For the average college student in Portland, working in a restaurant is either a rite of passage into the working world, or a viable career choice, especially given the plethora of restaurants, diners and bars in what Bon Appetit recently dubbed America’s Foodiest Town. (Half of the Free Press staffers either have day jobs working in one of Portland’s many eateries or are veterans of the profession.)
The Restaurant Opportunity Center of Maine was recently established to represent workers in this growing industry. Though its leaders are careful to note that ROC is not a union, the organization works to ensure better wages and benefits for employees who previously lacked meaningful representation.
Even though Greater Portland’s more than 250 restaurants form the economic backbone of the area, there has never before been a local organization like ROC for local restaurant workers. The ample supply of labor and the high rate of turnover provide little incentive to some restaurant owners and managers to raise wages or pay overtime. “It’s really a sort of a new industry,” said Tracy Allen, co-coordinator for ROC Maine in Portland.
“Maine is a perfect example of the decline in manufacturing jobs and the decline in locally based jobs in industrial centers,” she added.
As tourism has become a primary sector of Maine’s economy, more and more people have taken jobs in restaurants and bars.
“There’s a growing need for organizations like ROC that are advocating for workers in the industry,” said Allen.
ROC began in New York City, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 claimed the lives of 73 workers of Windows on The World, a fine-dining restaurant on the top two floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.? In addition to those killed during the morning shift, another 250 were left jobless. In the wake of the tragedy, a small group of activists set up a network to help displaced workers apply for assistance, meet basic needs and find a job in an economy that had essentially ground to a halt.
Allen said the success of ROC in New York led to calls from across the country for similar services.? “After making some really great strides in the restaurant industry and building their membership and reaching out to all sorts of people, they were getting calls from people all over the country that were like, ‘how can I do this in my city,'” she said.
The organization now has affiliates in New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, Washington DC and Los Angeles. While the idea for some of these chapters came from the organization’s national leadership in New York, ROC Maine came about in spring of 2008 as the brain child of a number of local activists.
Allen says area workers and some employers have embraced the program.? “We have people regularly coming in either to hear more about the organization or to enroll in classes or [to ask] questions about their rights on the job,” she said. “At this point, we have over 200 members. And that number just keeps growing.”
“There’s a lot of restaurant workers who go to school at USM,” said Dan Toolan, a Senior Economics major who teaches a bartending class in the mock bar ROC Maine has set up in their Congress Street office. “It’s definitely a great organization,” he added.?
Toolan, who tends bar at Old Port Sea Grill and Falmouth Sea Grill, said he got interested in worker rights through classes with USM economics professor Michael Hillard. He decided to join ROC Maine when the founders of the original organization came to speak at USM.
The program has been beneficial to area workers, he said, though ROC is still in it’s developing stages. “Right now, we’re trying to get the word out,” he said.
According to Allen, ROC’s goal to better the working lives of Maine’s restaurant workers is no easy feat.
“The restaurant industry is really big and we know improving working conditions for restaurant workers is a pretty big task,” she said. Which is why ROC has broken down their efforts into a three-pronged model. The first is training.
“We know sometimes people get stuck in a low wage jobs and don’t really have the skills to advance forward,” Allen said. “There aren’t really formalized career ladders in the restaurant industry. So part of our role is to create a structure through which people can move up, through which people are rewarded for their skills and by the length of time and experience and all of the sort of things that you should be judged on, rather than on race or gender or those sorts of things.”
?Allen says research is ongoing to determine if upward mobility is hindered by racism or sexism in the Portland food service industry. ROC Maine is currently engaged in a research project to analyze the specific challenges faced by Maine’s restaurant workers.
“It’s inconclusive in Maine whether or not race or national origin or gender necessarily impacts the restaurant industry,” she said. “That’s because we’re still in the process of finishing up our research. We’re planning to publish a big report at the beginning of next year. We’ve conducted surveys with over 500 restaurant workers. We’re interviewing employers about their challenges.”
The third facet is educating workers about their legal rights.
“Unfortunately there are violations here in Portland and in other parts of the state,” Allen said. “Often times it’s not being paid overtime, or [workers] having their wages shaved or not being offered any breaks at work. We want to make sure workers know what their rights are. A lot of people have questions, they aren’t sure, so we sort of act as a resource center to turn to when they have questions about their rights.”
Toolan said ROC has illuminated his studies at USM, where he minors in Labor Studies. He recently attended a march in New Orleans to protest the minimum wage for restaurant servers.? “The federal minimum wage for servers is $2.13. It’s been that same wage since 1988,” he said. “I think the most amazing thing is we’re able to try to enact some policy here in Maine, but we’re also part of a national group.”
ROC-ME is planning a show of restaurant worker’s art on Oct. 19 at One Longfellow Square in Portland.
For information on membership for ROC-ME, go to http://www.rocunited.org/affiliates/maine or call 899-0256.