Would you take building advice from anarchitect whose own house fell down? How about employee-training advice from a restaurant that regularly receives “critical violations” from the city Health Department fordisturbing sanitary conditions?
The Restaurant Opportunities Center, or ROC, has asked the restaurant industry and taxpayers to do just that — itsColors restaurant was recently cited for “evidence of rats or live ratspresent” throughout the eatery.
That means it’s getting worse: Last year, Colors was only cited for mice.
But then ROC isn’t in the restaurant business for its own sake. It’s actually a labor-union frontgroup, set up by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union to, as co-founder Saru Jayaraman put it, “organize the 99 percent of the [restaurant] industry that doesn’thave a union.”
But whenit comes to airing industry dirty dishes, ROC shouldexamine its own kitchen first. And New York diners — and taxpayers — should ask why a group they’re funding lectures otherrestaurants on how to runtheir businesses, even though ROC’s record isdecidedly less than spotless.
In service of its organizing goal,ROC devotes most of its energy to savaging the restaurant industry. Its annual“Diners’ Guide” is the most obvious example: It rates restaurants not onfood quality and service, but on whetherthey meet ROC’s arbitrary labor standards.
The report heaps failing grades on mostnational chains, while awarding a handful of single-outlet or regionallocations a passing grade. Naturally, ROC’s own restaurant, Colors, alwaysgets excellent marks.
But ROC doesn’t practice what itpreaches. At Colors, ROC has actually created one of most exploitativerestaurants in the city — or so say its own workers.
Colors was supposedly founded as “a new type ofrestaurant, where workers are owners, stress is kept at a minimum, andall possiblemeasures are taken to prevent work-related injuries,” as the New York Sun reported. But within years of itsfounding, most ofits original employees had left “to findbetter-paying jobs,” according to Crain’s New York Business.
Clearly, ROC’s promise of a worker’s paradise didn’t materalize. An attorney representing former Colors workers at that time stated, “They have cheated these people and basically got free labor out of them.”
As The Post reported, other ex-employeeslamented that “ROC itself is guilty of those veryabuses” that it so frequently levels at other eateries and chains.
But there’s still more to the story.All of this employee mistreatment has been taxpayer-subsidized. NewYork City and state have given ROC over $1 million in grants, while the federal Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention has given ROCsome $200,000 and the Labor Department has awarded the groupnearly $1million in grants to “provide training and education for workers” regarding“safety and health hazards”in the workplace.
Apparently more training is needed in-house, given Colors’ history of health violations. Actually, its near-total failure: Colors recentlyclosed its doors for regular lunch and dinner service; it’s now open only forprivate events (often hosted and paid for by none other than ROC).
In other words, the restaurant touted by its parent group as a “high road” model of employment and management couldn’t make it as a regular restaurant.
Such an ignominious endshows that the demands thatROC makes of other restaurants are not onlyimpractical, but dangerous to employees who stand to lose their jobswhen theiremployers go under.
Considering that ROC’s busy bees are still actively protesting other restaurants around the city, however, it seems they didn’t learn their lesson. Either that, or misery loves company.
Mike Paranzino is communicationsdirector for ROC Exposed, which is supported by a coalition of restaurant workers, employers and citizens concerned about ROC’s campaigns againstAmerica’s restaurants.