Not Even Minimum Wage

Andres Almeida is a server at a restaurant in New York, along with being a graduate student and advocate for the organization, One Fair Wage. The restaurant he works at didn’t close during the pandemic, so Andres tells us all about what it was like working during all the different stages of the past couple years, including adapting to new safety regulations, but also adapting to the attitudes of different customers. Roundtable guests: chef and host of Broken Bread, Roy Choi, and author and President of One Fair Wage, Saru Jayaraman.

Learn more about One Fair Wage: https://onefairwage.site/ 

Learn more about Broken Bread: https://www.kcet.org/shows/broken-bread

Episode Transcript: https://app.trint.com/public/e2c0bcc1-9e1b-4ebe-9a02-a6555537000f

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, Mr Hey Wilmer. Can you believe that it's been
almost a year since we started Essential Voices? No, you know,
I can't believe it. Do you remember what our first
episode was? I remember it well. We spoke to Jenny
Swarz about her work as a restaurant tour in Oakland
and how she stepped up for a community running feed
e r, which distributed meals from local restaurants to other

(00:23):
essential workers and those in need during the beginning of
the pandemic. Such an incredible initiative. And that episode was
when we first bonded over our shared restaurant experience. Yes,
we both have been shaped by working in restaurants, and
you always say that every person should have that experience.
I know, I know, my broken record, but it definitely

(00:46):
teaches you so much about empathy and working with other folks.
And today we thought we'd bring it full circle and
come back to restaurants. We're going to hear from Essential
Worker and this al Meida and this is a server
at a restaurant in New York. Along with being a
graduate student and advocate for the organization One Fair Wage.
The restaurant he works at didn't close during the pandemic

(01:07):
so on the This tells us about what it was
like working during all the different stages of the past
couple of years, including adapting to new safety regulations, but
also adapting to the attitudes of different customers. After and
that as a story, we'll have a round table discussion
with chef and host of Broken Bread Roy Choi and
author and president of One Fair Wage saru Jaya Rahman

(01:29):
and dressed A story starts now and this thank you
so much for being here with me and chatting about
your work and who you are. Really excited for the
conversation today, So to get started, tell me a little
bit about who you are and what's important to you,
what is important to me. If you only I was

(01:50):
still believe in the American dream, even though that sounds
a little more controversial nowadays because people question a lot
about America and the society that we leave in. But
as an immigrant, I've been seeing many sizes of the story,
like people that come to this country and fight very
hard for their dreams, and so I feel like I'm
a pursuer and someone who likes to dream, and as

(02:10):
an essential worker, there is a great relations between what
we do every day and the dreams that we pursuing
because we don't have more options that work in there
than industries, and then we have to work like the
little hard if we want to kind of like growth
of financially especially, So I feel like that's definitely department story.
How I came to this country. I worked in the

(02:33):
service industry now and pursuing a great master's degree program
that's amazing. Graduate school is no joke. So congrats. And
besides being a student, you mentioned that you're an essential worker,
and you mentioned the service industry. So throughout the pandemic,
what were you doing and where were you working. I
was working as Presterna in Brooklyn. We never closed. I

(02:56):
was very fortunate for many people, but it was kind
of like a roller coaster of emotions and feelings throughout
the pandemic. But I still feel a little angry about
how people just quickly forgot about how hard it is
for the workers that like face the public. I tried
to leave between being so grateful about the job that

(03:17):
I had, in the job that I still have, even
though I don't work as many words that I used to. Yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. I mean, even before
the pandemic. I feel like many folks didn't understand what
the work is really like, so I can imagine that
that was exacerbated during the pandemic. I was actually a
chef for many years, so I feel like I have
my own answers to the question that I'm about to

(03:39):
ask you. But I'm curious in your opinion, what are
some things about working in the service industry, and particularly
in the restaurant industry. Do you feel like people don't
know but should for means the difference being like a
long road, almost like seven years working in this industry,
and I feel like at this point it takes slot

(04:00):
for me to deal nowadays it's even worse, like I
don't really know how to deal with it. It teads you,
It teds you to be patient, to be understanding that
not everyone comes with the same background, and everyone has
the same manners, not everyone had the same education. I mean,
the great part is that I understanding how different people
are and how different like how those difference kind of
like get reflected everywhere they call that makes sense, Yeah,

(04:23):
I mean, as you're saying, I think being in a
restaurant environment brings out both the best and the worst.
Of people and learning how to be around all different
kinds of folks is a skill that I feel like
sets up restaurant industry folks super well to pursue other
jobs or also outside of work, be able to get
along with lots of different personalities. But it seems like

(04:44):
you're talking about some of the more difficult aspects of
the customer service component of the industry. But I'd like
to know, is there something in particular that makes you
passionate or that you really love about doing this kind
of work. I would say people, people. The fact that
I can just stand behind the desk and work on
a computer. I need to work with people. And many

(05:06):
times I had amazing conversations and I met amazing people
that in a later time they became someone very important
in my life and even influential. That for sure. And
the fact that serving people for me has like even
like a greater meaning. I want to be a public servant.
I want to work in policy, So for me, knowing
how to measure like the feelings of other people is

(05:28):
very important. At a restaurant, get these saints. Are people
feeling okay? Are people having a good time, or are
they feeling like angry about their service. It wasn't what
they wanted. So I feel like that was the greatest
part for me, is those skills that I've learned and
they're going to be able to apply in the future
for any of my future career. Yeah, you're talking about

(05:48):
honing an intuitive nature, being able to read what people
want before they even maybe know what they want, and
that's definitely an incredibly valuable skill and it makes me
wonder how you use that gil throughout the pandemic while
working with customers. From my experience in restaurants pre pandemic,
the industry is already so fast paced and intense you
don't really ever get a break. And then when the

(06:10):
pandemic emerged, there are other things that are really affecting
the work. And then there's been so many varied phases
of the pandemic and restrictions. So how did the day
to day service at the restaurant where you were working
changed with the pandemic? Yeah, well, definitely, I would say
the first phase of the pandemic was a little uncertainty
and fear people didn't know what to do. When I

(06:30):
feel like that applied to everyone. That was like the
uncertainty of like the industry, but also the uncertainty of
public health emergency. We didn't know, we didn't have any
vaccines available for people. Then as the months went by,
we had better conditions, like what people were feeling safer,
so people started coming back. The industries started reopening. The
city organized restaurants that way that they could open spaces

(06:52):
outside of their restaurants, so people started like floating again
the restaurants and getting the restaurants at getting full. At
the beginning, I was say, people were more appreciative of
what we were doing and very grateful and very considered impatient,
and there was like this feeling of gratitude towards essential
workers workers. But I feel like Dad just say, went away,

(07:16):
but we're still living in an a pandemic. I don't.
I don't feel that people still talk about essential workers
the way that they were doing a year ago, like
a year and a half ago. So you know, vaccination came,
we started living a new normal and as we talk
about it, and then the concept of essential worker just
like definitely work completely off that. That's what I can't

(07:38):
like what I can say under my perspective, thank you
for saying that. I mean everything that you're bringing up
makes so much sense to me. We're in this moment
where folks want to move on and put the pandemic
behind them, so it's kind of no surprise at talking
about essential workers fades into the background. Really unfortunately. I'm
wondering if there's a particular moment from working recently that
you'd like to share that makes you feel like they're

(08:00):
needs to be systemic changes in the restaurant industry to
improve conditions for yourself and fellow essential restaurant workers, even
as the pandemic keeps shifting and air quotes here fading
into the background of people's minds. I mean, you know,
over the years you work for a place, and you
know you have to always be very attached to the

(08:21):
rules enterning customers in a very nice way, regardless of anything,
you know. But I'm at this point now that I'm
a student. One day, I was working and I had
this customer that only like basically taped a ten percent
of X amount of the check, and and you know,
I was like angry, and I told the person, hey,
knowing and knowing that the person knows the dynamics that

(08:43):
work in America, those are our salaries and you're just
not giving what is fair. So I was just saying
no because I'm not only even feeling my own pain
in my hard work. I'm just seeing the hard work
of my coworkers that God's sake through only crown, that
they also live through the uncertainty. And it's just saying
no just because you're not aware that's not the reality.

(09:05):
And i will tell you that this is not accepted,
but I'm sure like that experience for them, for for
good or for bad, will be remarkable and they will
just like think next time, Hey, if I have the
money to pay almost a hundred dollars for two meals,
I would have the money to pay what I think
is fairer, because like these people work in the industry.
And then again, that's why an organization like One fair

(09:26):
Way His Way is fighting for because we work in
an industry that we're underpaid by our employers. The things
that I've been doing with One fair Way, she's talking
about my own experience, how I'm transitioning from this industry
to another field. That's why I'm in school for and
I'm just like trying to move forward, and to be honest,
I'm not patiently waiting for the time that I can

(09:49):
completely liave the industry. But now the more that I
enteract with people like you guys, it's just say, I
feel like encouraged and motivated to say, like, okay, if
I'm going to leave the industryally from raising my voice,
making people understand that this is a very valuable job,
and like what we do is very very needs to
be very appreciated and we need to be grateful for
everyone that works in the industry. Oh absolutely. I mean,

(10:11):
using your voice is such a powerful way to make change,
and I'm honored that you're here doing that with us today.
It's awesome that you have a goal in mind of
working in policy so that you can have a hand
in changing systems that undervalue and underpay essential workers. And
this leads me to something I've been wanting to ask you,
which is about your connection to the organization One Fair Wage.

(10:31):
Could you tell me about who they are and how
they support folks working in the restaurant industry. Yeah. Absolutely,
I learned about one per Wage right when COVID started.
For the time that I've been living in New York
and being connected to nonprofit organizations in the nonprofit world
that mostly the folks that were supporting immigrants and the

(10:51):
working class. Let's say, I don't know if I just say,
what's like doing my usual research and trying to like
find some definitely like there were uncertainty. So that's how
we learned about one Fair Wage and I apply for
one of those like grants let's say that they were
doing for people that was working in the service industry.
And I did apply, and then I feel like kind

(11:13):
of like starting relationship with them knowing what they were doing,
so I became closer, and I've been working with a
couple of organizers and knowing that they're living campaigns in
many states but mostly f right now in New York State,
trying to raise the wage and make it like fair. Basically,
I feel like that name that you have just describes

(11:33):
their mission very well, and it's the mission of like
keeping all essential workers, including myself, one fair way. That's amazing.
It's awesome to hear that you're involved with raising wages
and extremely underpaid industry and organizing and advocating. I mean,
it's just awesome. And I'm wondering how the community and
listeners to today's show, who might be learning about one

(11:53):
Fair Wage for the first time. How can folks support
the work that you in One Fair Wage you are
doing well not only One Fair Ways, but any nonprofit
organization that works for for immigrants, for essential workers, for
the working class, for for people of color, joining the
organization's advocating anything else and of course donating. So there

(12:17):
are always many ways to learn. You can be of
course an ally and even if you're having words in
the industry, just listening to the stories of many people
and trying to be more compassionate. Thank you for sharing that.
I mean, it's good to know that there are multiple
ways to get involved in the best way to get
involved just taking that first step getting involved with a
local organization. So thank you. And as we wrap things

(12:38):
up here, what messages would you want to leave for
future essential restaurant workers and maybe specifically future immigrant essential
restaurant workers like yourself. Um, one thing that I know
for sure is that many people, even maybe myself in
many other seasons in my life, they leave out of here.
So one important thing to tell to their immigrants and

(13:00):
essential workers, whether they're Americans or immigrants or newly arrived Americans.
Whatever you want to call it. It's like you cannot
live out of fear, and you have to really get
out of that. The industry sometimes it's very evil and
you really have to be aware of that is an
industry that can like sucks the best of you. So
you need to really raise your voice and and live

(13:22):
out of fear and get out of the comfort zone.
And you just say, you know, like make sure you're
worth it as a human. You're worth is an immigrant,
You're worth is an American. And that's very I feel
like the thing that I have to say. You know, Mr,
We've spoken to almost thirty different essential workers, and it
still shocks me how disrespectfully workers like Andreas are treated.

(13:45):
You know, I'm so glad he has been able to
stand out for himself and his co workers. And I
hope that everyone listening is taking some notes. I agree
restaurants can be such special places for both workers and diners,
but only if we respect our um in humanity. So
to continue the conversation and how to make restaurants the
best that they can be. When we come back from

(14:07):
the break, we'll talk with Chef roy Choi and Soru Diorama.
Roy and Saru, welcome to essential Voices were so stoked
to have you on today's show and to be able
to have the opportunity to discuss the restaurant industry with
you both. So Wilmer take it away. So what are

(14:27):
your reactions to undress story? I mean, maybe we can
start with you, Roy, and then we're got to use
a room. Yeah, I mean, I'm very familiar with this story.
I've been in the food business as an immigrant. It's,
you know, something I grew up in and then eventually
became a professional in which wasn't intended. You know, most
immigrant families there are people that work indications, or run

(14:49):
small model and pop restaurants, or start from nothing. You know,
the allegory of coming to this country with nothing, it
is not just the fairy tale. It's real, you know.
And so when you I'm here, usually the only thing
that you have is your memory of food. And sometimes
it's not only a pathway to make a living, but
also as a bridge back to where you came from.

(15:11):
But a lot of families don't want their kids to
go into that business because that was what they do
to get their kids into the American dream. But I've
been around it my whole life. I've been around it.
I grew up in a restaurant, I worked in a
restaurant high school, and now I'm a professional chef. You know,
the system itself is broken. There's not many other professions
or areas of work where there's so much disparity and

(15:33):
exploitation within the same structure. And I'm mainly talking about
front of the house and back of the house. It's
a very old European system that doesn't make sense anymore
in this new world economy. It doesn't make sense for
because of your language or the way that you look,
or your annunciation of words, that you can make ten
times more than someone else and work maybe one fifth

(15:56):
of the amount of time. There's never going to be
a level playing field for anyone working in the service
industry unless the idea of tipping gets confronted, because the
dishwasher should get as much as the captain. Everything should
be shared across the board. If that's never confronted, and
if we're only working off of this kind of you know,
Bridgerton Downtown Abbey fantasy of what services, there's never gonna

(16:22):
be any progression because there's the disparities built in a
lot of us end up in this industry because we
either love it there's nowhere else for us to go,
or again we're cast out by society, whether that's because
of our language or because of our past record, criminal record,
or whatever. The case. May be the only place in
the world that accepts us as many cases of kitchen,

(16:43):
but it's still a hard road to get from dishwasher
to waiter. It just doesn't make sense anymore. And it
may be made sense in a way when the world
was a little more even, you know, let's say the
seventies or the eighties, and from the seventies show in
the seventies, you know, where like ship was somewhat affordable,

(17:05):
But now it's way out of whack and it's just
can't sustain. So so I'm very familiar with the story,
and I deal with it every day. You know, I'm
not perfect. I run a restaurant that still has you know,
waiters and tips and stuff like that. So but I'm
working every day to try to create entities that will
level the playfield. So what about for you? What reactions

(17:25):
do you have to enter as a story? So and
this story really is a reflection of the very, very
incredibly historic moment that we're in. We are in an
extraordinarily historic moment. It's not a once in a lifetime moment.
It's not a once in a generation moment. It's a
once in a nation's history moment. Because the wage structure

(17:48):
in the restaurant industry was created after emancipation of slavery
in the United States of America, when the restaurant lobby,
the Trade Association for Restaurants in the US, demanded the
right to hire newly freed black people, not pay them anything,
and have them live on this new concept that had
just come from Europe at the time, called tipping before

(18:09):
emancipation of slavery. Even in feudal Europe, tipping had always
been an extra or bonus on top of a wage.
When it came to the States, it came right before emancipation,
and the restaurant lobby basically wanted a way to hire
black people for free, and so they mutated tipping at
that time from being an extra our bonus on top
of a wage to becoming a replacement four wages to

(18:31):
becoming the wage itself, and that idea that black people
could live on nothing but tips was made law in
eight as part of the New Deal when everybody got
the right to the federal minimum wage for the first
time except for millions of black workers. Farm workers, who
are mostly black, were left out. Domestic workers were mostly black,
were left out, and tipped restaurant workers were mostly black.

(18:52):
Women were left out and told you live on zero
from your employer. If you get tips, that's all that counts.
We went from zero and nine eight all the way
up to the insane two dollars and thirteen cents an hour,
which is the current federal minimum wage for tipped workers
in the United States of America. Almost six million workers

(19:12):
still live on that absurd two dollar wage. And even
before the pandemic, you had a population of millions of
mostly women, mostly disproportioned women of color, working as servers
and mostly very casual restaurants I Hop, Denny's, Applebee's, Olive Garden,
mom and pop restaurants in Michigan and Missouri. That's where

(19:34):
most restaurant workers work. You know, Roy is an example.
I think of a really great minority of restaurants that
are good employers that do the right thing take care
of their workers, but the vast majority of workers are
working in chain restaurants in mom and pop restaurants are
struggling to make ends meet in both the front and
the back, and in the front of the house it's

(19:56):
largely women, women of color that struggled with incredible amount
of poverty and sexual harassment even before the pandemic because
they were living on tips. Well, that situation got so
much worse with the pandemic. Over six million workers lost
their jobs instantly. Two thirds of tipped workers said they
couldn't get unemployment insurance because in most states they were

(20:17):
told that absurd wage of two or three dollars was
too low to qualify for benefits. So talk about essential.
These workers were kicked to the curb. They were called
essential and then told they couldn't even get unemployment insurance
because they were paid too little. And then they went
back to work in the summer of they found that
tips were way down because sales were down, and customer

(20:39):
hostility and sexual harassment were through the roof. I mean,
we had workers who were punched, shot, beaten up for
trying to enforce the rules. And find you they were
trying to enforce COVID rules on the very same customers
from whom they had to get tips to make up
their base wage in most states. You know, it was
an imposed, possible situation, and that moment when they were

(21:02):
asked to do so much more for so much less
enforcing rules, becoming a public health marshal, for so much
less income in tips, they were done. They were done.
One million restaurant workers have left the industry since the
pandemic started, and of those who remain, fifty four percent
say they're leaving a say they will only come back

(21:23):
if they get a full livable wage with tips on top.
So when I say historic, the historic moment is it's
taken one fifty years since emancipation and a global pandemic
for millions of workers to finally say no. I refused
to put up with this wage structure. I rejected, I
will move away from this industry. What workers are saying

(21:44):
is I will do anything else or nothing at all
compared to working in restaurants. It's just not worth it anymore.
As Roy said, it's always been broken, but it's gotten
to a place of just it's unlivable. It's unlivable, and
the most beautiful thing has happened. In response, We've noted
thousands of restaurants that are now raising wages fifty thirty

(22:06):
bucks an hour plus tips in order to get people
to come back, And a lot of those employers are saying,
we can't do it alone. We need wages to go
up across the board so that we're not out there
on our own paying thirty bucks an hour, and we
need policy to signal to millions of these essential workers
that it is worth coming back, that you're gonna get

(22:27):
paid better, and we're gonna build back better, and it
is worth coming back to this industry. So I'll just
close by saying what struck me the most about what
I'm the desk talked about is what we hear from
workers all the time. People love working in restaurants. They
take pride in it. It's not a throwaway job for
most people. It's not something they do while they're passing

(22:48):
on to something else. Yes, there are college students who
work in restaurants. Many people here, I'm sure worked in
restaurants in college. But for a lot of workers, this
is their career, this is their profession, this is what
they take pride in doing. They can't just they just
can't do it anymore, not being valued and the professionals
that they are, whether they're a server or a dishwasher.

(23:09):
We need to value these workers. If we truly recognize
them as essential, then for God's sakes, we need to
pay them as the essential professionals. But they're no. Thank
you sorry. Both of you bring up such amazing insight
to that, and so I feel like the statistics, everything
that you mentioned, it's incredibly sobering. It just really isn't

(23:30):
awakening to understand how behind we are and actually comprehensively
think about where we gotta go. You know, I used
to own restaurants myself. Some restaurants were kind of close
to the Hollywood areas, so it was kind of close
to the bars and close to their clubs. But there
was always that conversation, how do we give more? Because
I was a buzz boy when I was about twelve

(23:51):
years old. You know, at that time, I had just
gotten to America and my uncle was a server and
he was kind of making a good living. We were
necessarily living great, but you know, he was working his
ass off. And then you offer, hey, if you're just
not doing anything at home after school and you want
to come over to the restaurant, we can use a hand.

(24:11):
And that you know, this ring station and all that.
And I'm bring this up because it goes back you know,
I'm forty two years old now, okay, and the way
that restaurants have had to involve and understand who is
the person that's working at your restaurant and what their
needs are. I also think about what you were mentioning,
this should be this job should be enough for you

(24:32):
to live a happy life. I mean, if you're spending
eight nine hours, eight hours on your feet all day,
you should be able to go home to a place
you like, you know, and drive a car that works,
you know, and have a little money for entertainment, and
be able to buy yourself a shot because you need it.
Any other professional, any other profession you know. So so

(24:53):
I love that this conversation is going into a place
of awakening but also of awareness, right, Like what let's
be aware of when somebody comes to your table. You know,
how generous can we be to to support that. We'll
be right back after this break, Welcome back to Essential Voices.
You know. Something that you're all making me think about

(25:14):
is this kind of like I don't know if I
want to call it a joke, but just kind of
this like line that I have that I often say
to people, which is that if you haven't worked in
the service industry, I think that everybody needs to. And
that's I think the baseline that people don't always understand.
You know, you see people out there at the restaurant
that are like snapping their fingers out of wait person

(25:34):
to get their food, and you're just like, like, one
of the reasons why I couldn't come back, that's because
of that. And I didn't know how to speak English,
by the way, I didn't know how to speaking this way.
I got worse, Like people were just waving and like
you don't even speak somebody else. Come and bring this
kid out here, like it was so bad. You know,
what I was doing was bringing up it was was

(25:55):
picking up your dirty dishes, man, And you're yelling, right,
because then we're not recking nizing the humanity and the
human behind the folks who are actually working. I mean,
as I said to both of you off screen before
we started recording, I was a chef for a long time,
and I took so much pride in doing that work.
From when you're literally getting produced or meat or whatever
it is, to making that food that you're serving it

(26:17):
takes a lot of time and love and energy, and
it's not just as you said, some sort of you know,
air quotes throw away job. And so I think we're
seeing throughout this pandemic how we need to respect and
celebrate an honor essential workers. But as you're saying, I
mean giving us that history about tipping in the United States, Like,
I think, we still have so much that we need

(26:38):
to do, and we're entering a new phase of the pandemic,
a new phase of life, and the landscape for restaurants
has been ever changing as we've seen these different phases
of the pandemic. We went from total lockdown to reopening
and vaccines and then the delta Varian and O Macron
and so Roy. I'm curious for you operating various restaurants,

(26:59):
how has the pandemic affected the work that you've been doing.
Maybe walk us through a little bit about what that's
looked like for you and for your restaurants and your
employees throughout all these different phases. Yeah, sure, you know
everything is not the same, you know, because you have
things from street food and and goo chat us all
the way to find dining restaurants or busy restaurants and

(27:21):
club driven restaurants. So for me, I have a white
gamutt but my main business is lunch truncks. I run
a Tacol truck called Kody Thank You. But I can
give that as an example of what we faced during
the pandemic. What you saw in the news a lot
in restaurants and in the industry itself, is that no

(27:41):
matter how successful or small a restaurant or big restaurant is,
there's no savings in this business, you know. And I
know we're talking about essential workers, which is the most important,
but even the owners in most cases, unless the owners
has gone back. In most cases, the owners don't have
that much either. And there's the imagination that the owners
are living on a yacht and doing all these things.

(28:03):
But this business is a razor thin business. And what
we saw in the first week of the pandemic is
most restaurants couldn't last more than four days without business.
They had to completely fold. Kokee was no different. You know, Overnight,
we lost probably sixty of our business because most of
our business was fifty was focused on caring, whether that's

(28:23):
going to Hollywood sets and doing rap parties, or feeding
the crew or just doing birthday parties, weddings, all these things.
All those got canceled. The streets went empty for about
two weeks and we just had maybe one or two
of our regular stops. It wasn't looking good. By the
second week, we were pretty much down to two or
three days worth of money left. Our business itself didn't

(28:46):
really qualify for any loans, and so what we decided
to do is I looked at my team and I'm like, listen,
you know, if we're going to go down, let's go
down the Kokee Way. And the Kokee Way has always
been about feeding as many people's who post as we
can for it as an affordable price as we can.
And we're kind of like a new version of the
Grateful Dead. We fill parking lots, we take care of

(29:07):
each other. Money is a secondary concept. We're like a river.
We just try to make sure everyone gets taken care of.
And I'm like, listen, if we're gonna go down, let's
go down how we started, and let's just feed people
for free as much as we can. And so we
just started feeding people who had lost their jobs that
were out on the street that we're hungry families that
were hungry essential workers like people working in clinics, especially

(29:30):
clinics to skid row, which were the forgotten medical industries
during the pandemic, you know, And we just started feeding
people and then our Kogee fans started really latching onto it,
and we created a gasses to create a venmo and
everyone started donating. So for almost a year, ten months,
we fulfilled kind of this philosophy of taking the idea

(29:51):
profit out of a business, which is absurd in the
capitalist system. But it worked. You know, I'm not saying
that that is the complete answer, but it did allow
us to live in a world of idealism and show
improve that it can work if we all give a
little and take care of each other. That's ten months
of this venmo feeding everyone. No profit system allowed Kobe

(30:15):
to keep our employees employee for us to be able
to stay alive just enough until the world kind of
open back up, and it was a beautiful time. Well,
I mean, you're also talking about changing culture, right. That's
the other thing about the values that you are explaining
right now, very much like going back to us all
is saying that you're doing it for the right reasons,

(30:38):
Like that's why you show up to work because you
really love and it's a form of entertainment, right, It's
a form of recreation and release when you're go and
eat something you just can't eat every day because you
can't find it. So when you find the experience, when
you get able to get out and and experience that memory,
I think that's awesome. That's something you take with you
for the week. Right, Like going back to the values
of what the food entertainment industry, I all it because

(31:01):
it's so fun to just sit leave your house and
sit out somewhere and see people enjoying their food, their
conversations and and that's awesome. So I appreciate you what
you're offering there because I think it's a quick reminder
of it's not just a numbers game. And I hear
you on the ownership part of it, because I had
eight restaurants at one point in my early career, and dude,
you're breaking even, you know. And then if you don't

(31:22):
have a bar, it's even worse because the bar is
the only place where you could sustain, you know, salaries
for everybody else in the restaurant, not even just the bar.
The bar is providing for everybody you keep on the floor.
So it's like a very interesting dynamic. So I appreciate
you saying that it's really inspiring because I've been wanting
to get back to the food industry and I just
think my timing is off on this one, you know.

(31:43):
But it's a crazy model. It's very much like being
a public school teacher. You're not doing it for the money.
You're doing it because that's your purpose, your life. You know.
For many people who either run restaurants or working restaurants
outside of New York in l A, like you've mentioned,
this is a profession for you in l A. You know,
obviously they're they're actors on auditions that can only have

(32:03):
a night shift job, so the restaurant works well for that.
In New York, we have models that are going to
auditions and photoshoots, so a nighttime bartender job allows them
to have their career goals. But outside of that, it's
a profession. For most people, it's a livelihood. But the
weird card is if we were just oil changers, are mechanics,
that's one thing, but it's been moved to this weird

(32:26):
zone of entertainment. But then it gets treated like blue collar,
exploited work. But then it also gets all of the attention,
front page, newspaper media coverage. Every single person is dying
to get into the hottest place, and it creates a
really weird dichotomy that hasn't been addressed until now. So
hopefully as things go back to being open, that it

(32:49):
doesn't go back to normal, because normal wasn't normal. Sometimes
the powerless have to succumb to just accepting and going back,
and I just hope that that's not going to be
the case. But again, we can make small advances, I think,
but I don't think that we can fully change the

(33:11):
system unless we confront the industry itself, which is working
off of the model that is unheard of in any
other aspect of life, you know, hiring people under the table, undocumented,
not paying sick pay, PTO insurance, healthcare anything, working in
an environment where you can be abused at any time

(33:33):
of the day, any time of the night, not only
physically and sexually, but also over the phone. There are
breats that are given to workers. If you don't show
up to work today, you're fired, even if it's your
day off. And so all of those things, I think
because there is no regulating system. And again, this is
an industry that people take for granted, and it's an
industry that a lot of people coming through the back

(33:54):
door that can't get jobs anywhere else. That there's this
apparent belief that you can to treat people anyway you want.
That's unacceptable. I think that's exactly right. Normal was never normal.
It was always a crisis for millions of workers who
are living on the edge, and for sure for thousands
of restaurant owners who are living on the edge too.

(34:15):
I mean, frankly, the only folks who really benefited from
the system was the National Restaurant Association and the chains
that lead the National Restaurant Association. These are huge, multibillion
dollar corporations that have been around, some of them for decades.
As I said, that lobby has been around for over
a hundred years, profiting off a system that hasn't really
worked for anybody, and just got so much worse. I mean,

(34:38):
to the question of, you know, during the pandemic, what
happened to workers, just one example that was really one
of the most egregious examples, you know, on top of
as Roy said, here, you are your food, your entertainment,
it's blue collar, like all these different things. And then
on top of that, it became a COVID hotspot, and
it became a place where workers were asked to and

(35:00):
worst public health rules. And so we heard from thousands
and thousands of women across the country who said, I
am asked on every shift, take off your mask so
I can see how cute you are before I decide
how much I want to tip. You. Take off your
masks so I can see the pretty face of my
server before I decide whether I want to tip or
how much I want to tip. And so women were

(35:21):
put in this horrific situation of do I expose myself
for the chance, not not even a guarantee, but the
chance that the man will like my face and expose
my family and myself, or do I say no with
the risk of getting no tips, which in most of
the country you all, I don't know where you work, filmer,
but it sounds like a lot of the experience. Here's California,

(35:43):
and believe it or not, as we've got issues in California,
but it is so much better than the rest of
the country. At least we have a wage in California.
At least the women you know in California can say
buzz off to a man who says, because I can
count on a wage for my bus. In forty three
states in the US, you live on nothing but tips.
Your wages two or three or four dollars. Most states
it's under five. So that wage, it goes entirely to taxes.

(36:07):
You're living off your tips. If a man says, take
off your mask, you can't have no choice because that's
the only way you're making money that hour is from
that tip. And so that was kind of the breaking
point for so many workers. Basically, you're asking me to
risk my life for the chance of getting a tip.

(36:27):
Were talking about that, you were talking about the snapping Wilmer,
that that is comes down to a power dynamic, and
it's the sense of I own you as I tip you.
You know, I snapped my fingers. You come, I snap
my fingers, you take off your mask. I snapped my fingers.
You do what I expect. It kind of goes back
what you were saying to this Bridger Tin idea that

(36:49):
you are my servant. You are my servant because I
tip you, and rather than seeing the service person as
a professional who has skills, who can offer you something
you can't get at home. And therefore you should show
respect to this person who is bringing you a delicious
meal that you can't prepare by yourself, who is bringing

(37:09):
it to you anticipating your nieves, talking to you about
the meal and the wine in a way that you
cannot do at home. So pay some respect. Would we
treat a professor or any other customer service profession right,
even a real retail worker or a doctor, or a
lawyer or a professor, you know, imagine if a doctor's
income was based on whether their diagnosis pleased us, Or

(37:34):
imagine a professor. You know, we pay them based on
whether the grade they give us pleases us. This is
the only profession where whether they please me or not,
and in some cases that means take off your mask,
whether you please me or not, is going to determine
how much they earn. And it's ridiculous for both front

(37:54):
and back. It doesn't make any sense, and it got
so much worse, and it's why so many workers are
done with it. But I have to say, for all
that I've just said, that's so negative, I really believe
it or not, I'm so hopeful. I am so hopeful
because I have never seen such a seismic shift, such
an upheaval in our industry, where so many restaurants that

(38:15):
fought us on this in the past are now paying this,
are not doing it differently all over the country because
either the murder of George Floyd really moved them to
say it's time to get rid of a legacy of slavery,
or they realized we have to try an entirely new
model because remembered for so long we didn't have indoor dining,
and suddenly people were attempting models of Okay, everybody works together,

(38:37):
where a team, you know, we all prepare the food,
we all we handed off to the customer, everybody shares
the tips. So people were experimenting with new models because
they had to. And then now they're having to raise
wages to get workers to come back. So we're seeing
the opposition to raising wages going away. We're seeing a
lot more restaurants get on board with change, and a

(38:57):
lot more restaurants understanding exactly what Roy is saying, which
is that it was never normal and we cannot go
back to the way things were. And sorry, I wanted
to pick it back when you're saying because you work
extensively at documented in the stories of workers in the industry,
and I want to mention your book One Fair Wage,
which I encourage everyone to pick up. This is a
deep dive on what you really should know as law,

(39:19):
you know, so I'm excited for you to talk a
little bit more about that. But can you elaborate on
how the pandemic has impacticitial workers, you know, kind of
bigger back in in elaborating on what you've already started,
many of whom are undocumented at the moment. What's changed
for workers over the last two full pandemic years. I
mean that's the zone we're entering now. Yeah, I mean,

(39:40):
just like many employers, workers in experienced the most extreme suffering.
We already had the highest levels of home and security
of any industry in the United States, meaning people living
under bridges, living in their cars, working in restaurants all
over the country, are living on somebody's couch. You know,

(40:01):
there's many different forms of home and security, and that
just got insane with the pandemic. I mean, people lost
their homes, moved in with family, left the country. I mean,
just all kinds of situations, and so it's so true.
I can't tell you the number of workers I've known
who live in their car, or live under a bridge,
or live on somebody's couch and then show up put

(40:21):
on a white shirt, black pants, and then they're supposed
to put on a smile, and nobody knows what they're
dealing with in the restaurant or in their quote unquote home,
which is not a home. That's what I was talking about.
That level of suffering got just so bad. It reached
such an extreme level that so many people are done.
They're done. I think Roy that moment of when does
the customer understand what people are going through. It happens

(40:45):
when they're not able to eat out as much as
they used to be because workers aren't willing to go back,
and every restaurant is understaffed and they're not open every
day of the week the way they used to be
because they don't have enough staff. That's why I have
a hope, because know it is, like you said, a
moment of worker leverage. It's a moment of worker power.
I've had some members say to us, it's like we

(41:06):
finally know our worth. We're worth more than two dollars.
We're worth more than three dollars. We're we are worth
more than this. Our skill, our value, our professionalism, we
are worth more than this. And it's taken so long
for workers to say I know my worth and I refuse,
and I think, what's going to happen. I hope is
we're more and more going to see workers stand up

(41:28):
and say enough is enough. There is a part of
the history I didn't share, which I hope will give
us some hope, which is that right before emancipation, when
tipping first came to the US, actually was rejected by Americans.
Americans said, this is a vestige of feudalism. We rejected.
You know, customers should get good service regardless of how
much they can afford to tip. And by the way,

(41:49):
we think employers should pay their workers, not customers. And
there was this anti tipping movement. Six states passed bands
on tipping because they said employers should pay their workers.
And that movement's bread to Europe. The labor movement picked
it up in Europe in the early nineteen hundreds and
got rid of tipping in Europe based on this rallying cry,
we are professionals, we don't live on your tips, and

(42:11):
that is why you don't tip as much when you
go to Europe, because there was a movement to say,
we are professionals, treat us like professionals, and so I
feel like we're in a similar moment. I'm not necessarily
saying get rid of tipping, but I am saying we
are in a moment where workers are saying we are professionals.
Value us as the professionals that we are. I mean,
I've been doing this work for twenty years. I have

(42:33):
never in twenty years scene of the women at Hooters
stand up against the uniforms. Do you know last year
the women at Hooters stood up against the uniforms. It's incredible.
We're seeing this like moment where workers are saying I'm
done with being treated like dirt and I need to
be respected and valued because what I have to offer
is a skill and a profession that everybody should value.

(42:57):
I mean, really, truly, I have to tell you something,
because you're running this Essential Workers podcast. For so many
of our members, essential workers became an insult. Calling people
essential became an insult because what people understood when people
kept saying, oh, you're essential, you're essential, that means I'm
underpaid and mistreated. And so you can call me essential,

(43:20):
but you're gonna pay me two bucks, and you're gonna
snap your fingers and tell me to take off my mask,
and you're gonna not give me unemployment insurance and tell
me that I'm lazy and that's why I don't want
to go back to work. Those were all the things
that we did as a country to essential workers, and
so it became an insult. And if you think about
restaurant work in particular, you know, the CDC named restaurants

(43:42):
the most dangerous place for adults to be, believe it
or not, of all public places, they named restaurants the
most dangerous place to be UCSF you you don't research California.
San Francisco named restaurants the number one most dangerous place
to work during the pandemic, more dangerous than hospitals. And
so you're talking about working in the most dangerous environment.

(44:04):
All the other essential workers are talking about hazard pay,
and we get me to be paid more because we're
doing all this very essential, high risk work. And workers
in the restaurant industry saw their wages stagnate. I mean,
the wage hasn't gone up from two dollars for thirty years.
Thirty years, it's been stuck there at the federal level,
so you know, it became an insult people felt. People

(44:27):
experience extreme suffering. I mean, we had people telling us
I don't even have gas money to get to the
food bank to get food for my children. I'm being evicted.
I mean, I just can't even tell you the level
of suffering people experience. Sorry, I also wonder about the
undocumented because you think about fair ways, right, and then
you probably go down a couple of more floors on

(44:49):
the on the building when it's speaking of undocumented because
I'm documented, don't qualify for the conversation we're having. I
almost feel like they get picked with food, you know
what I mean. It's just kind of like, now it's true,
But the truth is, actually, Wilmer, they do have rights,
and we've actually sued on behalf of undocumented workers and
gotten wages back because if people got a livable way,

(45:09):
if the minimum wage were to go up, you would
see undocumented workers wages go up because the whole floor
is lifted. So technically they do have right. That is,
if the restaurant honors that by specifically you know what
I mean. You're also talking about You're talking about East coast,
West coast. They don't want to get violating, you know,
you don't want some secret shopper to come in and say,
you know, let me see your books. You know, but

(45:31):
the rest of the country doesn't have to oblige to
that specifically, you know states in the rest of the country,
when your wages two or three dollars, a lot of
times workers think of the wages negligible. They're like, I
don't even get a wage. I just live on my tips.
And frankly, that has not changed since emancipation. That is
exactly where we were at when black workers were told
you don't get a wage, you live on tips. The

(45:52):
fact that that hasn't changed in a hundred fifty years
is insanity. It's insanity, and it's got to change. And
that's why I'm hopeful, because I've been doing this work
for decades, if the first time I'm seeing actual movement
on the issue where people who fought us are not
fighting us the way they used to because they're realizing
we have only two choices as an industry, change or die.

(46:14):
If a million workers have left and are saying they're
gonna leave. We have only two choices. We can either
experience half of the industry that we experience pre pandemic,
or we can raise wages and change the way we
treat people and make things more equitable and provide people
with an actual ability to think of this as a
profession or a career. If you don't start thinking of

(46:36):
this as a profession or career, we'll never get all
those workers to come back. They won't do it. We'll
be right back after this break. Welcome back to essential
voices and diving into the work that both of you
do and wanted to introduce also the audience to your
efforts and what you've done and how you expanded what
you're your knowledge into the other minis Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

(47:00):
It's a show called Broken Bread. It's on two platforms.
It's on public television case ET and it's also on
Taste Made, which is a global media food platform that
you can watch from anywhere, your phone, your TV, anything.
And really what it is is it's a social justice
show disguised as a food show, because food is the
thing that brings people in. You know, shoes are more

(47:21):
popular than sneakers. You know, everyone loves food, and so
we use food and the cinematography of food and the
storytelling the food to bring people in to be able
to talk about issues like this, to talk about seed
preservation and the loss of seeds. You know, things like
do you know that of the world's seeds are controlled
only by four corporations? If that moves, we're in trouble

(47:45):
as human beings, you know, we get caught up on
the algorithms controlling who we are as people. It's once
they control food, they're going to control everything about us,
and we will be you know, some science fiction movie
in the future where we have no individual or abstract
or creative thought will So we do things like that.
We talk about gentrification, the loss of neighborhood restaurants, worker exploitation,

(48:09):
We talk about all these things that are really tough
to talk about through the lens of food. It's our
second season. We tried to up our game by getting
some really powerful guests, covering powerful topics and really investing
in our storytelling, in our cinematography, and our season finales.
Actually tonight and we it was the first time we
went international. Tonight's episode covers Tijuana. Yeah, thank you. Roy

(48:32):
for sharing about broken Bread. It's amazing as I see
the intersection so intensely between food and social justice. Obviously
there's so many connections and so many threads. You just
brought up seeds and the fact that's for corporations, and
there's so much to be learned from the way that
we're preserving our food traditions and honoring food storytelling like
we're doing today. So thank you for shutting a bit

(48:52):
of light about what the show is and turning it
over to you, Suru. What campaigns are you currently working
on with one Fair Wage. So we started to notice
this incredible moment of opportunity last year. Our members are saying,
this is not a great resignation, it's a great revolution.
It's workers rising up and saying enough is enough. And
so we knew that this was, like I said, once

(49:14):
in a nation history moment, and so we decided to
massively scale our efforts and so, together with donors across
the country and workers and employers, we are committing an
initial twenty five million dollars to raise wages and end
seminimum wages in twenty five states by the United States
two or fiftieth anniversary, which is twenty six, twent or

(49:35):
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is six, and I
think we want to ask ourselves what kind of country
do we want to be at our two or fifty anniversary?
And what kind of country do we want to be
in our next two or fifty years. Do we want
to be a country that persists with a legacy of slavery,
where you've got the nation's largest workforce unable to pay
for rent and food for themselves while they're putting food

(49:57):
on our tables? Or do we want to be the
kind of country where we've you the people who serve us.
And so that is why we're committed to raising wages
and half the states by our nation's two fiftieth anniversary,
and we'd love it if people would join in that
effort contribute support. You know, this issue is going to
be on the ballot this November in California, we're raising
the wage to eighteen dollars an hour in California. It's

(50:19):
going to be on the ballot in Michigan, where we're
raising the wage to fifteen. Do you know the wage
for servers in Michigan is three dollars and sixty seven cents,
So we're raising that wage to fifteen. We're raising the
wage in our nation's capital. It's on the ballot in
June to go from five bucks an hour in our
nation's capital, Washington, d C. To fifteen dollars an hour.
So this is happening in states across the country, and

(50:39):
we'd love for people to get more engaged by going
to our website, One Fair Wage dot org. You know,
there's so much the process and learn from that conversation.
He definitely helped me to look at the business from
a new perspective. And while it is frustrating to hear
all the statistics and the stories are rules shared, you know,

(51:00):
I got really excited when I heard about the hope
that both she and Roy have for the future of
the industry. As they mentioned, were clearly at a turning
point totally, and it was so cool to hear about
the experimenting that Roy has been doing at Kogie and
at all of his other restaurants and food trucks. Coming
together for a meal should be a loving celebration, and

(51:21):
I'm grateful for the work that One Fair Wage and
chefs like Roy are doing to get us back to
that place and on that positive note, let's look forward.
We are actually at a turning point as well with
Essential Voices. We have two episodes left of our season,
so we'll be shaking things up a little before we
sign up. Yeah, that's right, and next week we'll air

(51:43):
a collection of unaired Essential Worker interviews. We have the
privilege of speaking to many folks from a huge variety
of careers for the show, and they all had incredible
stories to tell. After we hear from our final voices,
will regroup the next week for our final, final Final,
which chess bol Alert is going to be awesome. Are

(52:03):
you going to tell them what we're doing? No, because
eight is more fun to keep it as a surprise. Alright, Fine, Well,
to find out what our finale is all about, tune
in next week to hear from our amazing Essential Voices.
Essential Voices with Wilmer val Drama is produced by me
m R. Raquel, Alison Shano, and Kevin Rotkowski, with production

(52:24):
support from Associate producer Lillian Holman. Executive producers Wilmer Val Drama,
Adam Reynolds, Leo Clem and Aaron Hilliard. This episode was
edited by m. R. Raquel, Sean Tracy and Justin Cho
and features original music by Will Risotti. Special thanks to
this Week's Essential Voice and This al Meda, and to

(52:44):
our thought leaders saru Jaya Rahman from One Fair Wage
and Roy Choi. Additional thanks to Yami La ruiz Mana Gavati,
Alexa Rukaa, Clara Bottoms and Natasha Fan. This is a
Clamor and w V Entertainment production in partnership with I
Heart Radio's Michael Dura podcast Network. For more podcasts from
I Heart, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(53:07):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H