High-Stress Industry Fosters Increased Inequality

“Earlier this week, Batali announced that he is stepping away from his restaurant empire and taking leave from his cooking show after reports of sexual harassment over a 20-year period. Ken Friedman, founder of the Spotted Pig in New York, and John Besh, owner of the Besh Restaurant Group in New Orleans, are facing similar accusations.” – NPR, the Salt

For the many of us who have spent years serving food or shaking cocktails, the significant role that gender plays in shaping restaurant culture has never been a secret. Rather, the ways in which staff behave towards one another based on sex is as clear as day. NPR reports that not only are the issues of workplace inequality based on sex, but also on power.

Citing remarks from Chef Amy Brandwein, owner of Centrolina in Washington, D.C., (noted for its majority-female management team) the range of misbehaviour goes beyond sexual harassment due to the industry’s high-stress environment and physically demanding jobs which fosters a cut-throat situation that is “like being on a football team.”

Now is the time, let us speak up and support one another! As media exposure of these critical issues continues, we are on the precipice for enacting change socially and, I hope, politically!

Small Farmers Protest Trump’s Rollback by NPR

“An organization representing the interests of small farmers across rural America fired a legal salvo Thursday aimed at a Trump administration they feel has let them down. The lawsuit, filed by the Organization for Competitive Markets — a small-farmers think tank based in Lincoln, Neb. — and three farmer plaintiffs, did not shake the halls of Congress. Nor will it go viral on social media. But to the 40,000 contract poultry farmers, 900,000 cattle ranchers, and 70,000 hog farmers in America’s heartland whose interests it seeks to represent, the lawsuit represents the tip of an iceberg of financial and emotional despair. At issue is the Trump administration’s withdrawal of two Obama-era rules designed to protect small farmers, who say they are being exploited by the meatpacking companies they supply. The suit, filed on behalf of OCM by the Capitol Hill legal watchdog Democracy Forward, charges U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and his agency with “arbitrary and capricious” behavior in rolling back those two rules. One of them would have made it easier for individual farmers to sue for anti-competitive behavior.” – NPR, the salt