I am so grateful for UUSC supporters like you who are dedicated to economic justice. At each stop on my national book tour for Behind the Kitchen Door, Unitarian Universalists have shown up and expressed their commitment to restaurant workers’ rights. Hundreds of UUSC supporters have bought the book, and many are organizing related activities in congregations around the country. Because of you, the book is a national bestseller, having made it to #1 on Powell’s online bookstore bestseller list and the top of several categories in Amazon.

Now let’s take our message to Congress! 

Step 1: Call your senators.

You can reach their offices by calling the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Talking points:

• Tell your senators' offices that you care about restaurant workers’ rights.
• Ask that your senators support the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would increase the federal minimum wage, including the base wage for millions of tipped workers.
• Explain that tipped workers are often paid as little as $2.13 per hour, a wage that hasn't been raised in more than 20 years!
• Optional: Mention that although the current law requires employers to make up the difference between the tipped minimum wage and the regular minimum wage if tips fail to cover the gap, the reality is that employers often don’t.

Step 2: Please take one moment more to let UUSC know that you called. When you tell us which senators you called and how their offices responded, we can further hone our strategy.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 (bill number S. 460) was introduced by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) in a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill last week. Now we need to show that there is a groundswell of support!

I know you can create a buzz. I’ve seen how UUSC supporters are already generating enthusiasm for restaurant workers’ rights in your congregations and communities — now let’s change the conversation in Congress!

Raising the minimum wage for millions of workers — including tipped workers — is the fair and right thing to do.

But this won’t be an easy win. And it won’t be quick. The National Restaurant Association is a powerful opponent, and they spend millions of dollars each year to keep the tipped minimum wage low. We’re going to need your support every step of the way — starting this very moment and continuing in the months ahead. 

Thanks to you and other UUSC supporters, the change we seek is possible!

Over the past month, we've asked you to help us make the release of Behind the Kitchen Door: What Every Diner Should Know About the People Who Feed Us a success — and UUs across the country answered the call!

What You Can Do to Support Restaurant Workers

• Buy the book! And tell us you bought it.
• Review the book on Amazon, where new audiences will be exposed to it. 
• Organize a book group with your friends.
• Speak up for restaurant workers' rights when you dine out by using the 2013 ROC National Diners' Guide to Ethical Eating.
• Order stickers to help send a message to restaurant managers. 
• Let policy makers know that you support a raise in the minimum wage that includes tipped workers. 

To recap: we're aiming to get this new book by our partner the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United on the bestseller lists. Why? To help build a movement to improve conditions for millions of restaurant workers who earn poverty wages and lack basic benefits like earned sick leave.

It has been an exciting couple weeks as we've worked with you to get the word out, generate a buzz on social media, and team up with our allies at Standing on the Side of Love to honor compassionate consumption.

We're well on our way to changing the national conversation about restaurant workers!

• Approximately 625 UUSC members (over 100 more than our goal!) told us that they purchased Behind the Kitchen Door — if you did and haven't told us yet, please do!
• Behind the Kitchen Door was the #1 bestseller on Powell's for the critical 10 days after its release.
• The book was ranked #1 on Amazon in three categories and was in the top 400 books sold on Amazon.
• ROC-United's cofounder and codirector Saru Jayaraman was interviewed on Moyers & Company, CNN's Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien, and MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes.

We want to thank the hundreds of UUSC members and supporters who have helped by buying the book; passing information to their friends, congregations, and social circles; sharing videos, infographics, and reviews on social media; and purchasing a copy for their local library or their congregation's lending library.  

Behind the Kitchen Door is a bestseller — and you helped make that happen! 

All of this was done to help bring restaurant workers' rights the national attention they deserve — and we are gaining momentum! A few more ways you and fellow UUs are helping to do this:

• The Unitarian Universalist Pennsylvania Legislative Advocacy Network (UUPLAN) is working with ROC-Philly to organize UUs, including mobilizing for earned sick days.
• The UU Church of Sarasota is coordinating community-wide Choose Compassionate Consumption activities linking national issues with local community partners.
• Unitarian Society of New Haven's Kid's Service Team are teaching youth about issues facing restaurant workers by creating a board game about how youth can use their consumer power as well as teach adults in their community. To celebrate their work, they will head to a restaurant using the ROC National Diners' Guide.
• First Parish in Plymouth is forming a study action group.
• In Michigan, Ethical and Mindful Eating groups from a number of congregations are coming together with ROC-Michigan to support their local campaigns.

I have also heard from many of you who are organizing book groups, making presentations, coordinating Justice Sunday services about labor rights in the food system, using UUSC's "Paying Customer, Paying Attention" stickers when you eat out, and much more.

We joined with ROC United on this campaign because we know that Behind the Kitchen Door is not just a book — it's an opportunity for Unitarian Universalists to change the national conversation about how to create a truly sustainable food system.

Together we are raising our voices to let policy makers know that we care about the people who feed us and that restaurant workers should be able to afford putting food on their own tables. In February, UUSC helped ROC-United make a big splash to highlight the deplorably low federal tipped minimum wage, which has been stuck at $2.13 per hour for more than 21 years. We participated in a restaurant-worker rally with earned-sick-leave proponent Rep. Rosa DeLauro, accompanied workers to visit their legislators on Capitol Hill, and witnessed the official announcement of the reintroduction of the WAGES Act (H.R. 650) by tipped-minimum-wage champion Rep. Donna Edwards. Stay tuned for legislative action you can take.

While this is only the beginning and it will take a concerted effort, we truly believe that we can win and make a real difference — to not only restaurant workers, but all minimum-wage earners. Thank you to all of you who are joining the movement!

Take Action for Restaurant Workers

1. Change the national conversation by making Behind the Kitchen Door a bestseller — buy the book.
2. Tell us that you ordered it.

A friend of mine from high school worked as a waitress in a pub-style restaurant for years. Once she was in an accident outside of work that left her severely burned. Though her hands were wrapped in so much gauze that only the tips of her index fingers and thumbs were visible and usable, she had to go back to work after a week, because she had no paid sick days and couldn't afford to miss more work or risk losing her job. So she served food and poured beers with bandaged hands as they slowly healed. Her boss said nothing.

After reading Behind the Kitchen Door, by Saru Jayaraman, I realized that stories like my friend's aren't a crazy exception; they're really just the tip of the iceberg. Most importantly, I learned what we — people who love to eat out — can do about it.

In Behind the Kitchen Door, Jayaraman highlights the plethora of injustices that the restaurant industry perpetuates day in and day out. And she is in a position to know: as cofounder and codirector of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United), a UUSC partner, she has worked with restaurant workers for more than 10 years. She outlines the major industry offenses:

• No paid sick days
  And this in an industry where we should especially want the people cooking our food and serving us to be healthy!
• A ridiculously low tipped minimum wage of $2.13 an hour
  See why I always tip 20 percent minimum? Because otherwise servers might not be able to feed themselves.
• Racial discrimination
  Stats prove there's often a racial disparity between front-of-house workers and workers behind the kitchen door. People of color are being denied opportunities for advancement.
• Gender inequality
  Women face a particular set of challenges in the industry, from a pay gap that benefits male servers over female servers to rampant sexual harassment.

Jayaraman also explores the popular interest in sustainable food — and how much it is at odds with the labor practices of a restaurant industry that is trying to cash in on that interest. She writes: "Food can't really be healthy, ethically consumed, or sustainable if it's prepared and served in an environment that permits abuse, exploitations, and discrimination. It's definitely not sustainable to eat food served by workers who cannot afford to feed their families and face the added burden of having their wages and tips stolen. Sustainable food, by definition, must include sustainable labor practices."

Behind the Kitchen Door offers lots of shocking statistics culled from years of on-the-ground research by ROC-United. But most movingly, Jayaraman introduces you to the people behind the statistics. Claudia, a server who had to flirt with cooks for food, since she couldn't otherwise afford to eat on her meager pay. Oscar, a superb busser denied the chance to become a waiter because he wasn't white. Alicia, a former pastry chef and woman of color who quickly hit the industry's glass ceiling and both endured and witnessed blatant sexual harassment by an abusive executive chef.

As I read their stories, I thought of another friend of mine who worked at a café where she had to repeatedly worry about whether her paycheck would bounce. Even if your restaurant is unsuccessful, you have a responsibility to pay people for their work in a timely manner (or face the legal consequences, which in Massachusetts include paying triple the original amount). When the owner suggested he pay people under the table (at a lower rate than before, claiming that it was essentially the same since taxes wouldn't get deducted), my friend got in trouble for bringing up state labor and wage laws.

Reading the book's stories of struggle can be intense — but the book provides the antidote, too: Workers who win significant victories. "High-road" employers who run successful businesses while respecting their workers. Nikki and Woong, who organized creative "Carrot Mob" events to show support for high-road restaurants and won paid sick leave for more than 500 workers.

And then there's the best part: chapter 7, "Recipes for Change," in which Jayaraman gives us road map to use our consumer power for good. She lays out concrete actions we can take to help make the restaurant industry truly sustainable.

Here's how you can start:

1. Buy Behind the Kitchen Door. You can help put it on the bestseller lists and change the national conversation about this issue.
2. Tell us that you ordered the book. If you're one of the first 100 people, you'll get a gift packet from UUSC.

This book is essential reading for all people who care about workers' rights and their own health and enjoyment while dining out, and I look forward to hearing what you think about it. And I'm even more excited to see the changes that I know we can help make in the restaurant industry.

The following blog post was written by Rev. John Gibb Millspaugh, editor of the forthcoming anthology The Joy of Just Eating: Food for Personal, Public, and Planetary Well-Being.

Do you eat? If so, this blog post is for you!

Unitarian Universalists have always united behind our responsibility to build a more decent society. In 2011 and 2012, Unitarian Universalists chose to make one aspect of that responsibility — our role in the food chain — explicit. Representatives of our congregations at General Assembly adopted a national “Statement of Conscience” called “Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice,” and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) launched its Choose Compassionate Consumption campaign.

Why food and why now? We are beginning to understand that when it comes to food, our society is speeding along various tracks, each heading toward a different future. Some of those futures further degrade people who are already carrying more than their share of social burdens, multiply the suffering of animals that are already living in misery, and further exploit natural resources that are already destabilized. Other futures build the world we dream about, where rights are respected and creation is honored.

In 2013, UUSC is teaming up with UUs across the country who are committed to ethical eating and to promoting the human rights of workers in the food system. Join us.

Remember how Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (made into the movie Food, Inc.) created a sea change of public interest in healthier eating? You can do that for the human rights of workers throughout the food chain with Behind the Kitchen Door: What Every Diner Should Know About the People Who Feed Us, a new book written by Saru Jayaraman. In it, Jayaraman shows us that food sustainability depends not only on the sourcing of the ingredients, but also on how workers are treated!

Behind the Kitchen Door is not just a book — it’s an opportunity for Unitarian Universalists to change the national conversation about how to create a truly sustainable food system.

Our immediate goal: get the book on the bestseller lists.

Our bigger goal: bring restaurant workers’ rights the national attention they deserve.

Will you commit to buying Behind the Kitchen Door in the critical first two weeks of its release, so we can make sure that millions of Americans read this book and join the conversation? Sign up right now to buy the book between February 11 and February 23, and please invite others as well. Together we can put it on the New York Times bestseller list! We’ll send you a reminder in February, along with information about how to buy the book.

This book will put an essential issue of economic justice on the map — but only with your help. Uniting for this cause is a golden opportunity not only for our faith, but also for the values we hold most dear. Will you take this one simple act to help build the world we dream about?

One more reason to participate: all proceeds from the book support the work of a UUSC partner organization to advance restaurant workers’ rights! Sign up today to help put Behind the Kitchen Door on the bestseller list.

Behind the Kitchen Door is not just a book — it is the key to reaching a broad audience and changing the national conversation about how to create a truly sustainable food system.

There's a book I really want you to read, only here's the catch: it's not in bookstores yet. So why am I telling you? Because this book will put an essential issue of economic justice on the map — but only with your help. Our immediate goal: get it on the bestseller lists. Our bigger goal: change the national conversation about the rights of restaurant workers.

Raising wages for millions of restaurant workers

For the past three years, UUSC has been working our partner the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United) to raise the federal tipped minimum wage. It's been frozen at a mere $2.13 per hour since 1991, leaving millions of workers — mostly women — in poverty and unable to feed their own families. We've advocated for legislation (the WAGES Act and the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2012), but none of it has made it into law yet. We expect a similar bill to be reintroduced in 2013, and we need to show policymakers that there is widespread popular support for raising this minimum wage.

We have a plan to achieve this! It starts with you — and it continues with everyone you know. We believe that there are millions of people who eat out at restaurants and who care about how the people who make their meals possible are treated. To reach those millions, ROC-United's codirector and cofounder Saru Jayaraman has written a book, Behind the Kitchen Door: What Every Diner Should Know About the People Who Feed Us, that provides an inside look into the personal experiences of restaurant workers around the country.

Here's what Danny Glover, actor, producer, and cofounder of Louverture Films, has said about the book:

"With Behind the Kitchen Door, Saru Jayaraman has introduced a fresh and essential perspective on our culture's food obsessions and dining habits. By highlighting the lives and circumstances of workers who are often unseen and unheard, she has helped us see that labor is a key ingredient of authentic sustainability, and greatly enriched our understanding of those people who have — whether we have recognized it or not — been part of some of the most important celebrations of our lives."

Putting the "W" in SLOW

Behind the Kitchen Door is not just a book — it is the key to reaching a broad audience and a unique opportunity for Unitarian Universalists and other UUSC and ROC-United supporters to change the national conversation about how to create a truly sustainable food system. Since Unitarian Universalists are often at the leading edge of emerging justice issues, more than 400 congregations across the country have been involved in the Ethical Eating Congregational Study Action Issue, and in 2011 the UU General Assembly approved "Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice" as a statement of conscience.

Building on that foundation, UUSC believes that UUs can continue to be at the forefront of this national movement to improve the restaurant industry. Just as diners changed the restaurant industry by asking for sustainable, locally sourced, and organic (SLO) options, we can shift restaurant practices from the bottom up by requesting respect for workers' rights in every dining establishment — putting the "W" in SLOW.

How you can help

We hope that you will help take the lead in sharing the book's message and that we can work together to help Behind the Kitchen Door make it onto the New York Times bestsellers list, thereby garnering vital national attention for restaurant workers and their call for better conditions.

We will be counting on you to buy Behind the Kitchen Door in the critical first two weeks of its release — February 11-23, 2013 — to get it on the bestseller lists, so we can make sure that millions of Americans read this book and join the conversation. UUSC will provide links to Powell's Books and other vendors where you will be able to purchase the book. We will also offer a discussion guide and other materials to help you take action in your own community. Let's make this a major turning point for the more than 10 million workers who chop, cook, and serve our food!

Claiming that the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. "Obamacare," will cost them millions, Papa John's, Olive Garden, and other restaurant chains are announcing that they will begin instituting higher menu prices and huge cuts to employees' hours. One Denny's franchise owner suggested that if customers were upset about paying the surcharge, they could choose to reduce tips to their servers to offset the increase. Meanwhile, some corporate executives are matter-of-factly admitting that to avoid passing the cost onto consumers they will simply evade the obligation to insure their workers by shifting to a part-time workforce. While it is appalling that restaurant employers are pronouncing their intention to ensure that workers don't receive basic benefits, this practice is hardly new.

The restaurant industry has maintained this status quo — in which more than 90 percent of restaurant workers don't have health insurance or paid sick days — by intervening to defeat the passage of paid-sick-day laws. But that's not all. They've also lobbied Congress for decades — yes, more than 20 years — to keep the federal tipped minimum wage at just $2.13 per hour. (And despite laws saying that employers have to make up the difference to reach regular minimum wage when tips fall short, the hard reality is that many employers ignore the law.) The industry is determined to be exempted from any policy aimed at providing fair wages and benefits to its workers.

UUSC partners with the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United) to ensure the opposite. As part of our Choose Compassionate Consumption initiative, we're working to make sure that restaurant workers receive what every worker deserves: a living wage, access to standard benefits like paid sick days and health insurance, and a chance to advance. And we need you to join us! We've got a bunch of opportunities to get involved coming up as we help get the word out about Behind the Kitchen Door, a book by ROC-United cofounder Saru Jayaraman that explores these issues.

Besides being the right and moral thing to do, standing up for the rights of restaurant workers is in our best interests as consumers — who wants to go out to dinner to celebrate and be served a side of germs because the waiter or the chef is working while sick?

Many years ago when my son was still in elementary school, I worked as a server in a restaurant. Actually, to make ends meet as a single parent, I held down part-time jobs waitressing and bartending at three locations totaling about 70 hours a week. I survived on tips and was lucky most of the time. But my former roommate still jokes about those days, when she watched me literally counting change to make my share of the rent.

Today I am on staff at UUSC, a human-rights organization that has always been important to me as a longtime Unitarian Universalist. Working with UUSC's volunteer network, we help Unitarian Universalists raise awareness of and support for UUSC's efforts to protect workers and advocate for living wages. One of the benefits of working at UUSC is that I meet some of the dynamic people who work at other human-rights partner organizations.

I was particularly excited about a recent visit to our offices by Saru Jayaraman of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. So I got out a video camera to record some of her visit to UUSC! I hope you will take just a few minutes to check out what she has to say.

Political lobbying groups have actually frozen the national tipped minimum wage for over two decades. My son, an adult and college graduate, now works as a server in Washington State. There, the state law requires that tipped workers are paid the same as the state's regular minimum wage, $9.04 per hour. But tipped workers in many other states are not so lucky. The laws vary from state to state, tips fluctuate, and not all restaurant employers follow the laws. As a result, many workers end up only getting paid the federal minimum wage for tipped workers, which is still $2.13 per hour.

It is a cruel irony for me that the national tipped minimum wage — $2.13 per hour — is exactly the same as when I did this work at his age! As a parent, I naturally want safety and security for my hardworking son. As a UU, I am appalled that the federal tipped minimum wage — which was insufficient for restaurant workers 20 years ago — has actually spanned generations and is still frozen in time, creating dire situations for so many people.

You and I have opportunities to change that for the future. The first step is to raise awareness of how the big players in the restaurant industry, including the National Restaurant Association and the Darden restaurant group, are using their political muscle to freeze the minimum wage for tipped workers. Please watch the short video above and share it today.

Like thousands of activists around the country who are protesting the ever-mounting gap between the extremely rich and those of us who are the 99 percent, UUSC's economic-justice partner based in Springdale, Ark., is supporting the Occupy Northwest Arkansas movement. Meanwhile, rooted in its core mission to organize and advocate for workers to obtain a safe workplace and a fair wage, worker members of the Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center (NWAWJC) continue to deal with day-to-day, firsthand experiences of wage theft, otherwise known as "the crime wave no one talks about."

NWAWJC has been a leader in bringing public attention to the enormity of the nationwide wage-theft issue, and I was especially pleased to see that their latest public activism caught the attention of radio and television outlets in Fayetteville, Ark.

The media coverage included a major feature story on KUAF-FM, the National Public Radio station in Fayetteville. You can listen to the nine-minute segment, "Restaurant Involved in Wage Theft Picketed," which aired as the lead in the daily Ozarks at Large program on Friday, November 18, 2011.

Click play button to listen or download the MP3 file.

The forum and rally also was featured in a two-minute video segment on KNWA-TV, a Fox Network affiliate, also based in Fayetteville.   

The news stories focused on events organized by the workers' justice center in Fayetteville. The forum spotlighted and urged support for an anti-wage theft bill pending in the Arkansas state legislature. The forum was followed by picketing in front of Celi's Restaurant on Center Street in Fayetteville for allegedly withholding wages from a former employee.  

"Wage theft takes a toll in our communities as wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year," said Fernando Garcia, the center's campaign director. "Wage theft too often forces workers to make tough decisions between feeding their families and providing them shelter. Workers should not have to go through these difficult times because some greedy employer decides to not pay wages."

Ana Aguayo, the center's communications director, pointed out that unscrupulous employers often use threats and other pressures to dissuade workers, many of whom are recent immigrants and do not speak English, from reporting wage-theft abuses.

"Wage theft includes violations of minimum-wage laws, not paying time-and-a-half overtime pay, forcing workers to work off the clock, workers not receiving their final paychecks, and stealing tips," said Aguayo. "Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal 19 billion dollars in unpaid overtime. The scope of these abuses is staggering."

Last year, at the urging of NWAWJC, the mayor of Fayetteville issued a proclamation condemning wage theft as an illegal practice that causes irreparable harm to low-income workers and ethical businesses. Fayetteville was the first city in the United States to issue such a public pronouncement and to promise strong action to combat wage theft.

Legislative advocacy is one of the most important tools in the struggle for human rights and social justice. At UUSC, we rely on our members to speak up for the values that we want our government policies to reflect and against repressive policies. At General Assembly this year, members of our Volunteer Network helped us get the word out about legislative actions that need our attention. Right now we are working on the following actions:

Promoting the human right to water
UUSC is proud to be partnering with the UU Legislative Ministry of California (UULMCA) to support the California human-right-to-water bill package! If you live in California, visit the UULMCA website to learn more about how you can get involved.

If you don't live in California, you can support the Water for the Poor Act in Congress and make sure that the most needy communities have equitable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Exposing the truth about U.S.-sponsored torture
UUSC has joined with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) to call upon President Barack Obama to appoint an independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate the history of U.S.-sponsored torture.

Asking Congress to support fair wages and working families
It is time to make sure all of the nation's largest workforce — tipped workers — are paid fair wages for their hard work. Although the last raise in the federal minimum wage was in 2009, the minimum wage for tipped workers has remained the same for the last 20 years! We are asking members of Congress to cosponsor the Working for Adequate Gains for Employment in Services (WAGES) Act.

Urging the Senate to support women's rights throughout the world
We are working to urge the U.S. Senate to bring the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to a vote. The United States is one of only seven countries — including Iran, Somalia, Sudan, and three Pacific island nations — that have not ratified the convention. It's time to ratify CEDAW now!

As you may have heard by now, a new Census report was released announcing that 3.8 million more people officially live in poverty now in America than in 2008, an increase that brings the total number up to 43.6 million — or 1 in 7 people.

A 14.3 percent poverty rate wasn't the only distressing part of the report, though. Besides a record number of people without health insurance and stalled median household incomes, what's worrying is what the statistics aren't telling us.

The U.S. government considers an annual income of $21,756 to be the poverty line — for a family of four! A wage that puts you just over the poverty line is not a real living wage. There are thousands of people living above the poverty line who are struggling just to make ends barely meet — and they are nowhere to be found in these statistics.

That's why advancing the living-wage movement is one of UUSC's priorities. The minimum wage should cover a family's basic needs — something that the current rate of $7.25 per hour doesn't come close to achieving. By partnering with Let Justice Roll — especially on efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 and to raise the wages of tipped workers, in addition to other local and state campaigns — UUSC is supporting people organizing for a more just minimum wage across the United States.

As Let Justice Roll puts it, "A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it." And that goes for what many consider to be poverty — not just what the government statistics tell us poverty is.