How Movements Move Edible Education 101 with Saru Jayaraman

WILL ROSENZWEIG: Good evening. Good evening. Welcome again to
Edible Education 101. This is our third class meeting.

I'm Will Rosenzweig. I'm really happy to
be with you tonight. Thanks for your patience. We have a really
special guest tonight.

I'm very excited
about tonight's class. I don't know if
you noticed this, but each week, I've
been starting off with a picture, an image,
something that inspires me. These are Meyer lemons. These actually-- if you
pay attention each week, sometimes the fruit on the stage
is the same fruit in the bowl.

These are from my garden. So how many of you saw this? You know what that is? That's a blue moon. Once in a blue moon,
Edible Education meets. How many people have
been under a blue moon or know what a blue moon is? This is your moment to
integrate a little bit more with nature, like get out
from inside the building, or your cell phone.

A blue moon is a full moon that
happens twice in one month. It's a very rare occurrence. And it's an important occurrence
for gardeners and farmers, because traditionally,
a lot of times people would plant on the
night of the full moon, because they could both
see what they were doing, and there was also some both
scientific and apocryphal reasons that planting
in those cycles would produce a better harvest. So tonight is an
auspicious night.

And I hope that when you go
outside tonight after class, you'll take a moment to
really peer at the moon, and maybe receive
some information. So tonight, Saru Jayaraman
is going to be here. Saru is going to help us
understand how movements move. And leading up to
that, I just wanted to reflect a little
bit on where we've been and where we're
going in the class.

And as you know, food is
different than everything else. It's very personal. It's individual. It's really the substance
that connects us personally to our health, and personally
to the planet's self.

And so it's this very
interesting place to be studying and working. And one of the things
I love about this class is that there are people from
all across the campus studying different fields, and you're
coming together here tonight. Remember last week, I asked
you to picture your last meal and talk about it with
someone next to you? What I'd like you to do
now is take a deep breath, close your eyes, and
I want you to think for about 30
seconds of something that makes you really happy. Not just tentatively happy
or passingly happy, but what makes you deeply happy.

Think about that
for a few seconds. Reflect on it. I can tell when you
get it, because I. See these faces change.

Seeing a few smiles now. If you really hit
on something happy, your face is going to change. So keep searching for it. And when you lock on to
it, bring it to life.

OK? Now if you want take a
second and note it down on a piece of paper, or
write it on your hand, or wherever you want,
just think about it. It's going to become important. Because in this
class, our intention really is to develop
this sense of becoming an enlightened eater. What does it mean to be
an enlightened eater? And you know I
was thinking today about the difference between
an objective and an intention.

When you get the class
evaluation for Edible Education 101-- which we'll do toward the
end of the semester-- it's going to say, did you understand
the objectives of the class, the learning objectives? Well, an objective is
something that you sort of achieve, or gain, or hold. It's very specific. It's kind of like a goal. But an intention is more about
something you set yourself to.

It's like a directionality. And it infers that
you have a sense of kind of commitment behind it,
like almost a sense of purpose. So I'd like you to think
about the intention of this class of actually
becoming an enlightened eater. And what we talked about is
becoming an enlightened eater requires kind of a
self-awareness, a self knowledge.

And we've started to
ask these questions in the class about what are
your tastes and preferences? Where does your food come from? How does it get to the plate? Who's handling it? How has it grown? And these are bringing out
questions like, OK, well, what are your core values? What do you believe in? And what are your mental
models of the world? What do you hold? What do you think? What are the things you
take for granted in the way you think about things? And now I want you to
start this week in food, I want you to start
thinking about well, what kind of riles you up? What troubles you? What bothers you? What problem in your own
life would you like to solve? And then what's your vision
maybe for an alternative to the way it is now? And then I'm going to start
to talk to you this semester about what's your
theory of change. And we'll go into
more about that. In order to concoct a vision
and a theory of change, you really have to have an
understanding of the system. Last week we started
to introduce you to the systems theory and how
things are interconnected.

The week before that,
Alice introduced you to kind of vision
and values along with Eric and the
theory of change. Alice articulated
this bold vision that every child would
get a free school lunch, and that that lunch would
be grown and provided by local farmers. That was an incredible vision. And embedded in that
vision where a bunch of values about eating together,
about cooking ourselves, about making food part of
every educational experience.

And her theory of change
connected to that too. Her theory was if you
start young with people, if you start when
they're growing up and you can influence their
tastes, their preferences, their habits, their
practices, their values to get them to appreciate
growing food, cooking food, and understanding
the system of food that they participate
in, that you will transform the entire culture. That's her theory of change. We also started to
dance with systems.

You read this wonderful
article by Donella Meadows, Dancing with Systems,
and I was thinking about the last couple of
weeks what attributes has she been talking about that
kind of stood out to me, and I thought number six, this
idea of locating responsibility in the system is
really important. And both Eric and Alice
and Professor Brown talked about that last week,
and Margiana did as well. Also this idea of
expanding time horizons. Rather than thinking so
short-term and immediate, thinking generationally
is so important in food.

Expanding thought horizons. Boy, Professor Brown
stretched my thinking with Buddhist
economics last week. I was sitting there thinking--
and I know a lot of you were too. You were thinking, like,
how does this work? But she was stressing these
ideas of this recognition that everything
is interdependent.

We're all interdependent. We're all interconnected. We're interconnected
with our food system on a very personal
and intimate basis. And that care and concern for
other people and all living things really is
a human quality.

And I know one or
two of you were sort of challenging that too. So she was stretching
our own mental models. And she also reminded
us I think what was important is that the
capitalistic system that we live in, that drives us,
that makes us so busy and kind of habituates
our consumption, it's a human construction. It doesn't occur in nature.

And that's a little
bit mind-bending. And then what was interesting
was one of your classmates stood up at the
question and answer and bravely said, how
do we make this real? So like, I like all this. I get Chez Panisse. It's a famous restaurant that
serves food for wealthy people.

And I get Professor Brown's big
vision of Buddhist economics. But Ella said, how
do we make this real? And I just really
appreciated that comment. And it made me think a
lot about this class, and what we can do in
this class together. And I thought, what
can I do for this class that I think a lot
about and work in a lot? And that is, how do you
translate vision into action? How do you manifest, cultivate,
change for the better? And so what I'm going to try to
do this semester is bring you some of the kind of
entrepreneurial skill sets, and mindsets,
and tool sets that I've been practicing
for like 30 or 35 years that work about how
you actually create change.

And I'm going to challenge
our speakers to build on that and add to that. And so I hope you'll not
only learn about the food system and the people that
are shaping it, and thinking about it, and
working in it, but I. Hope you'll take away
now as an intention this ability to actually
make a difference, OK? So tonight I
thought I would just share with you this first-- call it an entrepreneurial
tool set, OK? So making change, translating
vision into action starts with the
act of reflection. Now, before you can reflect
on what you're learning, you have to be able to listen.

So listening is a prerequisite. I appreciate you're
here tonight. You're here after a long day. You're already listening.

There's already a lot
of people listening out on our live stream. And so paying attention
and listening, and listening for patterns,
listening for common ideas. So that's the first step is
listening, and then to reflect. So what I try to do when
I'm working on a problem is I write down what
resonates with me, what makes me buzz a little bit inside.

Like what has meaning. What has heart and
meaning for me. I write that down. I reflect on it.

I don't try to turn
it into a goal. I don't make it into a job. I just I take a certain
amount of time-- you could call it
meditation, you can call it taking a shower, you
can call it going for a walk, but it's actually a time
of active reflection. Then the next step
is you're reflecting, and then what you
start to do is you start to connect disparate
ideas, disparate conversations from disparate classes,
from disparate speakers, from different areas of
expertise and influence, and you start making connections
between conversations and ideas that don't ordinarily
take place.

So you're taking a class in
the public policy school, and then all of a sudden, you're
taking a class in the business school, and then you're taking
a class in the engineering school, and you start to connect
these sort of common themes and common areas of resonance. So that's the next step. And it's also that recognition
of bringing your system's intelligence to start to
understand those connections. So once you reflect, and
then you start connecting, then the next step
is you're going to start to integrate those
disparate ideas that you've connected.

And then from that, you're
going to create and innovate. And I'm going to unpack this
last one in a subsequent class. This is like, a lot
in this last one. But I just wanted to
show you this process of reflect, connect, integrate,
create, and innovate, OK? And I think you'll hear quite
a bit more about that tonight.

So I was thinking about
the last two classes, and I was thinking about
what resonated with me. And I thought with
what Eric was really talking about, he told
this story about how he was an independent
journalist, an investigative journalist. He gets this call from the
Rolling Stone Magazine. Says hey, we'd like you to
look into this meat packing industry.

There's a lot of opacity, and
we think there's a story there. He didn't really know
anything about it. And all of a sudden, he just
completely serendipitously, he gets the call. And the call is
like the beginning of the hero's journey.

And so 20 years
ago, he gets a call to do a story about food
and the food system. Turns into this big
story in Rolling Stone, which then turns into a book,
which then turns into a movie, and which turns into sort
of like a 20 year journey, odyssey for him in being a
voice of change and illumination in the food industry. But the word that he kept
using in his instruction to us was really about compassion. And I started thinking
compassion is really something that we need more of.

We certainly need more
of it as a solvent, as a catalyst for
making change in a very polarized and stratified
culture that we live in now. And then I started
thinking about Clair Brown. And she was so great. I think of her as a wise elder.

And she's been here at
Berkeley since 1974. And she told you that story
about how she and her friends used to make-- get together and make soup. And she still make
soup on Thursday, because the farmers
markets on Friday, and she's got all that
stuff in her fridge, so she said, let's make soup. So then I thought, all
right, why don't we figure out what is going
to be the compassion soup of this class.

So I wanted to invite
you to start thinking about this week how to create
your own recipe for creativity, innovation, change
in your own life. I want you to think
about this idea of being an enlightened
eater, the intention of being an enlightened eater and
developing food systems intelligence. And maybe as the
semester goes on, we'll share these recipes
of where people are making unusual connections
and recognizing patterns, OK? So that's where we've been
just for two meetings, and now we're in the third. And now I'm going to ask Amanda
to do the attendance question.

So if you can get your iClicker
out, that would be fantastic. Here's the question. Can you all see it? I'll read it to you. This relates to Saru's
reading from her book, Forked.

The restaurant industry
A, is currently the second largest and fastest
growing employer industry sector in the United States. B, perpetuates a
legacy of slavery by paying its own
workers a menial wage because they earn tips. C, uses the federal minimum wage
of $2.13, Which has remained steady for almost 25 years. And D, all of the above.

So please put your
answer in your iClicker so we can record your-- don't you love how people change
their answer as soon as they-- OK, well, I think we have-- who's E out there? I want to know who
the wise guy is. OK, well, that's-- Rohini, is that
the right answer? No. D. D is the right answer.

OK, thank you. So we're really grateful
tonight to have a very-- really inspiring,
committed leader who works right here
on campus, Saru. She is the co-founder and the
co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities
Center United, which is a very dynamic organization
working on a lot of restaurant industry issues. Saru was kind enough to
be here with us last year.

And I remember that
night very vividly, because it was
the night before-- was it Andy Puzder? Yes, so Andy Puzder
was about to be-- Andrew Puzder-- who had
been chairman of Carl's Jr-- Was about to be confirmed
as Secretary of Commerce-- Labor, Secretary of Labor
in the Trump administration. And you came up here and said,
not while I'm on my watch. And you described
a lot of the things that you were doing to
bring to light the practices that his company-- among others-- condoned. And I remember vividly,
because you flashed-- you went on Google
Pictures, and you said, look at the Carl's Jr ads.

And you showed sort
of a bunch of pictures of scantily clad
people, including I. Think Stormy Daniels was one. But Saru is now
a real celebrity. I couldn't help myself.

Saru-- for those of you
that watched the Golden Globes the other night, Saru
made a wonderful appearance with Amy Poehler,
and is now I think being recognized as
a force for good, and the entertainment
industry is embracing her. So now you've got
fans on campus. You've got fans in all of
the restaurant community, and now in Hollywood as well. So let's give a warm
welcome to Saru Jayaraman.

[APPLAUSE] SARU JAYARAMAN: You
want me to sit here? WILL ROSENZWEIG: You
can speak from there, and then we'll sit-- when you're
done, we can sit down there. SARU JAYARAMAN: OK. Cool. Well, hi, everybody.

Can you hear me OK? WILL ROSENZWEIG: You
can stand out here. You might be better on camera. So wherever you're
comfortable, yeah. SARU JAYARAMAN: Hi.

Can you hear me OK? I'm a little under
the weather, so let me know if you can't hear me. Well, thank you so
much for having me. It's always a pleasure
to speak in this class. You know, I have to
confess that I myself didn't know any of
the issues that I now work on every day, all day,
all day long, all night long, I.

Myself didn't know
these things when I was in your shoes in
school, and even after that. I went to law school
and graduate school on the East Coast. And after law school
and graduate school, I lived in New York. And I worked at an
immigrant worker organizing center as an
attorney and an organizer, and I would eat out.

I lived in New York. I would eat out. I would eat out every meal,
sometimes three times a day, sometimes more. I would eat out.

I would enjoy everything that
New York City had to offer. And yet, for all of those
years of eating out, I myself can't recall
a single moment, a single person who served my
food, or who cooked my food. I can't recall individuals. And I would say that's
very purposeful.

The industry is this
invisible workforce that serves us while we enjoy-- we enjoy restaurants as the
place of American culture. We eat out as Americans more
than anybody else on Earth, literally and statistically. And it keeps growing. The amount with
which we eat out, the amount of workers
in this industry, and yet for most
of us, we know very little about what's happening
in the restaurant industry.

And that was true for me,
and then 9/11 happened. And it changed my life, and
it changed most people's lives around the world. But on 9/11, there
was a restaurant at the top of the World
Trade Center Tower One called Windows on the World. It was on the 107th and
108th floor of Tower One.

And on that morning, 73
workers died in the restaurant. They either jumped
to their deaths, because the plane hit below
where the restaurant was in Tower One. And so they either
jumped to their deaths from the 107th and 108th
floor, or they were literally evaporated inside the
restaurant because the heat from the plane below them rose
so quickly, and they perished. So I was asked as a very young
attorney, a very young person shortly after the tragedy
to start this organization in the aftermath
of the tragedy that could help the families
of the victims, and that could help workers
get back on their feet.

250 Workers lost their jobs
in that one restaurant, and about 13,000
restaurant workers lost their jobs in the months
and weeks that followed. And so I started this
little relief center as a very young person with
all of these workers who had no place to go. And what started as a little
relief center post-9/11 has grown over the last now
16 years since 9/11-- 17 years almost-- into
a national organization called, ROC, Restaurant
Opportunity Centers United. We now have about 30,000
workers across the country, about 500 restaurant
owner members ranging from Danny Meyer and Tom
Colicchio-- star of Top Chef-- and Alice is a member
of our association, and lots of great restaurant
owners around the country, down to small mom and pop
restaurants who are really doing their best to both
do well by their customers, and by themselves,
and by their workers.

We also have about
2,000 consumer members, and we're in 10 states. So we've grown geographically. We've grown numerically. But most interestingly,
we've grown in terms of our stakeholder base.

We started as a
worker organization, and then opened
our arms and became a worker-employer
organization, and then opened our arms even further
and became a worker, employer, and consumer organization
fighting for better wages and working conditions
in this industry. And our growth and our
expansion has paralleled the explosion in this industry. You are looking
at the food system as a whole in this class. There are 20 million workers
in the entire food system.

As a system, it is the largest
employer in the United States. One in five private
sector workers in the US. Works in food. One in six American workers
period, public or private, works in food, whether it be
farm work, or food retail, or processing the food,
or transporting the food, or restaurants.

But of that 20 million
workforce, a full 13 million, 13 million are in one industry,
the restaurant industry. The restaurant
industry is not just the biggest part
of the food system, it's almost the biggest
part of the entire economy. It's the second largest
private sector employer, but it is the number one
fastest growing employer, which means we will soon
surpass all other sectors as the largest industry
in the United States. The problem though, is
that as large as we are, as fast as we're
growing, we continue to be as the restaurant
industry the absolute lowest paying employer in the US.

So every year, the
Department of Labor puts out a list of the
10 lowest paying jobs. Every year, seven of the 10
lowest paying jobs in America are restaurant jobs. People don't know this, but
four of the seven lowest paying jobs in the United
States are actually tipped occupations, even when
you take tips into account. So servers-- and
you may not know it living in Berkeley,
or in San Francisco, but tipped workers
across America are some of the poorest workers
in America, even when you take tips into account.

So how is it that you've got
one of the largest and fastest growing industries in America
proliferating the lowest paying jobs? And by the way, what
does it mean for America to have the largest
and fastest growing industry proliferating the
absolute lowest paying jobs? Let's stop and just
think about that. What does it mean when the
largest and fastest growing industry has the absolute
floor of the economy jobs? Not that they aren't
really skilled jobs, not that we shouldn't be valuing
them as the professional jobs that they are, but they
are paid the least. They're paid the least
of any job in America. So what does it mean when you've
got the largest and fastest growing industry proliferating
the lowest paying jobs? It means that we are close to-- we are one in three working
Americans right now, one in three working Americans
works full time and lives in poverty.

And if any of you know what
it's like to be a working American living in poverty, you
know you don't work one job. You don't work full time. You work two and three jobs. You work way more
than full time.

So one in three
working Americans is working full time
or more than full time and living in poverty. And we are getting very close
in the next couple of years to it being one in two. One in two working
Americans working full time or more than full
time and living in poverty. And even if you couldn't
give a rat's behind-- excuse my language-- about
anything I have to say tonight about workers, even if you
couldn't care less about workers, about the people who
produce and serve the food that you are talking
about in this class, even if you couldn't
care at all, you do need to think as an
American about what it means when half of America
doesn't have money to eat, can't afford to consume,
cannot afford to eat out, can't afford to
feed their families.

What does that mean for
the GDP of this country? What does it mean for any
business, sustainable or not, and its ability to survive when
half of America can't consume? What does it mean for
the future of our nation when half of the country is
eligible for public assistance, and must rely on the
other half to survive? What does it mean? It means we are going
nowhere very fast. It means that any business you
might think about will fail. Including the restaurant
industry itself is beginning to stagnate in certain parts,
because workers in this industry cannot
afford to eat out. So how is it--
how have we gotten to this point where you've got
the second largest and absolute fastest growing sector of
the economy proliferating the absolute lowest paying jobs? We've gotten to this
point not because it is inherent and
organic for restaurants to pay the least
wages of any business.

No. We've gotten here because of
the money, power, and influence of a trade lobby called
the National Restaurant Association. We call it the other NRA. It represents the Fortune
500 chains, the IHOPs, the Applebee's, the McDonald's.

This entity has been named the
10th most powerful lobbying group in Congress. It's actually one of the
most powerful lobbying groups that nobody has
ever heard about, which is why we call
it the other NRA. So you know, it's not
the Rifle Association, but it's almost as powerful in
Congress, and in every state legislature across the country. And I had always thought-- I have to be honest, until
about four or five years ago, I.

Had always thought the other NRA
has been around maybe 30, maybe 40, at most 50 years. It couldn't have been
around that long. These chains couldn't have
been around that long. But oh no, the other
NRA has been around-- as it turns out in doing
research for my last book-- in some form or
another for 150 years, since the emancipation
of the slaves.

Because it turns out that
tipping as a practice didn't originate in
the United States. It originated in feudal Europe. So think of Downton
Abbey, or if you read any old English
literature, if you ever see any period pieces
or period movies, Jane Austen or any other movies,
you might see references to tipping. It was noblesse oblige.

It was something that
an aristocrat or noble gave to a serf or a vassal,
always on top of a wage. Serfs and vassals
in feudal Europe actually got paid a wage,
but tips were on top of that. They were bonus or
a gift, something that a superior would give
to an inferior, but always on top of a wage. So that idea of a tip
came to the United States in the 1850s and 1860s,
when rich Americans traveled to Europe and came
back and tried to show off that they
knew the rules of Europe.

And there was massive
populist resistance. They said-- people in America
said this is undemocratic. It's un-American. We don't tip here.

We should get good service
regardless of how much you can afford to tip. And by the way, employers
should pay their workers, not customers. And actually, six states
in the United States passed complete
prohibitions on tipping. And if you've taken
American history, you may have learned about
Alexis de Tocqueville, who came to the United States.

A French writer
came to the States and wrote about
American democracy. And one of the
things he wrote about is American democracy
is so great because they don't tip in America. They got rid of this vestige
of the feudal system. They don't tip in America.

And that movement, anti-tipping
movement spread to Europe, and the labor movement
picked it up in Europe and got rid of
tipping in Europe, dismissed it as a vestige
of the feudal system. They said, we are professionals. Don't you dare tip us. We are hospitality
professionals.

But here in the States, we
went in the exact opposite direction, because the
restaurant industry demanded the right to hire
newly freed slaves and not pay them
anything at all, and let them live
on customer tips. And that idea that a newly
freed slave, a black worker could get a $0 wage
was then made law. The first minimum wage
law that passed in 1938 as part of the New Deal
said tipped workers alone could get a $0 wage as long as
tips brought them to the wage that everybody else got through
the new minimum wage law. And we went from $0 in 1938,
to a whopping $2.13 An hour in 2018.

We are literally celebrating
the 80th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act this year. We as tipped workers have gotten
a $2 increase over 80 years. It is between $2 dollars $7 in
43 states in the United States. And the Restaurant
Association has essentially gotten away with
saying we shouldn't have to pay our own workers.

You the customer should pay
our workers wages for us. They've gotten away with
that incredible idea, arguing it's totally OK. These are white guys working
in very fancy fine dining restaurants in Berkeley, and
San Francisco, and Chicago. When I'm on
television with them, they love to say they
make $100,000 a year.

They make $50 an hour. There's no reason they
should get a wage. When in fact, 70% of tipped
workers in the United States, and in California, and
in every state in the US. Are actually women.

And they're women who don't
work at fancy fine dining restaurants. They're women who
mostly work at IHOP, and Applebee's, and
Olive Garden, and very casual restaurants, very
small restaurants and diners across America. Their median wage
including tips is $9.50. They suffer from three
times the poverty rate of the rest of
the US workforce.

They use food stamps
at double the rate, which means the women who put
food on our tables in America can't actually afford to
feed their own families. But the very worst part
of this for me as a woman, and a woman who is the
mother of two little girls, and I hope for any woman or
any conscious man in the United States, the worst part of
this is that our industry has the highest rates of sexual
harassment of any industry in the United States,
literally and statistically, because women in this country
who live on $2.00 And $3.00 An hour-- and more-- but who
live on these wages must put up with
anything and everything from the customer to feed
their families in tips. 40% Of tipped workers in the
United States are single moms. 40%.

These are moms feeding
their families on tips. And 90% of the
workers we've surveyed have said they have
experienced sexual behavior in the restaurant that
is scary or unwanted. They have experienced a customer
grabbing them, touching them, saying uncomfortable
things to them. And even worse, because
they live on tips, the manager tells them dress
more sexy, show more cleavage, wear tighter clothing in order
to make more money in tips.

There are seven states
that got rid of this system 42 years ago,
including California. California, Oregon, Washington,
Nevada, Minnesota, Montana, and Alaska got rid of this
system many decades ago. These seven states--
we've studied them-- have higher
restaurant sales per capita, higher job growth
in the industry, higher job growth
among tipped workers, higher rates of tipping,
people tipped better in the seven states that have
a full wage with tips on top, and half the rate of
sexual harassment. Sexual harassment isn't gone.

We have the highest rates
of sexual harassment of any industry, even here in
California in the restaurant industry. But it is half the rate here
in California as it is in New York, or Washington DC, where
the wage is $3.00 An hour, or Massachusetts, where
the wage is $3.00 An hour, or Pennsylvania, where
the wage is $2.83 An hour, or New Mexico, where the
wage is $2.13 An hour. We have half the
rate of harassment here because here
at the very least, a woman gets a full
wage from her boss. She knows she doesn't
have to put up with anything and everything
from the customer.

And we found not only do we have
half the rate of harassment, we have women being told by
managers dress more sexy, show more cleavage, wear
tighter clothing at 1/3 the rate in California as in
all of our neighboring states. Again, because a manager
can't tell a woman that when she gets a full
wage from her boss. In these other states, what
you have to understand-- I mean, this is true
in California too, but it's much worse
in these other states. In these other states,
you have to understand that women in this
industry are not told to put up with harassment.

No, they are encouraged
to encourage harassment. They are encouraged to
go out and get harassed, because the more you
get a man to harass you, the more successful
as a worker you are. That is why you are told dress
more sexy, show more cleavage, wear tighter clothing in order
to make more money in tips. And as a tipped worker,
one of the things that really got to me over
the last couple of months as we've gotten so much
attention because of the Me Too moment, and we're seeing
things start to change.

I had a worker in Boston
where the wage is-- again, $3.00 An hour in Massachusetts. I had a woman in
Boston tell me, Saru, you don't understand
how bad it is. It isn't just that we have
to put up with everything from the customer. No.

Because we're
living on tips, that means every man
in the restaurant has incredible power over us. So that we know-- the guys in the kitchen know
we have to produce something to please the customer. And so they know they have
power over us in the kitchen, because we're the
ones who live on tips. The managers know they
have power over us in terms of giving us the best
shifts and the best tables.

Everybody, all the men know
they have power over us, because our wage is not
secure, because everything depends on how much we
please that customer. And so every man in the
restaurant has power over us. Not just the customers, but also
the coworkers and the managers. And maybe even worse,
or just as bad, this isn't just the
millions of women that put up with this
every day of their lives to feed their families.

Millions and millions, we're
the largest industry, after all. No, it's millions
more young women for whom this is the first
job in high school or college or graduate school. This is how they're introduced
to the world of work. One in two American women,
one in two American adults, half of American adults work
in this industry at some point in their lifetime.

Half of American adults. Half of American women,
including Amy Poehler, who I went to the
Golden Globes with, including Meryl Streep, who
I was at the Golden Globes with, including Kerry
Washington, who I. Was at the Golden Globes with. Including senators, including
lawyers and doctors, all of whom--
everybody I've named has told me I have experienced
harassment more recently in my current job, but I didn't
do anything about it because it was never as bad as it was when
I was a young woman working in restaurants.

Which means what? It means our industry isn't
just the worst on this issue. It isn't just that
we set the standard in terms of being the worst
in terms of harassment. We set the standard
for the whole economy. Because most women
start their lives here, and they learn what's acceptable
and tolerable, ethical, how they can succeed
in this workplace, a workplace in which
they are told you must subject yourself to
objectification in order to do well on the job.

It's also the industry
though-- and this is why we're getting so much
attention from Hollywood-- it's also the industry with
the clearest policy solution. We have a very clear
policy solution. Pay these women an actual
wage with tips on top of that, as it was in feudal Europe, and
you can cut harassment in half. A very clear policy solution.

So clear that when we launched
the campaign in 2013-- called it One Fair Wage. We spent the last
several years since 2013 educating people on all the
issues I just told you about. In 2015, the president
of the Ford Foundation sat me down with Danny Meyer. How many people know
who Danny Meyer is? A few people.

Danny Meyer is probably the
foremost fine dining restaurant owner in the United States. He's founded Shake
Shack, but he also is the founder of the Union
Square Hospitality Group. He started all the
restaurants surrounding Union Square in New York City. He's written several
books on the industry.

Most fine dining employers
in the United States know who Danny Meyer is, see him
as a legendary standard setter for the industry. So I sat down with Danny Meyer. I said-- I told him
everything I just told you, the legacy of slavery,
the sexual harassment. He said you know
what, I've actually hated this system for decades,
and you've given me the impetus to do something about it.

And he invited me to come
speak to all of his managers from all of his restaurants,
and the general manager of the Modern at the MoMA-- the Metropolitan Museum
of Art-- was there. And he got very
inspired and said, I want to be the first
restaurant in our company to make a change. And they decided as a
company not just to get rid of the lower wage for tipped
workers, which at the time was $5 or $6 an hour
in New York City, not just to get rid
of that lower wage, pay everybody a full
wage, they actually said we want to
go way beyond that and get rid of
tipping altogether. We to be professionals
in this company.

We want to pay our people as
professionals that they are. And so we want actually to go
beyond what you're asking for and actually pay
everybody a livable wage. We said we support that, if
you can guarantee that nobody actually earns less than
they used to earn with tips, that everybody is doing better. The same or better.

And they said we guarantee that. And so we were supportive
of Danny Meyers move. All of his restaurants
went tipless. The day after he announced,
The New York Times publish an op-ed by me on
the slave history of tipping and the tip minimum wage.

And we've counted
since that time almost 300 restaurant companies
across the country follow-- work with us, follow this move. Either get rid of the lower
wage for tipped workers, or tipping all together. So we've had enormous success
with lots of amazing restaurant owners across the country. Danny Meyer, Tom Colicchio,
Zingerman's in Michigan, lots of amazing
restaurants in Chicago.

Even in the South
in North Carolina, we've been helping
them figure out how to get rid of this
old antiquated model, move towards a different system. But what we knew we really
needed was policy change. If these seven states could
change this policy-wise, why couldn't the
rest of the country? And we kept fighting for policy
change over and over again, until the Me Too moment happened
in the fall of last year. We suddenly got a
lot of attention on all the research
we had been doing on these issues for many years.

And right before Christmas,
thanks to the Me Too moment, Governor Cuomo
announced that he would make New York the eighth
state in the union to completely eliminate the
lower wage for tipped workers. It was a huge victory. We had been working to
change this policy in New York for many, many years. But it took a moment.

It took all of the
momentum of the many years plus this incredible
attention suddenly on women, and the importance of
standing up for women, and the importance of standing
up against sexual harassment for a state leader to
say the time has come. So we are now moving towards
one fair wage in New York. One fair wage is on the ballot
in Washington DC for June 2018, and it's on the
ballot in Michigan. On the ballot, meaning
people will vote on it in November 2018.

It is polling above 80% in both
places, meaning we will win. And we are seeing this
extraordinary tipping point-- no pun intended-- where many, many
states are starting to move away from
the old system, many employers are starting to
move away from the old system. And it's taken years
of organizing workers, women to stand up and
share their stories, workers to stand up and
share their stories, and a moment like
this to finally shed light on everything that we
had been doing for the last two decades. It hasn't come without
a lot of pushback.

The Restaurant
Association was never going to take this lightly. They have been
attacking and attacking and trying to shut us down. They've been following
me around the country. They've created attack web sites
and put my children's pictures up on them.

They've taken out full page
ads in the USA Today and Wall Street Journal. They've sued us for tens
of millions of dollars. They got two congressional
investigations into us. It's a real badge of honor.

President Trump's
Department of Labor has announced that they're
trying to shut us down. All wonderful things. Your professor mentioned
that we were fighting against President Trump's
Secretary of Labor when I spoke in the
class last year. His candidate for
Secretary of Labor was this man named Andy Puzder,
who was the head of Carl's Jr restaurants.

And I showed these
images that this guy had been responsible
for creating at Carl's Jr of practically
naked women eating burgers. And we had surveyed 1,000 Carl's
Jr workers across the country. Most of them are teenagers. And we asked them of
their experiences.

So many of these
girls, 15, 16, 18, 19, told us because of the ads, men
would walk into the restaurant say, you don't look
like the girl in the ad, but I'll take you anyway,
and follow them out into the parking lot, or
try to follow them home. In many cases, it led
to assault. Young girls. We flew these girls-- we
surveyed 1,000 of them.

We flew them to Washington
DC to do a shadow hearing with Senator Elizabeth Warren. And we got that man out. He is not the
Secretary of Labor. Big victory.

[APPLAUSE] But more importantly--
that happened after I came to speak to you. So that was a big victory. But much more
importantly, for us, we've been engaged in
a lot of resistance. You should know that another
wonderful thing that President Trump has done or is doing
is proposed a new rule that would make tips the property
of owners rather than workers.

We've submitted 300,000 comments
to the Department of Labor saying no, tips should be
the property of workers, not employers. It's pretty common sense,
even from feudal times. That's how tips were
always thought of, the property of workers. Doesn't matter.

He will go ahead and
make tips the property of owners in the United States. And that is why it can't
just be about resistance. It has to be about
proactive power building. Every time we pass one
of these state bills, like Governor Cuomo is
going to pass in New York, or we're going to pass
in DC, or in Michigan, we not only get rid of the
lower wage for tipped workers, we actually pass protective
laws in those states making tips the property of
workers, rather than employers.

So wherever we win, workers
get to keep their tips, and they get an actual wage. So that is why rather
than just resisting, we are building a
movement for change. And we are seeing so many
restaurant owners come our way. We are seeing so many state
legislators come our way.

We are seeing the
public already agree with us for a very long time. This is a long fight. It's with a huge enemy. But we are winning.

And it's very, very exciting. And it's happening because of
this extraordinary moment where both men and women are
standing up and saying really, time is up. Time's up. We will not allow
women to be treated in the workplace
like this anymore.

We will not stand for
this legacy of slavery to be perpetuated. And we will not allow
a trade association above all else, a lobbying group
for the nation's biggest chains to dictate how we live
and how we eat out. We the people, we will
determine how we eat out. I'm going to stop there.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: OK. [APPLAUSE] Thank you. You're such an inspiration. So think about your
questions, class, as you have Saru's attention
for a few more minutes.

I'm struck by a
couple of things. One, the persistence it takes. And also, almost kind of the
serendipity of the moment. I mean, you were
here a year ago.

We were all pretty rattled
about the election. You were doing your
thing to just prevent this guy from getting
appointed Secretary of Labor. But we had no idea that-- Me Too was not a
meme or a hashtag. SARU JAYARAMAN:
It was, actually.

But it wasn't a big thing. WILL ROSENZWEIG: OK. So it wasn't sort
of proliferating. SARU JAYARAMAN: Right.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: So how do you-- where do you find sort of
the faith, hope, courage-- you can't count on-- you can't
count on that moment coming. SARU JAYARAMAN: No. WILL ROSENZWEIG: So
what sustains you? I mean, maybe talk a
little bit about that. And also, you know,
maybe illuminate, just for the class-- that I mentioned
theory of change.

Because you have a
theory of change, here, about your organizing. So maybe you could unpack
that a little bit, too. SARU JAYARAMAN: Sure. So first, it's
important to note, this is one moment of
500 moments, right.

There have been so many
moments in this work. Every time a worker joins
our association and says, you know what, I
want to stand up. I want to be part of
collective change. I'm not afraid anymore.

Or you know, I used
to not agree with you, and now I see we need
to change this industry. Or a restaurant
owner says, you know, I totally didn't agree
with you, but now I. See this has got to be the
future of the industry. Every time that
happens, it's a thrill.

It's a moment of inspiration. But you know, then there
are bigger moments. Before this moment,
there was the moment where Danny Meyer listened
and said, I'm going to do it. Let's do it together.

And then a lot of
restaurant owners followed. There have been
other moments where states have said,
you know, we're going to do this in the
past or where legislators have joined forces with us. So there have been
a lot of moments. And maybe that speaks
to the theory of change.

The theory of change
is collective power that you, in our case,
we started with workers, and we grew and grew and grew
to have more and more workers. And then, we realized we were
up against such a powerful enemy or villain or foe, that it
couldn't just be workers. We had to stand with employers,
with restaurant owners as well, who agreed with
us, who actually said, this is possible. There are ways of doing this.

We don't have to say
no, no, no to change. Actually, change is possible. And then, we realized we
needed consumers, you know. And we, in every moment,
were willing to adapt.

Over the course of
the last 20 years, we've watched the food movement. We watched Eric Schlosser
and Alice Waters. And we watched the food
movement, you know, turn customers from
not caring to caring about local and organic. And we thought, well,
if we can actually help people expand their
definition of sustainable food from just sustainable, you know,
organic tomatoes and chickens, to sustainable wages
and working conditions for the people touching
your food and producing it-- if we can expand that
definition and replicate that movement's success
and get consumers to care about these
issues and act, there's a lot that could happen.

So for us, the theory
of change has always been collective prosperity-- the idea that, first
it's workers saying, we need to do better. And then it's workers and
employers standing together and say, we can do
better together. And then it's
workers, employers, and consumers saying,
we all will do better when workers do better. And these days,
we have employers who have worked with us
to produce research that shows that, in fact, their
bottom line is improved by paying better wages
and working conditions.

We worked with Cornell School
of Hospitality and Management. We surveyed 1,100 restaurant
owners across the country. We quantified how much employee
turnover costs restaurant owners by talking to them. You know, we have the
highest rates of turnover.

How many of you have ever
worked in a restaurant? Yeah. Most Americans have. Restaurants have the
highest employee turnover of any industry in
the United States. It's typically about 300%.

That's three turns in
one job in one year. That costs employers
a lot of money-- a lot of money in
retraining, in rehiring, employee productivity, morale. I mean, you know what it's
like to have a staff that's constantly changing. We showed that you can
cut those costs in half by providing better wages and
better working conditions.

It makes sense. Workers stay with
you longer if they know that they, not only
can be treated well, but they can move up a ladder. So we've worked with employers
to show it's better for them when their workers do well. And we've worked with consumers
who say it's better for us if our workers are treated well.

It's not just about having that
wonderful, delicious, organic meal. I want to make sure that the
worker isn't sick and sneezing on my food, that they can
take care of themselves when they serve me, that I'm
not participating in a system as a consumer that
treats women like this. As a consumer, I want
to know that everything is ethical, not just the food. And so, our theory of
change has been this idea of collective prosperity.

Everybody does better when
everybody really does better. And that, and every moment
it's important to show that another way
is truly possible. It's not a theory. It's not hyperbole.

We've got very large restaurants
and very small restaurants that are paying $15 an hour and
thriving, not just making it-- they're thriving. We've got small restaurants and
big restaurants, fine dining and fast food and
casual restaurants-- 500 of them across the
country who prove the point, you can do this and
not go out of business. In fact, you can do
well, not in spite of treating your workers
well, but because you treat your workers well. WILL ROSENZWEIG: I just-- thank you.

I love the vision
when you are talking-- and I remember you mentioning
it last year, too-- but the vision of
collective prosperity, really, to me, sort of,
I thought, you know, that's beautiful. And you know, we can
assail all the wrongs. And we need to
know what's wrong. And I think, also, we need
something to aspire to.

So when you put out that notion
of collective prosperity, I felt like, you know,
that's aspirational. And that really
evokes this notion of being interconnected
and interdependent. Because if I feel
like, you know, if the person who's serving
me this or making me this is in pain and
suffering, then I'm participating in something
that is not appropriate. So I actually, knowing that
you were going to come tonight, I brought a little
book that I wanted to read you a little passage.

Because we've been thinking a
lot about, what do we value. You know, and what's
interesting in food is there's an attribute of
it, and we lose track of it in the speed that we're going. But the value of beauty-- just the value of beauty
and beauty in food. And next week, by the way,
Dan Barber, the chef-- chef Dan Barber is going to be here.

And he, you know,
produces beautiful food. And I mean, when he
produces it, he just brings like these little
vegetables out of the garden, and that's it. It's just the beauty of
the vegetable itself. But anyway, I just
wanted to share this with you because to give
something back to you.

This is an excerpt from
a book called Beauty-- Rediscovering the True Sources
of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope. And it's by a gentleman
named John O'Donohue, who is a well-known sort of
Irish poet and philosopher. He's really a brilliant
man, very thoughtful man. But just this little
section for you, Saru.

SARU JAYARAMAN: Sure. WILL ROSENZWEIG: This is called,
"If Beauty Were Invited." "Our times are driven by
the inestimable energies of the mechanical
mind, its achievements derived from its singular focus,
linear direction, and force. When it dominates, the habit
of gentleness dies out. We become blind.

Nature is rifled. Politics eschews vision and
becomes the obsessive servant of economies. And religion opts for
the mathematics of system and forgets its mystical flame. Instead of true
leadership, which would be the servant of
vision and imagination, we have systems of puppetry,
which are carefully constructed and manipulated from elsewhere.

We never know who
we're dealing with, hidden agendas operate
to deepen our insecurity and persuade us to be hopeless. Our present dilemma
is telescoped in this wonderful
phrase from Irish writer and visionary politician,
Michael Higgins, quote, "The acceptance of
inevitability in our lives is consistent, of course,
with the suggestion that there is but one vision of
the economy, an end of history, the death of ethics, and an
appropriate individualism that eschews solidarity and any
transcendent public values." Yet constant struggle
leaves us tired and empty. Our struggle for reform needs
to be tempered and balanced with a capacity for celebration. When we lose sight of
beauty, our struggle becomes tired and functional.

When we expect and
engage the beautiful, a new fluency is set free
within us and between us. The heart becomes rekindled
and our lives brighten with unexpected courage. It is courage that restores
hope to the heart." So, one of the things that
I so look to you for-- your spirit and
your leadership-- is this sense of courage. And you know, it's interesting
because you mention, you know, when this professional work that
you're doing becomes personal, it's really tough.

I mean, and to have your
children implicated and-- this is not playing fair. I'm kind of interested in what
you do to sustain your courage. Where does courage come from? How do we, you know, invoke
the courage in each of us? You use the word "consumer." I said, this year I'm going to
challenge every guest at Edible Education to think of the people
who eat food not necessarily as consumers, but maybe
as eaters or sustainers or citizens or something. Because if we're stuck
in the consumption model, we'll never get to-- SARU JAYARAMAN: Yup.

WILL ROSENZWEIG:
--that beautiful image or that sustainable system. SARU JAYARAMAN: Yeah, totally. WILL ROSENZWEIG: So,
I want to get rid of the word "consumer"
in the food industry. We're not consumers.

We need to be
enlightened eaters. SARU JAYARAMAN: Yeah, totally. WILL ROSENZWEIG: But so, how
do you think about courage? Where does it come from? How do you generate it? How do you work up to it? If you're a student
here, how do you work up the courage to like, ask
the manager of the restaurant what their policy is? SARU JAYARAMAN: So, I want to
answer that question by first talking about another
part of that quote, which is the opposite of
courage to me, which is this idea of inevitability,
right-- that there is a inevitable way
that things must be. And the industry
perpetuates this very well, because I'm sure there are many
people in this classroom who have very much bought into
the idea that you cannot raise wages without jobs being lost.

That is a common wisdom that
the industry has perpetuated. You cannot raise wages
without businesses suffering. You cannot raise wages
without, you know, somehow the economy suffering. That's one myth that, you know,
you can't run a small business and pay anything more
than a certain amount, or you will not survive.

There's no way to
run a restaurant, except to pay the lowest
possible wage tier. These are "facts" that
have been distributed across American society
as if they are facts. And they just aren't. All of the evidence points
in the opposite direction, that in fact, the states and
cities with the highest wages have the fastest growing
restaurant industries.

The seven states that
got rid of the lower wage for tipped workers
have the fastest job growth among tipped workers
and servers themselves. I mean, this common wisdom
that they love to spread is not actually wisdom. And it's not evidence. The courage comes when
you are able to stand up in a room of people who've
accepted that as common wisdom and say, that is
not common wisdom.

That is actually
not wisdom at all. That is mythology. And here is the truth. And sometimes it means
people attack you.

It means they put your
children's pictures up on attack websites. It means they follow
you around the country. At one point, somebody from
within the National Restaurant Association leaked documents
to Salon, the online magazine. And the Salon reporter shared
privately the documents with me.

The documents showed that
the Restaurant Association has spent $6 million to
shut me down, shut ROC down. And he forwarded
me the documents. They were pages and
pages of my whereabouts. They had been following me
around the country wherever I spoke, wherever I traveled.

They had been following
me everywhere. So you know, you could
take that and stop. You could take that and
say, it's inevitable. You know, with
sexual harassment, it's so amazing to me
how many times for years before this #MeToo moment, I
had everybody in the industry, including women, say,
well, that's just the way our industry is.

That's what you do
in this industry. You put out. You please the customer. That's just the way
the industry is.

You put up with it. So that's, again, that
notion of inevitability. And the courage comes
when women say, time's up. Actually, no-- it's
not inevitable.

We won't put up with it. You know, and even if
it takes being attacked, what drives me when I'm attacked
is I have two little girls. And to me, the restaurant
industry could be so beautiful. I would be very
proud of my daughters if they became restaurant
industry professionals.

If-- if by the
time they grow up, we can fix this
industry together. If by the time
they grow up, they don't need to put up with
an eater or a manager or a coworker touching them or
talking to them with anything less than 100% respect. So, this industry
is so beautiful. Talk about beauty.

This is the most
beautiful thing you can imagine, being
able to come together over wonderful food, people
serving each other, people serving each other with
care and love and such skill and professionalism. What a beautiful thing. The thing that's not
beautiful is the fact that these folks are not paid
or treated as the professionals that they are. And so, the courage comes from
knowing that we can change it.

It's not inevitable. We have to change it for
the sake of my daughters and the women in this
room and their daughters. We have to change it. The courage comes from
knowing the status quo is not inevitable.

Change is actually inevitable. [APPLAUSE] WILL ROSENZWEIG: Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.

SARU JAYARAMAN: [LAUGHING] WILL ROSENZWEIG: Go on. [APPLAUSE CONTINUES] I love it. And we're going to
come out to you now. So get ready.

There's a mic there, and
there's a mic over here. So if you want to
ask a question, please come down to the mic. Be courageous. SARU JAYARAMAN: [CHUCKLES] WILL ROSENZWEIG:
This is your moment.

You know, in a parallel
part of the food industry, there is some movement with
the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which is
sort of, not nearly as powerful as the other
NRA, but a big lobbying group for the packaged food
industry that has basically been the front whenever
there's been a citizen's initiative for a soda tax-- SARU JAYARAMAN: A labeling. WILL ROSENZWEIG: --or a
GMO labeling or nutritional labeling. They're the ones that go out
and say, oh, oh, oh, no, no. It's going to be just too
complicated for people.

They won't understand. Or, it's going to cost the
food industry way too much to change the packaging. SARU JAYARAMAN: Right. WILL ROSENZWEIG: Or
you know, it won't be fair to those small grocery
stores to put a soda tax because their business
depends on that.

You're going to put
them out of business. All the myths you're
talking about. But just a few months
ago, Campbell's Soup says, we're done. Why? Because they're on the
wrong side of the argument with the eaters.

SARU JAYARAMAN: That's right. WILL ROSENZWEIG: This
eater power is like, alive. And it's interesting,
with social media, now all of a sudden the brand is
not controlled by the company, it's controlled by the customer. So we're in a whole new dynamic.

And what I love
about the way you approach things is
you're so informed. You're research-driven. You're data-driven. You're not sitting here,
presenting another myth.

You're showing people like,
here's where it works. Let's just figure out how
it works, why it works. Let's replicate it. SARU JAYARAMAN: That's right.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: So I'm
encouraged, you know, with this sort of
fissure-- because Nestle, the world's largest
food company, just resigned from the-- SARU JAYARAMAN:
Oh, that's right. WILL ROSENZWEIG: --GMA. And I think another big
food company did, too. So that's starting to crumble.

And part of your theory of
change and your strategy is in this realm of-- in business, we would call it
the "key influencer strategy." Danny Meyer's-- SARU JAYARAMAN: Right. WILL ROSENZWEIG:
--a key influencer. He's wildly successful. He's successful at the
top end of the market, at the fast-casual
end of the market.

He's a visionary. He's made a lot of money,
but he's also been, you know, incredibly, sort
of just and mission-driven. So getting somebody
like that as your ally. So, I guess I have one
more question around that.

Like, who's next? Who do you need? How can we help you-- you know, are we going after
one of the big chains now? SARU JAYARAMAN: [LAUGHS] WILL ROSENZWEIG: Or-- how do
we trip the dominoes for you or help? SARU JAYARAMAN:
Honestly, anybody you know who's a restaurant
owner, anybody that you connect with as an eater,
please encourage them to join our association. Honestly, we would open our
arms to the Applebee's and IHOPs if they wanted to work
with us to figure out how to raise their wages. We've had Panera call us. Chipotle has been in
discussions with us.

It's not like we
believe anybody's evil or anybody's perfect. We call these high
road and low road, if you read the first
two chapters of my book. We call them roads for a reason. These are not destinations.

These are pathways
that people are on. Anybody can change, you know. I've changed. Danny Meyer changed.

Anybody can change. So fundamentally, as I
said, change is possible. I believe it's inevitable. And it's possible for
you all, as eaters, to connect restaurant owners--
even those that you think might be the most opposed to this-- to sit down with
us and hear us out.

You know, it's funny. You were talking about
people breaking off. The National
Restaurant Association has been very stuck. But the Golden Gate
Restaurant Association, which is the San Francisco
restaurant association, reached out.

And we've been
working a lot together because a couple of years ago,
they decided, we've had enough. You know, what the
leadership said to me is, we were tired of always
being the party of "no." And you know, we
realized at some point, people wanted change. And so, rather than always
being the party of "no" and being behind
the ball and having to catch up as
people made change, we decided to get out
in front and say, OK, if you want this changed,
let's figure out how it can work for our industry. You know, let's work
together and figure it out.

And now I have restaurant owners
in Washington DC approaching the Restaurant Association
of Washington DC. And other people approaching the
National Restaurant Association and saying, we have got to
stop being the party of "no." It's not working. Change is inevitable. So, any of you can be part of
that by encouraging restaurant owners you know to work
with us, to talk to us.

And we made that easy. The book you read, Forked,
has an app version. You can go to
forkedthebook.Com, and there's a mobile site where
we actually rate restaurants on their wages,
benefits, and promotion practices. And when you're eating out,
you can show that mobile site to a restaurant owner and say,
you know, I love eating here.

I love the food. I love the service. I'd love to see you
rate well in this guide. And I can put you in touch
with people who can help you either rate you well because
you're already doing well, or help you get there.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: That's great. So remember that--
change is inevitable. That's going to be on the final. SARU JAYARAMAN: [LAUGHS] WILL ROSENZWEIG: You've
got a question over here.

STUDENT: I do, yeah. WILL ROSENZWEIG: Please use
the mic so everybody can hear. Just introduce yourself,
and speak into the mic. And that way, everybody
at home can hear you too.

STUDENT: Sounds good. Hi. My name is Grace. I'm a student actually in the
College of Natural Resources, and I've seen you speak a
few times in various classes.

SARU JAYARAMAN: Sorry. [LAUGHS] STUDENT: No, no, no. I appreciate it every time. There's always new
data that sticks.

I feel like there's
so many numbers that you have in your head. And also, a few years ago,
you kindly offered actually to speak with me on the phone
over some organizing work that I was trying
to get started. And one thing that always
stuck with me is you said that our generation
is afraid of direct action. And that really stuck with me,
and I appreciate that so much.

And it's pushed me-- I mean, it's definitely
played a role in pushing me to do
more organizing work. And I feel like what you're
doing is definitely-- like, when those unfortunate things
are happening to your family and to you, it's like, you know
you're doing something right. Because you like,
affecting power. And that's really amazing.

My question is more
specific around, I've been curious about when
you talk about negotiating-- because you work with
employers and workers-- I'm just curious, how does that
work when-- obviously, there's this explicit power
dynamic, and when you're working
within one restaurant or like a network of restaurants
and you're working with workers and you're trying to
mediate these issues on wage and harassment,
how does that work between the employers and those
who are at a different power level? SARU JAYARAMAN: Yeah. It's a great question
because, as I mentioned, there are two pathways. Some people are on the high
road and want to figure it out. And it doesn't mean
that they're perfect.

And so, when workers come
to us from a restaurant that we've been talking
with and working with, we are able to sit down
quietly with that employer and say, workers have come to
us and expressed this issue. Let's help you clean up
so that you can correct what you're doing wrong. And employers who
work with us are able to fix it quietly,
positively, you know, and avoid bigger problems. But we've had other employers
where workers come to us and say, I'm not being paid,
or my tips are being stolen, or I'm being harassed.

And we attempt to
do exactly that. We send them a letter, say,
let's sit down and talk, your workers have approached us. Those restaurants often
don't want to listen. And so, we end up having
to take it to the public.

And that means direct action
in front of the restaurants. It means litigation--
suing the restaurants. It means encouraging
eaters to actually speak to the restaurant owner and
communicate to the restaurant owner, I'm not
going to eat here. I need you to change
your practices.

So direct action is
extraordinarily powerful, especially when the people
who are most affected-- in this case, the workers-- are the ones leading the effort. And there are people
who support them, like eaters and other
allies, who stand with them and go to the restaurant
owner, and say, we need to see you change. And we've had dozens and dozens
and dozens of these instances-- we've never had an instance
where the employer ultimately doesn't sit down,
pay back the workers, change their practices,
hire people they fired. Not one, because direct action
is so powerful in actually getting employers to-- I mean, direct action in
front of a restaurant-- a restaurant relies on its
on ambiance and its location.

They can't just close up shop
and open in another country. You know, they have
to be where they are. And so, direct action in front
of a restaurant with workers appealing to the
public and saying, we are not being treated well,
is the most powerful thing out there. And so, it's just
an example of how you all, if you
act collectively-- you know, and since I said
that, Trump was elected.

And I think people
are much more seeing the power of collective
action and direct action and resistance. So maybe I was wrong. And maybe your generation
is totally, totally into direct action and
totally capable of it. Again, this is part of
this common wisdom thing.

I think before
Trump was elected, there was a bit of common
wisdom of respectability. You know, it's not
respectable to go out in the streets and protest. And now there's a common wisdom
that we all have to get up and do something. Otherwise, we may actually
be killed in a nuclear war, or we may actually, you
know, all lose our tips.

Or things might happen. And so, I do think
things are changing. And I think a lot
more can be done. Thank you.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: Thanks, Grace. Any other questions? Come on. Somebody else has
got a question. Yeah, please.

STUDENT: Hi, Saru. SARU JAYARAMAN: Hi. STUDENT: Nice to meet you. And thank you for coming here.

SARU JAYARAMAN: Yeah. STUDENT: My name is Kevin. I'm a first year in the
full-time MBA program here. And my question's around-- something that I would
love to get your opinion on is, you talked a little
bit about tipped workers.

I would love to
hear what you think about the pay gap between back
of house, front of house-- between tipped workers
and non-tip workers. And please correct me
if I'm underestimating or overestimating the problem. But I mean, I'm
guess, I'm trying to understand from a
restaurant's point of view that says we can't
raise our wages, our margins are thin enough. Maybe this is where this
misguided idea of a tip pulling comes into play, where we
can "redistribute" the money around.

What are policy implications? What are thoughts on how
restaurants can address this? WILL ROSENZWEIG: Great question. SARU JAYARAMAN:
Yeah, great question. Thank you. So, this is something
that especially higher end restaurants bring
up a lot, both those that are with us and in
the National Restaurant Association.

We can't raise wages
for tipped workers, or what they call the
"front of the house" because the inequity
between front and back is already so great. Sometimes they make
it even uglier, and they say, we
can't raise wages in the front of the house,
because those are white workers and the workers in the
back are people of color. Now that goes a
little bit too far because I like to
point out, God didn't tell you to put white people in
the front and people of color in the back. That is actually discrimination.

That's called segregation. And that is another issue we
need to fix in a restaurant industry. But the other big point
is that, first of all, that inequity doesn't
actually exist in the vast majority of
restaurants where people work. Most workers don't
work in fine dining.

They work in Applebee's
and Denny's and IHOP. In the vast majority of
restaurants in America, there actually isn't that
inequity between front and back, because the
women in the front-- and they are mostly women-- earn very, very little in
tips and very little in wages. So when you look at median
wages across the country, tipped workers and
non-tipped workers actually make almost
exactly the same, even taking tips into account. But the problem does exist.

I totally see it and
feel it and hear it. And I've experienced it. The problem does exist in
the higher end restaurants. We can't deny it.

And so we actually
do agree with, what we call one fair wage,
plus sharing tips with the back. We do agree with that
or moving to a model like Danny Meyer's, where
the employer actually pays everybody's wages and can
insure a more equitable wage between front and back, where
everybody is a professional. And like every other
profession-- you know, please stop and think
for a minute about all the other customer
service professions in the United States. I hear customers sometimes
saying, we have to keep tips.

There is no way to express
pleasure or displeasure except with tips. There's no way to
motivate servers, except through tipping. No, I'm sorry. There's so many
other professions where people are served and
where people are treated well and where people are
motivated to treat people well and where customers can express
their pleasure or displeasure.

Teaching-- imagine if the
University of California Berkeley said to you,
we shouldn't have to pay the professors wages. You, the students,
should pay their wages in gifts and tips that express
your pleasure or displeasure with our teaching. Can you imagine your doctor-- the hospital saying, we're not
going to pay the doctors wages. You the patients,
pay the doctors wages based on how happy you are
with the doctors' services-- what they tell you,
the news they give you.

So there's no other
profession where that's true. And so, in a situation
like Danny Meyers, he did that in
particular because he wanted to create greater
equity between front and back. Other restaurants have moved to
service charges, as you know, which are problematic
if the employer tries to keep a portion of the
service charge, which happens all too often. And so, we have passed
laws in various places making service charges the sole
property of the worker, not the employer.

So in general, we believe, look,
if there can be one fair wage-- meaning the same minimum wage
for front of house and back of house-- certainly, back of house workers
can be paid way more than that. And tips can be shared
between front and back, as happens in a lot of
places in the seven states. You can create greater equity
in multiple different ways, but it can happen by having a
lower wage for tipped workers. And it cannot happen by
employers being able to keep any portion of the tips.

So this is the problem
with Trump's rule. The National
Restaurant Association is arguing that this rule is
good and OK and justified, precisely for the
reason you're saying. They're saying, we should
be able to keep and control the tips so that we
can redistribute them because it's so inequitable
between front and back. You can allow tips to be shared
without managers and employers having any portion
of those tips.

There is no reason for a manager
to be able to take those tips and turn around
and buy a Mercedes. I mean, the rule
actually states, employers should be
able to take tips to make capital improvements
in the restaurants. You know, there's
no reason for that. So there are ways to
deal with inequity-- everything I've just said.

Plus I want to mention
one more thing, which is, if we're going to go
there on the racial equity, let's go there. Let's talk about the
fact that the Bay Area has the highest racial wage
gap between white workers and workers of color of
any restaurant industry anywhere in the United States. There's a $5.50 Wage gap between
white workers and workers of color here in the Bay Area
in the restaurant industry. And that is because
workers of color are steered into
lower level positions.

They are the bussers and the
dishwashers and the cooks-- not the servers and the
bartenders in fine dining. And they're steered into
lower level segments, like casual restaurants
and fast food. And so, white men end up
in fine-dining restaurants as servers and bartenders. We actually tested this.

We sent 400 pairs of white and
people of color applicants-- men and women-- into fine dining restaurants
to see who would get hired. We found that white people
had twice the chance of a person of color of
getting a fine-dining service or bartending position, even
when the person of color had a better resume. We had many restaurants openly
say, we don't hire women here. They can't carry trays.

So, you know, if we're
going to go there on equity, let's talk about equity. But let's address what we
call implicit bias, which is the fact that
employers steer workers into different positions
based on their identity. And eaters participate in this,
because we hear from employers, well, the eater wants a
certain kind of person as their sommelier or
server or bartender because they can engage in a
certain kind of "table talk." That's coded language for
a certain kind of culture-- shared culture. And there's no reason
why a person of color can't learn wine
and food pairings.

You know, we run training
for people of color. We actually have gotten
together with Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. And we bought a building
across from the Fruitvale BART. Station.

And we're opening a
COLORS restaurant, where we're training hundreds
of low-wage workers of color to move up the ladder. We did this in New
York and Detroit. We opened our own
restaurants called COLORS, and we train workers in them. One of the young men who went
through our training programs in DC has become
a master of wine.

There are 75 masters
of wine in the world. Only two are people of color. One is our guy
from Washington DC. There is no reason why
a young man of color-- even a formerly
incarcerated person-- couldn't become a master of
wine or a sommelier or an owner.

It is our implicit bias. It is the fact that when
we think about equity, we think about front and
back, which is legitimate. We don't actually think
about racial inequity, gender inequity. So if we're going to
talk about equity, let's talk about all of it.

And let's address
all of it together. [APPLAUSE] Thanks. Thanks. [APPLAUSE CONTINUES] WILL ROSENZWEIG: So maybe just
building on Kevin's question a little bit.

Say I'm a young person. I've worked in restaurants
since I was in high school. And I love the industry, but
I've been kind of trained in this old model. I've seen it.

And I've seen it
from the inside. I see like, how hard
it is to make a living. I see how much food is wasted. I see, even for an owner of
a small restaurant that's trying really hard, how hard
it is to make ends meet.

But I want to come over. I want to join-- SARU JAYARAMAN: Yeah. WILL ROSENZWEIG: I want to be
on the right road with you. Would ROC help me as like,
a small business owner? Like-- SARU JAYARAMAN: Of course.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: --even do
the math and figure out like, what do I have to
change in my pricing? SARU JAYARAMAN: Totally. WILL ROSENZWEIG: Yeah. SARU JAYARAMAN: Yeah. Absolutely.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: OK. SARU JAYARAMAN: I was on Real
Time with Bill Maher on HBO. Last Friday. That guy, every time
I'm on Bill Maher, I get hundreds and
hundreds of emails-- way more than I did
from The Golden Globes.

Just hundreds of people writing
to me-- small business owners, saying, I want to do this. I don't know how. Workers writing
to me and saying, I agree with everything
you're saying, but I don't understand
how my small business employer could possibly imagine
to, you know make this change. The restaurant would shut down.

And our response to
everybody is, come. Come talk to us. We'll put you in
touch with somebody who runs your same
kind of restaurant, in your state or
a different state. We'll have you talk to them
and see how they've done it and you can do it, too.

We'll help you
open up your books and figure out how you can
slowly make this change. We'll help you
figure out your PnLs. We'll help you figure out
how to change your employment practices. We have model employee
handbooks we can hand you.

We can provide you
with the support if you're willing to
go down this new path-- the high road to profitability. Again, nobody's perfect. Nobody's asking you
to do it overnight. But join us.

And when they join
us, inevitably they find, and they agree with
us, we want to do this. We can start to make this move. But you know what
would help a lot, is if there was policy
that made everybody do it at the same time,
rather than me alone. And so, that's why I hope
what you hear is not, we as eaters can affect
change company by company by a company, that
that's the only solution.

It's great that these
companies have left the GMA. And we need policy change. We need policy
change, fundamentally, because it can't go
company by company. It's got to be a level
playing field for the folks that are taking the high road.

They can be at a disadvantage
for doing the right thing. Everybody's got
to go up together. And these policies,
by the way, are not asking people to go from $2 and
$3 to $12 and $15 overnight. They're phased in $0.50
To $1 year after year.

And so they're phased in slowly. There's plenty of support. It's totally possible. And as I've said,
the states that have passed these
policies, actually have booming
restaurant industries.

WILL ROSENZWEIG: So if I'm a
first- or second-year student here at Berkeley and
I want to participate in what you're doing
and get prepared, what should I be studying? What should I be majoring in? SARU JAYARAMAN: [LAUGHS] I don't know. I mean, you can
major in anything. You should study
anything and everything. That's what college is for.

But if you care
about these issues, I think the best thing to
do is to get engaged now. You know, if it's
us, you can get engaged as a worker or
an eater or a student. However you want
to engage, there's plenty of ways to engage. Whatever issue it is you want
to work on, get engaged now.

And whatever it is
that you're studying, think about the connection
between what you're studying and what you're doing. Because there's no better
way to figure out what you want to do eventually
than to actually get out there and try to do
it or be a part of it. WILL ROSENZWEIG: Thank you. Thank you, Saru.

SARU JAYARAMAN: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thanks a lot. [APPLAUSE CONTINUES] WILL ROSENZWEIG:
Thank you so much. SARU JAYARAMAN: Thanks a lot.

Yeah, thank you for having me. WILL ROSENZWEIG: Can we have
this slide please, again? Just a preview of next week. I don't have any
control over that. Can you give me this
slide just so I can show-- one second.

Five seconds. So, next week, week 4-- really, very delighted
to tell you that Chef Dan Barber is going to be here. Chef Dan is highly respected. He's really a visionary.

He's much more than a chef. SARU JAYARAMAN: Sorry! WILL ROSENZWEIG: It's OK. SARU JAYARAMAN: [INAUDIBLE] WILL ROSENZWEIG: And
I've got a slide of him because I wanted you to see. If you have time
this week, there's a wonderful Netflix series
called Chef's Table.

And he's on the first
episode of that. And I would highly encourage
you to grab a couple of friends and watch it, because
you'll get a sense of him at work that will, I think,
really inform your experience to enjoy his presentation. And Dan's written a book
called The Third Plate. And he has a vision
that's very interesting, that he sort of looks at the
industrialization of our food system.

And he's got a vision
for where to take it. And he's working very, very
actively with plants and seeds. And he's going to talk
about regenerative cooking and from seeds to soul. If you hold on one second, I'm
going to give you something.

SARU JAYARAMAN: OK, sorry. WILL ROSENZWEIG:
Yeah, no problem. So come back next
week with Chef Dan. If you'd like a lemon from the
idea garden, help yourself.

And we'll see you next week. Thanks very much. [APPLAUSE] SARU JAYARAMAN: I'm so sorry.
[? I needed to come-- ?] WILL ROSENZWEIG: It's OK. I know.

SARU JAYARAMAN:
--to put my kids-- [INDISTINCT CHATTER].