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Saru Jayaraman has devoted her career to fighting injustices large and small in the restaurant world.
Photo: Paul Kuroda / Special To The ChronicleSaru Jayaraman has devoted her career to fighting injustices large and small in the restaurant world.
Saru Jayaraman has devoted her career to fighting injustices large and small in the restaurant world.
Saru Jayaraman has devoted her career to fighting injustices large and small in the restaurant world.
Saru Jayaraman, an activist and organizer for restaurant workers, has said that as a plate of food moves from the kitchen to the dining room table, it passes from brown hands to white ones the closer it gets to a paying customer.
Research shows that white male restaurant workers in San Francisco get hired faster, promoted sooner and paid more than their Latino, black and Asian co-workers, while employees of color are often relegated to posts in the back of the house, as busers and dishwashers.
Jayaraman, 43, has devoted her career to fighting injustices large and small in the restaurant world: working to raise minimum wage, confront sexual harassment, promote employees of color and create safe workplaces for all.
For her efforts to improve working conditions for the restaurant industry, she has received the fifth annual Visionary of the Year Award, an honor that recognizes individuals who use their business savvy to change the world for the better. The Chronicle announced the honor at a Wednesday evening gala at the War Memorial Veterans Building. The award carries a $10,000 grant from The Chronicle that can be applied to advance Jayaraman’s work.
“We are facing the highest levels of income inequality in our nation’s history ... and unless we address that, our nation has no future,” Jayaraman said as she accepted the award. “Because people in this country will not be able to survive ... unless we pay attention to the fact that everybody deserves the right to feed their families.”
Jayaraman was a recent graduate of Yale Law School and working in Long Island when 9/11 happened. Seventy-three low-wage immigrant workers died at Windows on the World, a restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. She set out to find jobs for the 300 workers at the restaurant who suddenly were without work.
During that time, she helped start Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a national advocacy group that today counts more than 25,000 workers, 770 restaurant owners and 15,000 consumers as members.
The group has studied topics from sexual harassment to pay practices in the restaurant industry, and created a program that encourages restaurant owners in the Bay Area to advance employees of color by training and cycling them through the front-of-house positions typically held by white workers.
Jayaraman’s ROC United is now working with the National Employment Law Project to pass legislation in Congress that would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.55 this year.
“Saru Jayaraman is the epitome of a visionary: she saw an unmet need, came up with an original idea to address it, then nurtured it and pursued it relentlessly,” said John Diaz, The Chronicle’s editorial page editor, who chaired the nominating committee that selected Jayaraman for the award. “Her impressive success in advancing pay and workplace conditions in the restaurant industry makes her the most worthy recipient for The Chronicle’s fifth annual Visionary of the Year award.”
Among those in attendance at the gala were Mayor London Breed, former Secretary of State George Shultz and his wife, Charlotte Shultz — all of whom were members of the nominating committee for the award.
Charlotte Shultz, who has served 10 mayors as San Francisco’s chief protocol officer, was presented a Lifetime Visionary Award for her service to the Bay Area.
Jayaraman found herself in good company among the six finalists for the 2019 Visionary award. They include Alex Bernadotte, founder and CEO of Beyond 12, a nonprofit devoted to college freshmen who face overwhelming challenges; José Quiñonez, founder and CEO of Mission Asset Fund, and a relentless advocate for immigrants; Eileen Richardson, president and CEO of Downtown Streets Team, which gives the homeless a path off the streets; Martha Ryan, founder and executive director of Homeless Prenatal Program, a resource center with a mission to break the cycle of childhood poverty; and retired Marine Maj. Gen. Michael Myatt, who rescued the city’s Fleet Week from an early end.
Past winners were Evan Marwell, founder and chief executive of EducationSuperhighway, a nonprofit that upgrades Internet infrastructure in schools; Chase Adam, creator of Watsi, a crowd-funded platform that provides medical care to people who can’t afford it; Priscilla Chan, pediatrician and advocate for children’s health and education; and Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, an online school to educate anyone in the world for free.
Melia Russell is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: melia.russell@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meliarobin
https://www.sfchronicle.com/visionsf/article/Fierce-advocate-for-restaurant-workers-wins-2019-13722336.php 2019-03-28 05:26:15Z
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