As An Advocate For Restaurant Workers, ROC Looks To Walk Its Talk

NEW YORK CITY —With its mission of looking out for the kitchen help and waitstaff that keep the city's eateries thrumming , the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC) vaulted into public view ten years ago, generating headlines, accolades and opposition.

Now entering a third decade with a track record of mixed results, the organization is refocusing its energies and clarifying its goals.

As a not-for-profit organization with affiliates across the nation, the original mandate of the ROC was to improve conditions and increase wages for the workers most often overlooked in the restaurant business — those employees often referred to as "back of the house" help.

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But at several high-profile junctures, the organization has appeared anything but organized. The group spread like wildfire early on, and now operates chapters in New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Oakland.

And its pedigree is unassailable: The ROC rose from the debris of the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11, with an early agenda of assisting those displaced restaurant workers who survived the twin towers' destruction — including many undocumented immigrants. The first to join once staffed the Windows on the World eatery that looked out from the North Tower on floors 106 and 107.

At its inception, the group attracted funding from an array of foundations with a lofty ambition to “organize all unorganized restaurant workers in New York City.” The founders included Dr. Sekou Siby (now the president of ROC United), labor advocate and lawyer Saru Jayaraman and Windows on the World server Fekkak Mamdouh, as other workers who survived the WTC carnage.

According to the watchdog site Influence Watch, ROC United is best known for hosting "trainings and protests in support of left-of-center employment policies" and is a driving force behind the campaign to support a $15 federal minimum wage.

"While similar to a labor union," the site states, "the group operates as a 'worker center,' such that it is able to engage in many traditional union organizing activities while being able to skirt many legal requirements concerning union membership and reporting."

As Communications Director Anthony Advincula told Patch, "our core mission comes down to equity and equality. Yes, we're fighters, and when we say 'fight,' we mean that in terms of a living wage, because more than two-thirds of the nation's tipped workers are women and the majority of those are people of color and immigrant workers. So tipped workers are the ones who get sub-minimum wages, with no clear policy to protect them. This is one of the reasons we are pushing legislation at the federal, state, and city levels— to eliminate that."

Compounding the problem is that many workers are undocumented and often speak English as a second language, if at all.

The original ROC-NY blazed into the limelight with a series of confrontations that chafed the status quo. Many employers bristled as the group appeared to bite the hand that fed restaurant workers and their families — albeit on substandard wages and without benefits.

When the former Windows on the World proprietor David Emil announced plans to open a new dining spot at Times Square in 2002, ROC-NY picketed, because Emil hadn't come through on a promise to hire employees from his destroyed WTC restaurant. Ultimately, he relented.

In 2006, the organization opened its own venture, called Colors. But through a series of management missteps, the restaurant failed amid recriminations and accusations that wages has been withheld. A second attempt ended in similar disarray and lawsuits and closed in 2020, not much more than a month after opening.

Legal actions and protests across the country flourished as membership grew. In 2013, the organization launched a campaign to change and standardize tipping they called One Fair Wage. The initiative seeks to increase tipped minimum wages to the standard minimum wage, while allow tipping practices to remain. That organization was spun off into a separate entity in 2019, with two founding members, Jayaraman and Mamdouh, joining the new effort.

In 2020, ROC United raised more than a million dollars to aid workers underemployed or without work during the pandemic shutdown.

"So our mission remains the same as it's always been," said Advincula. "We're working to ensure safety and job protections, for better working conditions and for paid leave, so people don't have to show up when they're sick."

Beyond that, the Communications Director believes that in its third decade, ROC United's priorities have been dialed in to not only help restaurant workers survive, but to expand their skill sets moving forward.

"That's the other side of the equation," he said. "We're trying to empower the base membership to move up the ladder in the industry. And not means not only bartending and hosting, but also managing through our CHOW program."

CHOW is the Colors Hospitality Opportunities for Workers Institute, providing "an in-depth and advanced professional training in both front-and back-of-the-house restaurant skills at no cost to either employers or employees." (The program remains, independent of the failed restaurant venture that bears its name.)

To date, he says that more than 10,000 restaurant workers have graduated in New York, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Illinois. "And last month in Chicago," he added, "all graduates were notably women of color."

As Advincula sees it, "All of these issues are things that can be fixed: Gender inequality, wage theft and inequity, and sexual harassment. At the moment, we're still pushing the Raise the Wage Act and fighting for tipped employees to be treated fairly."

As a voice for those who are often underrepresented in the industry if at all, Advincula believes that ROC United has emerged smarter and stronger through its adversities.

"If we have any kind of a new mission," he said, "it's to raise awareness for diners, employers and the workers themselves, as well as other stakeholders, policy makers and the media. Because most of what you see is on the surface."