Restaurant Workers are Serving While Sick

Did you know that almost 87.7% of restaurant workers surveyed do not receive paid sick days, and 63% have cooked or served food while sick?

How would you like to get your food prepared, cocktail mixed, or dinner served by someone who showed up to work with a runny nose or fever? No, thank you!

ROC-LA is engaged in a fight to win Paid Sick Days for all workers in the state of California and throughout the United States. Having to work while sick not only sucks for workers, but it can create a public health hazard for consumers. Illness outbreaks due to contamination from sick workers is a reality and affects thousands of people every year.

Join us in the campaign to pass a law that will allow workers to recover from an illness or get medical attention when they are too ill to go to work. For more information about the campaign to win Paid Sick Days, check out Support Paid Sick Days.

Katie Couric recently brought up the Congress's Healthy Families Act, making an appeal to pass the law to provide workers with paid sick time off. It's a great clip so check it out: Katie Couric, CBS - Sick at Work

Tri-Prong Strategy to Raising LA's Restaurant Industry

Restaurant Opportunities Center of Los Angeles (ROC-LA) is one of seven locals under ROC-United. ROC's mission is to raise the standards in the restaurant industry and to improve the working conditions for restaurant workers. ROC-LA strives for our mission through ROC's tri-prong strategy:

• Workplace Justice Campaigns,
• building a high road roundtable of model employers,
• and research and policy.

Though ROC-LA is still young and only a year old, ROC-LA has accomplished much through ROC's tri-prong method. 

Workplace Justice Campaign -- ROC-LA models after the 9 successful campaigns of ROC-NY that won $5 million in stolen wages and discrimination claims. ROC-LA is committed to  developing worker leadership, building power and creating consequences for employers who are violating workers' labor rights. 

High Road Roundtable -- ROC-LA has developed a preliminary list of potential high road employers. ROC-LA wants to develop relationships with restaurants that treat workers right (going beyond the minimum wage) and have sustainable practices. ROC-LA is committed to promoting high road employers as a model for the industry. ROC-LA will hold our second high road employer roundtable in February with some notable high profile Los Angeles employers.

Research and Policy --  ROC-LA conducted 562 worker surveys, 33 employer and 30 worker interviews in less than one year. The report will be released at the Restaurant Industry Summit on February 14 from 8:30am to 11am at Taix Restaurant. ROC-LA's Policy Committee drives the policy work of the organization. The Committee members selected Paid Sick Days as a legislation to pursue in California. Staff and members have met with coalition members of the Work and Family Coalition in Sacramento to strategize so that we will finally win this campaign. Paid Sick Days legislation would allow workers to accumulate 1 hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. For the restaurant industry, this is a serious public health issue.

ROC-LA is still a young organization, but we are growing stronger every day. With nearly 600,000 restaurant workers in LA metro, we are growing 600,000 strong to transform LA's restaurant industry.

We hope you learned a little more about ROC-LA!