[E. Pluribus Unum]

One of the more prominent critics of tipping is labor activist Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC).

Let me guess; Ms. Jayaraman couldn't operate a successful restaurant to save her life.

I'm right, aren't I?

[Rusty0604]

UC Berkeley
Labor Center

Labor Center Staff

Saru Jayaraman
Director, Food Labor Research Center

Saru Jayaraman is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United) and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. After 9/11, together with displaced World Trade Center workers, she co-founded ROC in New York, which has organized restaurant workers to win workplace justice campaigns, conduct research and policy work, partner with responsible restaurants, and launch cooperatively-owned restaurants. ROC now has 10,000 members in 19 cities nationwide. The story of Saru and her co-founder’s work founding ROC has been chronicled in the book The Accidental American. Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was profiled in the New York Times “Public Lives” section in 2005, and was named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” in 2008, 1010 WINS’s “Newsmaker of the Year,” and one of New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York City. Saru co-edited The New Urban Immigrant Workforce, (ME Sharpe, 2005) and authored Behind the Kitchen Door, forthcoming from Cornell University Press.

[easternsky]

Was a carhop at AW, in San Leandro in 67 68. I was good, and they knew I was working to pay off my husbands Hot Rod while he was waging the war in VN. Those people were so good to me in tips and kindness, I will never forget it. mrs easternsky

[VeniVidiVici]

Let me guess; Ms. Jayaraman couldn't operate a successful restaurant to save her life.

Right. But she's one hell of a community organizer.