'Beyond Outrageous': Bombshell Report Uncovers Restaurant Lobby's Anti-Worker Scheme

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/restaurant-lobby-anti-worker-scheme

'Beyond Outrageous': Bombshell Report Uncovers Restaurant Lobby's Anti-Worker Scheme

A New York Times investigation found that the National Restaurant Association is using mandatory food safety classes to force workers to unwittingly fund lobbying against wage increases.

JAKE JOHNSON
Jan 18, 2023

Labor advocates voiced outrage Tuesday in response to a New York Times investigation detailing how the powerful National Restaurant Association uses mandatory food-safety courses—which workers often pay for out of their own pockets—to help finance its campaigns against wage increases.

The Times reported that the restaurant lobby and its affiliates have created "an arrangement with few parallels in Washington, where labor unwittingly helps to pay for management's lobbying."

They did so, according to the newspaper, by taking over a food-safety training business known as ServSafe and pressuring states to "mandate the kind of training they already provided—producing a flood of paying customers."

"The company they are paying, ServSafe, doubles as a fundraising arm of the National Restaurant Association—the largest lobbying group for the food-service industry, claiming to represent more than 500,000 restaurant businesses," the Times noted. "The association has spent decades fighting increases to the minimum wage at the federal and state levels, as well as the subminimum wage paid to tipped workers like waiters."

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