A Living Wage and Beyond: Lawyering for Fair Play and Workplace Safety in the Restaurant Industry
Where: Tuesday, November 12, 12:00pm
When: WCC 3019
Nearly one in ten Americans is employed in the restaurant industry, where workers are often denied a living wage, paid sick days, health benefits, safe working conditions, and a voice on the job. Restaurant workers are three times as likely to live in poverty, with average salaries of $9/hour and the federal minimum wage for tipped workers–such as waiters and bartenders–frozen at $2.13/hour for over twenty years. Restaurant workers rely on SNAP benefits (food stamps) at twice the rate of the rest of the U.S. workforce, and 87% of these workers do not have earned paid sick days.
But restaurant workers and their advocates are finding new ways to come together and have their voices heard in one of the nation’s fastest growing sectors of the economy. Join us as a panel of consumer advocates, employment lawyers, and labor law experts discuss how attorneys can create effective models for worker and consumer advocacy, including alternative ownership structures and new forms of workplace representation. It’s time justice is served!
Featuring panelists:
- Johnda (Jonnee) Bentley, Assistant General Counsel for Service EmployeesInternational Union (SEIU) in Washington, DC
- Shannon Liss-Riordan (‘96), Partner, Lichten & Liss-Riordan, P.C., part-owner, Just Crust Pizzeria
- Alexandre Galimberti, Restaurant worker, Lead Organizer, Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) of Boston
- Moderated by Alli Condra, Clinical Fellow, Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic.