By my count, this marks the fourth time in the past half-century that labor’s efforts to strengthen workers’ ability to organize have been deferred by the Democratic presidents and the heavily Democratic Congresses they supported.

In 1965, about the only piece of Great Society legislation not enacted was the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act provision that gave states the power to block unions from claiming as members all the employees in workplaces where they had won contracts. In 1979, as American management was beginning to invest heavily in union-busting endeavors, the first effort to reform labor law failed to win cloture in the Senate by one vote as President Jimmy Carter stood idly by. In 1994, President Bill Clinton responded to a similar labor-backed effort by appointing a commission to recommend changes in labor law to the next Congress — which turned out to be run by Newt Gingrich.

And last year, by asking his labor supporters to wait, Obama ensured — unintentionally, of course — that the next effort to revive organizing must wait until the next overwhelmingly Democratic Congress.

With friends like these …

“Behind the Kitchen Door,” published by the Chicago Restaurant Industry Coalition, is an in-depth look at the labor practices of an industry known for wage and hour abuses. The coalition interviewed 31 owners and managers for the report and found that 17 of them “reported a policy of keeping wages low and overtime pay to a minimum,” even while paying lip service to better treatment of their workers. 

“While there are surely some ‘bad’ employers who operate only for their own profit, at the expense of their workers, what appears to be more common is that employers espouse supportive workplace policies in theory, but do not implement them in practice,” says the report. “This disconnect can be largely attributed to lack of good management, absence of industry incentives rewarding good employment practices in the industry, and ineffective employment law enforcement mechanisms.”

In other words: no carrots and no sticks. Guess it’s not schizophrenia after all.

The quotes really say it all. Said one manager of a family-style restaurant who has 10 years in the business:  

There are so many people that are actually doing (violating the law) that there is not really much (you can do). I mean, you can say that we can make it illegal blah blah blah, but it’s really hard to enforce. Most people won’t even say that they are getting paid below minimum wage.

Or my favorite, also from a manager of 10 years:

What is our overtime policy? Uh, there really isn’t one. There is no extra pay for overtime.

Uh, that’s illegal. But I digress.

Owners and managers pointed to barriers they face to paying their workers better wages. The recession has hurt their industry, they said, although almost all of them said their particular establishment was muddling through. They also said they’ve been hurt by the need cater to customers’ new food sustainability fetish. Benefits are completely out of the question; it’s too expensive to provide health care. The irony is the same employers cited high turnover as an obstacle to profitability.

The report notes that “when asked it if was possible to pay a living wage and still make a profit, many employers felt it was difficult, but not impossible. Commitment to doing so and an acknowledgement that it was a non-negotiable overhead determined whether or not better wages would be paid.”

For more on the restaurant industry report, check out coverage from Adam Doster at Progress Illinois and Kari Lydersen at Working in These Times.

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More than 80 percent of the cooks, servers, hosts, busboys and bartenders in the Chicago metropolitan area make less than $10 an hour, according to a new report on the restaurant industry released today.

In case you’re wondering, the report pegs a living wage — pay that allows a worker to support him- or herself and a family without government assistance — at $16.48 an hour. 

“Behind the Kitchen Door” was compiled by the Chicagoland Restaurant Industry Coalition, a group of academics, workers rights advocates, unions, and restaurant owners and employees. The findings are based on 582 worker surveys, plus interviews with restaurant workers and employers in Cook County, conducted between Sept. 2008 and May 2009.

There are approximately 9,500 eating and drinking establishments in Cook County, for a total of more than 171,000 jobs. That’s 6.8 percent of the jobs in the county. 

But as the table shows, just because you have a job doesn’t mean you’re above the poverty line.  

The people filling these jobs are a diverse mix: 36 percent Latino, 38 percent white and 18 percent black. Just under two-thirds were born in the United States. Approximately 66 percent speak English well; about 8 percent do not speak it at all.

The report found that most of the non-white workers toiled in the “back of the house,” where they were paid less and less likely to advance. Moreover, they also worked longer hours and faced greater on-the-job health and safety hazards.  

Tomorrow we’re going to look at some of the report’s most interesting findings, those related to the owners and managers of the city’s restaurants. They say they want to pay higher wages. They just don’t.

Raises and bonuses? Nobody owes you one, Jack. No matter how long you’ve worked, or how well, or if you worked Christmas, or the weekends or nights. The law requires employers to pay minimum wage, and to pay overtime, and that’s it. Raises and bonuses are agreed to by the employer and the employee.

Severance? Nobody owes you that either. You get what you can negotiate with your boss.

The exception is a union contract. A union contract is a legally binding document that specifies wages, benefits and working conditions. The union negotiates it, and it applies to all the workers in the union.

The information in this post was pulled from the “Workers’ Rights Manual” published by Arise Chicago.

Jorge Ramirez, courtesy of Chicago Federation of Labor

The Chicago Federation of Labor’s No. 2 man has the nod from his boss, who announced today he won’t seek to head the organization for a third term.

Secretary-Treasurer Jorge Ramirez is outgoing president Dennis Gannon’s choice to succeed him. According to a story in today’s Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago’s most powerful labor leader is calling it quits.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon — who went toe-to-toe with Mayor Daley in the fight against Wal-Mart — has decided not to seek re-election to another four-year term. …

“I’m just drained,” Gannon said. … ”I’m just tired. Between the politics and the labor stuff and trying to keep people together and making sure labor’s issues are front and center — it’s just time for somebody else to take the reins.”

Nick Kaleba, the federation’s spokesman, said Gannon was a little surprised by the Sun-Times’ headline, since he won’t leave office until June.

“He said, ‘Quits? I’m not quitting,’” Kaleba says.

The federation represents more than 300 unions, or about a half million workers. Ramirez has served in the No. 2 post since 2006. Before that he was executive director of United Food and Commerical Workers Local 1546.

“He knows the union business,” Kaleba says. ”He knows politics.”

Three weeks ago workers from the Andersonville restaurant Ole Ole protested outside the establishment, alleging the owner owed them more than $100,000 in unpaid wages. They wanted an amicable settlement, said Veronica Avila, coordinator for the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Chicago, which is assisting the workers. But they were willing to consider other options.

Today, the workers sued. 

Juvenal Mendoza, Victor Vega and Victor Hugo Jeronimo filed the class-action lawsuit in federal court. The suit says that Regina Pavone, Ole Ole’s owner, committed a host of labor violations. Workers didn’t make the minimum wage, they weren’t paid for all the hours they worked and they didn’t receive overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a week.

Pavone declined to comment.

The lawsuit says that during the course of Vega’s and Jeronimo’s employment, Pavone “would fail to issue any paychecks at all for individual work weeks.” Other times the checks would be “drawn from accounts with insufficient funds.” Sometimes, when customers paid for their meals with credit cards, the server never received his tip.

Workers and their supporters will be protesting at 6 p.m. tonight outside the shuttered restaurant at 5413 N. Clark St.

For example, this month, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, if you’re a tile setter employed on a federal public works project, you get $38.63 an hour. Carpenters make $40.77. A marble mason gets $49.03.

God. I should really learn how to work marble.

Employers are required to post prevailing wage rates at work sites, so employees can know if they’re being screwed. Violations of prevailing wage laws include the following:

• Misclassifying employees in order to pay them a lower wage. (For example, an employer might designate a worker as an “electric power groundman” because groundmen make less than linemen.
• Making employees work on a private work project at a lower wage while they also work on a public works project at the prevailing wage in order to lower the overall cost of labor.

And in Illinois it’s not just skilled workers who are entitled to prevailing wages. The Illinois Procurement Code says that service workers employed as part of a state contract get them too. That includes janitors, window cleaners, food service workers and security guards.

As always, this information comes from the “Workers’ Rights Manual” published by Arise Chicago.

My business cards say “freelance journalist,” but in the eyes of the IRS, I’m an independent contractor. Independent contractors, unlike employees, have the right to control how they work. The employer directs the outcome of the work, but not how it is performed. If an editor assigns me a story due on Feb. 19, I can spend the next six weeks camped on my couch watching “House” reruns, provided I furnish an accurate, readable story on the designated date. That’s because independent contractors sell their skills. Employees, by contrast, sell their time.

But employment law generally protects the rights of employees, not independent contractors, according to the “Workers’ Rights Manual” published by Arise Chicago. This leads to situations where employers improperly classify workers as contractors rather than employees to avoid paying taxes, workers compensation and other benefits.

Basically, this is how it breaks down.

Employees:

• Usually paid by the hour.
• Job does not require a particular skill.
• Employer provides tools and equipment.
• Employer sets the worker’s hours.
• Payroll taxes, i.e. Medicare, Social Security and income taxes, are withheld from a worker’s paycheck.

Independent contractors:

• Usually paid by the job or by commission.
• Job requires a particular skill or level of craftsmanship.
• Worker provides own tools and equipment.
• Worker sets own hours. (This is my particular favorite. And yes, I am typing this in my pajamas.)
• Taxes are not withheld from the worker’s paycheck, or the worker is paid in cash.

In Illinois, construction workers have slightly more protection against misclassification than other kinds of workers, thanks to the Employee Classification Act. Construction workers are most likely employees unless they decide what work to do and how to do it; the contractor who hired them is unskilled; or the worker has his own business apart from the person contracting him. The Illinois law also requires these rules be posted at the construction company’s office in English, Spanish and Polish, and at each work site.

The first time it happened, Vega, a cook for more than three years at the Andersonville restaurant Ole Ole, said the owner, Regina Pavone, told him the restaurant was going through some difficulties, but to just stick with it and it would be worth it. He said she told him Ole Ole was a family.

Well, every family has its feud. Vega and four other workers from the restaurant say they never got their money. They charge that Ole Ole owes them more than $125,000 in unpaid wages; Vega says his portion exceeds $40,000. Thursday night they were in front of the restaurant with placards. Vega’s read: “Pagame!”

But records from U.S. Bankruptcy Court show that Pavone filed Chapter 11 in August. The case was dismissed Jan. 6 and Pavone ordered to pay $1,950 to creditors.

Pavone could not be reached for comment Thursday night.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center of Chicago is assisting the workers in their fight. Wage and hour violations occur with depressing regularity in the restaurant industry, an outgrowth of the perception that coffee shops and diners are staffed by college kids who will move on to other careers, says center coordinator Veronica Avila. But the reality is that for most restaurant workers, cooking or serving is a career, not a job.

Avila says the workers would prefer to settle the dispute amicably, but should that fail, they are considering a lawsuit.

It was chilly, and after about 20 minutes, the protesters disbanded. But not before they sang the Ole Ole Song. With a twist.

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The workers charge that the restaurant owes them for minimum wage violations, for unpaid overtime and for improper deductions from their paychecks. It’s not like this is the first time they’ve brought this up. They planned to protest outside the prominent Clark Street location in December, but that demonstration was averted at the last minute when the owner agreed to negotiations. When the negotiations never happened, they protested on Jan. 6. Tonight, at 7 p.m., they’ll be back outside the restaurant. At least this time it won’t be as cold.

More coverage to come.