retail – grocery workers; and 5) service – restaurant and other settings.

Serving While Sick: This report from the Restaurant Opportunities Center based on national surveys revealed that 63% of workers reported cooking or serving while sick and that most faced high rates of exposure to dangerous working conditions.

Dime a Day: This report from the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley (which Jayaraman directs) explains how a reasonable increase in the minimum wage would have a minimal impact on food prices. As I have explained, scaremongering about higher food prices is a favorite talking point of the National Restaurant Association, regardless of the facts not supporting lobbyist claims.

Tipped Over the Edge: This report from the Restaurant Opportunities Center documents disturbing gender inequalities in the restaurant industry. (71% of servers are female.) Women are kept in lower paying jobs and suffer from sexual harassment, among other mistreatment.

The Color of Food: This report from the Applied Research Center examines the gender and racial divides across various food sectors, revealing a disturbing pattern of discrimination that keeps women and workers of color at the bottom of the food chain.

Good Food and Good Jobs for All: Building upon the Color of Food, this report connects the dots between the good food movement and the dire need for labor reforms, recommending that we combine efforts.

Get Active

In addition to supporting campaigns to raise the minimum wage, both federally and in cities and states across the nation (sign this petition), please support the following organizations and campaigns:

Coalition for Immokalee Workers: CIW’s hard work on behalf of farmworkers in Florida has resulted in numerous victories against such corporate behemoths as Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Burger King. Check out their Fair Food Standards Council, which monitors conditions for tomato growers, their Anti-Slavery Campaign, which helps investigate the worst labor abuses, resulting in criminal charges, and join their March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food from March 3-17.

Fast Food Forward: A movement of New York City fast food workers to raise the minimum wage, which is a paltry $7.25 an hour thanks to the powerful restaurant lobby there.

Food Democracy Now! This small but effective group based in Iowa works with small farmers and others who too often are getting shafted by Big Food. For example, they recently supported striking teamsters at United Natural Foods Incorporated, the largest wholesale distributor of organic and natural foods in the U.S., which is under investigation for 45 violations of federal labor law, including physically threatening immigrant workers in California who were trying to form a union. The strike ended in a successful contract negotiation, in part thanks to the solidarity shown by non-labor organizations.

Food Chain Workers Alliance: this amazing coalition of organizations brings together those who “plant, harvest, process, pack, transport, prepare, serve, and sell food, organizing to improve wages and working conditions for all workers along the food chain.”

Restaurant Opportunities Center United: The group co-founded by Saru Jayaraman that works to improve the lives of 10 million restaurant workers. They have numerous locations in cities around the nation, as well as targeted corporate campaigns, such as Dignity at Darden. You can also download their handy Diner’s Guide (and app of course), which ranks the most popular restaurant chains on worker treatment.

Unite Here Food Service: As anyone working on school food knows, food service workers are among the least respected professionals. Unite Here represents food service workers across the U.S. and Canada, in colleges, K-12 schools, corporate cafeterias, airports, stadiums and event centers.

United Food and Commercial Workers Union: UFCW advocates for better conditions for 1.3 million workers in the U.S. and Canada, in grocery and retail stores and in the food processing and meat packing industries. Their largest locals include UFCW Local 1500 in New York City and UFCW Local 770 in Southern California.

Warehouse Workers United: Among the least visible workers are those (mostly immigrants) moving tons of goods through the nation’s busiest ports often under deplorable conditions, en route to huge retailers such as Walmart. In 2011, I spoke on a panel with a warehouse worker who told his harrowing tale of abuse through a translator. He said the workers were treated like cattle. It was a humbling experience.

Finally here are a few tips about dining out that Saru Jayaraman suggests in Behind the Kitchen Door: 1) Talk to the workers to find out how they are treated; 2) ask restaurant managers about their promotion policies; and 3) adopt a definition of “sustainable food” that includes labor practices. As Jayaraman puts it so bluntly: it’s not enough to obsess over corn syrup or farm-raised salmon: “we absolutely must care about the health and sustainability of the workforce preparing, cooking, and serving our meals.”

1. Millions of Your Fellow Humans. Maybe this number alone will convince you: 20 million workers toil every day—often under inhumane conditions—harvesting fields, killing and cutting up animals, packing boxes, driving trucks, cooking meals, ringing up orders, serving tables, and cleaning up your mess.

2. Worker Conditions Tied to Food Safety. Research has shown a connection between worker conditions and food safety. For example, speeding up lines in slaughterhouses puts food at higher risk for contamination, and endangers worker safety. Also, workers who experience labor violations in restaurants are more likely to be forced to perform duties that might harm consumers. So better treatment of workers in the fields, in meat packing plants, and in other settings means safer food for everyone.

3. Sick Workers Mean Sick Customers. As I wrote about before, the health of restaurant workers is especially tied to food safety. Obviously it’s not a good thing for restaurant workers to be sneezing all over your meals. That’s why we need to support paid sick days for all workers.

4. Workers Risk Lifelong Injuries. While many food-related jobs are backbreaking work, meatpacking plants are especially notorious for being extremely dangerous places to work. If you care about how animals are treated on factory farms, you should also care about the workers suffering along with them.

5. Farm Workers Exposed to Pesticides. While most foodies are concerned about their own exposure to pesticides and other harmful chemicals used in agriculture, remember those most at risk are the farm workers who have to spray the crops and work in the fields. In other words, it’s not enough to just buy organic, we need policies that protect workers too.

6. Food Workers Living in Poverty. According to this must-read report from the Food Chain Workers Alliance, The Hands that Feed Us, “more than 86 percent of workers reported earning sub-minimum, poverty, and low wages.” If you only care about how this effects you, consider that nearly 28% of food system employees are on Medicaid, more than a third use the emergency room for primary care, and especially tragic is how food system workers use food stamps at 1.5 times the rate of others U.S. workers. In other words, the low standard of living suffered by most food workers effects us all through higher insurance costs and taxpayer programs. This is a fancy way of saying we are all subsidizing an industry that pays its workers slave wages.

7. Wage Theft. While I obviously live a privileged life, I like to consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the plight of those less fortunate. However, “wage theft” is a term I am ashamed to admit I only heard of fairly recently, in relation to farm workers and others working in the food system. (Of course, it can apply to any work sector.) It means exactly what it says: that employers simply fail to pay what their workers rightfully earned. It’s commonplace with immigrant workers who often have no recourse to complain.

8. Race and Gender Discrimination. Also applicable to the workplace in general, but in her book, Jayaraman paints an especially dire situation in restaurants, where women and workers of color are often not promoted to higher-paying positions. The Darden Group, which owns such chains as Olive Garden and Red Lobster has been hit with a class action for discriminating against workers in its Capital Grille outlets, along with wage theft and other labor law violations.

9. Healthy Food Is More Than Nutrition. One of the most troubling short-comings among many of my public health colleagues is to only see “healthy food” in terms of fiber grams and vitamins. This is far too narrow a lens for many reasons, including the moral obligation to also care about how the food was grown, raised, harvested, prepared, and served. This is why I cannot blindly support partnerships such as this one between Let’s Move and United Fresh (the trade association for fresh produce) to promote fruits and vegetables to children. We have to also ask how such a group treats its workers.

10. A Sustainable Food System Must Include Workers. Hopefully this is obvious by now, but we cannot talk about sustainability without including the workers, who are on the front lines of all the problems that food policy wonks complain about. Every public health, environmental, and animal welfare problem that has been written about for decades intersects with the plight of food workers. We need them to help inform our analysis and to help forge solutions. Also, as good food advocates, we have a moral obligation to help ensure they can live sustainable lives. We are in this fight together.

Have more reasons? Feel free to add them in the comments. Stay tuned for solutions and how to get involved to fix these problems.

This week, food labor advocate Saru Jayaraman is releasing her new book, Behind the Kitchen Door, which relates  heartbreaking stories of just some of the 10 million restaurant workers in the U.S. In a chapter called, Serving While Sick, she tells the disturbing tale of a fast-food worker who had no choice but to come to work with a bad cold since she couldn’t afford to go unpaid. When this worker tried to explain to her manager how perhaps handling food while coughing and sneezing was not such a good idea, she was laughed at. She later wondered how many customers she got sick that day because she couldn’t leave the counter every time she needed to wipe her nose.

As Jayaraman explains, this story is all too typical. Because most restaurant workers do not receive paid sick days, they are coming to work when they should stay home. Remember all the times that as a full-time salaried worker, you stayed home with a cold, or to take care of a sick child, or just needed a “mental health day?” It’s a perk many of us take for granted, but for workers who handle our food, in jobs where spreading germs is among the most risky, calling in sick not even an option.

That’s in large part thanks to the massive lobbying machine, the National Restaurant Association (aka the other NRA). In 2012 alone, the group (designated as a “heavy hitter” by the Center for Responsive Politics, among the 140 biggest donors since 1990) spent more than $2.7 million lobbying at the federal level, and donated more than a million dollars to federal candidates. (State restaurant associations are also very powerful.) The NRA also benefits nicely from the revolving door syndrome: Last year, 31 out of 40 NRA lobbyists previously held government jobs. Among the top issues on NRA’s agenda? Tips and sick leave.

This missive posted by the NRA last month and entitled, “Wage, sick leave, environmental issues top state agendas” explains the group’s anti-worker focus at the local level. The NRA whines about the how Philadelphia’s city council is sure to re-introduce legislation on paid sick leave that would so onerous that:

All employees would accrue one hour of sick time for every 40 hours worked and could earn up to 56 hours in a calendar year. Furthermore, the paid sick leave could be used for anything from being physically sick to caring for a sick family member or friend, or a doctor’s appointment.

The horror. How many NRA and restaurant industry executives enjoy these very privileges, or better? Locally, worker rights groups are gaining some traction, with numerous states and cities enacting paid sick leave bills. However, the NRA is also striking back where ever they can. According to this PR Watch story from 2011, the NRA teamed up with the notorious right-wing lobbying group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to pass a state-wide law in Wisconsin to override a local referendum to require paid sick days that had passed in Milwaukee in 2008 with more than 70 percent of the popular vote, democracy be damned. Also helping ALEC lead the charge on this issue was YUM! Brands, which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. As PR Watch noted: “The effect of the repeal will be more sick workers at work, making others ill, in order to save or increase profits by corporations.”

This is exactly what the research shows. Results from this 2011 study of food workers (conducted in part by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) were not pretty: Almost 12% (of 500 surveyed) worked while suffering vomiting or diarrhea on two or more shifts. (Previous studies showed only five percent of workers.) Factors associated with working while vomiting or diarrhea included high volume of meals served and lack of policies requiring workers to report illness to managers. For those of us thinking we are immune if we don’t eat at fast food outlets or chains, it hardly mattered, as independent restaurants were also at risk. The researchers conclude that paid sick days could help. Obviously.

Yet in response to this study, the NRA told CNN: “There is no greater priority for the restaurant industry than food safety.” Really? Then stop lobbying against paid sick leave and start protecting your customers, even if you don’t care about the workers.

A survey conducted by the Restaurant Opportunities Center (co-founded by Jayaraman) found that an incredible 63% of restaurant workers reported cooking and serving food while sick. Perhaps less surprisingly, 87.7% of restaurant workers reported not having paid sick days.

In her recent article for CNN, author Jayaraman explained how the current flu season puts more workers and customers alike at risk. She also stressed that those of us fighting for better food safety laws should be paying just as much attention to worker rights:

If we don’t pay food industry workers decent wages and ensure they receive paid sick days, then no matter how much the FDA regulates the boiling temperature for processing cheese, restaurant workers will keep sneezing on our dinner and food-borne contamination and illness will continue to be a problem.

More than half of all reported U.S. foodborne disease outbreaks occur in restaurant settings. While outbreaks have various origins, according to the CDC, about 50% of all outbreaks of food-related illness are caused by the highly infectious norovirus, the leading cause of illness from contaminated food. No wonder the CDC recommends against preparing food when sick:

If you work with food when you have norovirus illness, you can spread the virus to others. You can easily contaminate food and drinks that you touch. People who consume the food or drinks can get norovirus and become sick. This can cause an outbreak.

That’s why we need better laws to help workers be able to afford to do the right thing to protect restaurant patrons. Not to mention that food outbreaks are costly to society at large. As Jayaraman puts it: “If we pay restaurant workers a living wage and ensure they can stay home when they’re sick, that means fewer taxpayer dollars on public health emergencies and fewer stomach aches for diners as well.”

Everyone wins, right NRA? Please support the campaign for paid sick days and check out the book, Behind the Kitchen Door. You can also register for this upcoming pubic health law webinar on the need for paid sick days, and current campaigns and legal issues.

Michelle Obama speaking to the National Restaurant Association in September 2010

As I explained yesterday, I am writing one post per day this week to being attention to the new book by food labor rights advocate Saru Jayaraman, Behind the Kitchen Door. The book brings much-needed attention to the 10 million restaurant workers who toil everyday over our meals, often for slave wages. The National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) is largely responsible for lobbying to keep the federal tipped minimum wage at a paltry $2.13 an hour. Unfortunately, the topic of worker rights never came up in the speech the first lady gave to the NRA in September of 2010.

As part of her Let’s Move campaign to end childhood obesity, Michelle Obama has urged the food industry to make voluntary improvements to their products, along with some cajoling on their incessant marketing to children. But with the restaurant industry, the first lady has focused mainly on getting companies to improve the nutritional content of their children’s meals. From her 2010 speech to the NRA:

I’m not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business.  But what I am asking is that you consider reformulating your menu in pragmatic and incremental ways to create healthier versions of the foods that we all love.

Michelle Obama at press event for Darden restaurants in September 2011

Then in February 2011, the New York Times reported that the first lady’s team was “holding private talks over the past year” with the NRA to “get restaurants to adopt her goals of smaller portions and children’s meals.” (I wrote about the troubling aspects of Mrs. Obama’s secret meetings with Walmart that same year.) A few months later came the restaurant industry’s dream come true: a press conference with the first lady for the Darden Group, a massive corporation that owns such chains as Olive Garden and Red Lobster. The first lady was gushing, calling the occasion a “breakthrough moment in the restaurant industry.” She continued:

Darden is doing what no restaurant company has done before – they’re not just making their kids menus healthier so that parents have more choices and more control, they’re committing to make changes across the full menu at every single one of their restaurants. Darden is working to make the healthy choice the easy choice, and they’re making it the delicious and fun choice too. I’m confident that if companies like Darden continue to be creative and innovative and keep our kids’ best interests at heart then we will solve the challenge of childhood obesity and give all our kids the healthy futures they deserve.

It doesn’t get much better than that. But was all the fuss really warranted? Among the commitments: “working toward a 10 percent reduction of calories and sodium over five years and a 20 percent reduction in calories and sodium over 10 years.” Five and ten years? I thought we were at a crisis stage? Other vague promises were to be implemented by 2012, such as displaying healthier menu options more prominently “when possible” and promoting milk, with free refills. (Score one for the dairy industry.)

Author Anna Lappé was also unimpressed. In an article for Grist called Snake in the Olive Garden, she noted that given how insanely high in calories and sodium the chain’s dishes already were, these improvements were “not exactly deserving of fancy press conferences and pats on the back, especially when it comes with the publicity glow of the first lady.”

Moreover, Darden was an especially appalling restaurant group for Mrs. Obama to hitch her valuable PR wagon to, given the company’s history of labor violations. Charges of discrimination and wage theft, for example, have resulted in multiple class action lawsuits that continue today.

Which brings us back to workers. It’s great that the first lady is bringing much-needed attention to the problem of childhood obesity. And if she can convince the nation’s chain restaurants to improve its menu items to make dining out easier for parents who want to feed their kids right, more power to her. However, it’s disingenuous at best for Mrs. Obama to celebrate Darden for keeping “our kids’ best interests at heart” when this company has shown nothing but disdain for its workers. Don’t their kids count too?

Please support the workers’ Dignity at Darden campaign, organized by Restaurant Opportunities Center United, the group that author Sara Jayaraman started. You can learn more about her book, Behind the Kitchen door, here.

This week, Saru Jayaraman, an amazing advocate for food workers as co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and now director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley is releasing her new book, Behind the Kitchen Door.

As I have said before, the most under-reported  and neglected aspect of the good food movement is the 20 million workers, about half of whom work in the restaurant industry, preparing our food, serving our dishes, and cleaning up our mess.

This week, to help bring attention to Jayaraman’s important book, I will write one blog post per day on this topic. Why start with “the other NRA” as I like to call the National Restaurant Association? This powerful lobbying group is largely responsible for keeping the federal tipped minimum wage at a dismal $2.13. Yes you read that figure right. I was shocked to learn about that, even after years of researching and writing about the food industry. That’s because too often, my public health colleagues don’t connect the dots. While we know (as I described in my book) for decades the NRA has obstructed common sense laws such as menu labeling, far less attention is given to their lobbying against worker rights. It’s high time that disconnect comes to an end.

Just last week, a New York Times story on how restaurants are offering lower calorie items pointed to the “Healthy Dining Finder.” Although it’s not mentioned on the website, this program is funded by the National Restaurant Association as a way to promote its members’ brands, which include all the major fast food and casual dining chains. Another public relations program from the nation’s restaurant lobby is called “Kids LiveWell,” for which (as the site explains) registered dietitians developed “stringent” nutrition criteria for children’s meals. Criteria aside, this program is designed to distract away from any criticism that the food industry has come under for targeting children. Participating restaurants include such healthy establishments as Arby’s, Burger King, and Denny’s. Recently, the NRA announced that cereal giant Kellogg is now a sponsor of the kids’ program:

As a program partner, Kellogg will work hand-in-hand with restaurants to incorporate products into menu options. Kellogg offers multiple product choices that can help operators meet the Kids LiveWell criteria. With the growing demand for nutritious alternatives, the following solutions help to incorporate alternatives into a well-balanced meal: Morningstar Farms and Gardenburger veggie products; Keebler Animal Crackers; Frosted Mini-Wheats Little Bites Cinnamon cereal bowl packs; and Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Cereal Bars, all of which offer enhanced nutrition such as whole grain, fiber, vitamins and minerals and/or lean protein.

Just what we need, more processed food, now in restaurants. Stay tuned for more in this space on the Other NRA and be sure to check out ROC United and Behind the Kitchen Door.