Orientation

“There was a restaurant on the top of the twin towers called Windows of the World. The employees were paid very well there because they were unionized and had fought for a decent wage and just working conditions. On 9/11 many of the workers died and they all lost their jobs. A few months later the owner decided to open up the restaurant in a different part of town and decided that he wasn’t going to hire any of the same people back. He thought he could hire people that didn’t know their rights as well- people who were easier to exploit. Well the workers came together and decided to fight. They held protests in front of his restaurant and pressured him until finally he had no choice but to hire them back. Because of this group effort ROC-NY started. Since then ROC’s have been opened in Detroit, Chicago, Maine, New Orleans, and now Miami!"

“Our goal as an organization is to fight for the rights of restaurant workers. Sometimes that means protests, boycotts, lawsuits, and public pressure. Other times that means offering classes so that people can move up in the industry, legal services, and other trainings. We also conduct research on the restaurant industry as well as work on policy.”

“Why are we in Miami? There are 10’s of thousands of restaurant worker here. If we want to build a national movement then we have to be in the cities that are big restaurant markets, service-sector economy. We are seeing similar problems in Miami that other ROC’s are seeing: unpaid hours, stolen tips, unpaid overtime hours, forced double shifts, not paying minimum wage, or in some cases, not paying a wage at all! There is also rampant discrimination: both gender and racial and especially immigrants are facing this. To fight this we need to organize to build power!”

This is a small part of the orientation we give. Some of the groups have been very quite- barely saying anything until it is time to sign up for the bartending classes, while others are very talkative and excited. A day session we had last week was an example of one of the talkative sessions. The people were very into it and excited. They would stop John to tell him about how they weren’t getting paid overtime or how they were injured on the job. At the end John said “We are an organization here to fight for justice” and a man in the back yelled “amen!” to which a women replied “hell yeah!” It was exciting for me to see how inspired people can get and what a difference this organization can make. It also showed me that ROC-Miami is filling a need in Miami- the need for restaurant workers to organize and to have a place they can go.