The Continuing War on Workers

Millions of restaurant workers have been forced without their knowledge to subsidize an organization that exists in part to keep their pay low, The New York Times reports.  On the surface, it seems that the workers are taking a kind of insultingly basic food safety course. But the company that dominates the market for such courses is owned by the National Restaurant Association (NRA), the industry group that has successfully kept the minimum wage for tipped workers set at $2.13 an hour since 1991.

The company in question is ServSafe, of which a competitor told the Times, “We believe they’ve got at least 70 percent-plus of the market. Maybe higher.” The NRA (the restaurant one) took over ServSafe in 2007, then lobbied several large states to make such trainings mandatory not just for restaurant managers but for all restaurant workers, creating a huge built-in market. So far, “More than 3.6 million workers have taken this training, providing about $25 million in revenue to the restaurant industry’s lobbying arm since 2010.” That’s more than enough to cover all of the NRA’s lobbying in that time. And the lobbying in question has included a lot of efforts to keep the minimum wage low.

The timing wasn’t coincidental on the acquisition of ServSafe: It happened soon after Congress raised the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour (where it remains stuck, thanks to industry lobby groups like the NRA), leaving the organization looking for ways to raise revenue without raising dues.  “That’s when the decision was contemplated, of buying the ServSafe program,” a former chair of the NRA’s board told the Times. “Because it was profitable.”