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NRI attorney bats for NY restaurant workers
An NRI has helped turn a non-profit coalition of workers into a pressure group seeking improved conditions for them.
An Indian American attorney has helped turn a non-profit coalition of workers into a pressure group seeking improved conditions for restaurant workers here.
Saru Jayaraman, 29, executive director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), and Morocco-born waiter-founder Mamdouh Fekkah have made two Manhattan restaurants - Cité and the Park Avenue Café - pay $164,000 to 23 workers to settle lawsuits for alleged discrimination and failure to pay overtime.
ROC-NY was formed in April 2002. Jayaraman got a call from Fekkah, who worked at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center. Fekkah and other workers who lost their jobs asked Jayaraman if she would start an organization to promote their cause.
"Initially I was hesitant. When I met the workers I was enamoured and I wanted to work for them," Jayaraman told IANS.
The workers hailed from about 30 countries, including India and Bangladesh.
ROC-NY today has become a known advocacy group for restaurant workers in the city. Jayaraman claims that the organization has won six lawsuits, amounting to $300,000. For her the first victory felt great. "Windows owner tried to open another restaurant...he didn't want to hire former employees because he thought they would form a union. We protested and to avoid bad publicity he took them in,'' she said.
Jayaraman said that research has shown that workers were often subjected to derogatory remarks. ''In the case of Muslims, they were told to 'go back to Iraq.' Some of them were told that you are too fat...or you are too dark to be a waiter.'' She herself often leads the protest march. Her stint as a singer with the gospel choir at Harvard University has worked well for her.
ROC-NY's efforts have led workers to start a restaurant that will be owned and managed by them. Called Colors, the restaurant will open this fall on Lafayette Street near Astor Place.
Jayaraman grew up in a Mexican-American neighborhood in southeast Los Angeles. Her parents, software consultant father and a school teacher mother, immigrated from south India in 1974. The school she went to had students whose parents were janitors, domestic workers, etc. ''I am glad my parents put me in that school. I was exposed to a lot and made me what I am today.''
