Co-Coordinator, Restaurant Opportunities Center United

Posted by on May 09, 2011

ROC-PHILADELPHIA CO-COORDINATOR JOB OPENING

Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC-U) is dedicated to winning improved conditions for restaurant workers nationwide. ROC-U was initiated by the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), which was created by restaurant workers displaced from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Over the last nine years, ROC-NY has won eight campaigns for restaurant workers against exploitative employers, winning over $5,000,000 in unpaid wages and discrimination payments for restaurant workers, as well as improvement in working conditions. We also completed New York City’s most comprehensive research report on the industry, entitled Behind the Kitchen Door: Pervasive Inequality in New York City’s Thriving Restaurant Industry¸ and developed innovative City legislation based on our findings. In January 2006 we opened North America’s largest cooperative restaurant, COLORS. With COLORS, we developed the highly successful New York City Restaurant Industry Roundtable, which organizes ‘high-road’ restaurant owners. With their collaboration, we created a 60-page Restaurant Owner Guide, explaining owners’ legal obligations to their workers. We were able to convince the Mayor’s Office to publish the manuals and the City to distribute them to every restaurateur in the City. The ROC model has now been replicated in Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, DC.

We are currently recruiting a local Coordinator to conduct surveys of restaurant workers, build restaurant worker leaders, launch workplace justice and policy campaigns, and help coordinate restaurant skills trainings for these workers.

RESPONSIBILITIES:
Under direct supervision of the ROC-United Co-Directors, this organizer will
1)    Coordinate participatory research, including survey outreach, to restaurant workers in Los Angeles
2)    Organize workers against injustice in restaurant workplaces
3)    Launch worker-led policy campaigns
4)    Help coordinate job skills trainings for restaurant workers.
5)    Develop a leadership board and membership of restaurant workers to guide the process.

QUALIFICATIONS:
–    Demonstrated leadership in organizing experience, and understanding of member leadership development
–    Demonstrated commitment to racial, social, and economic justice
–    Restaurant work experience a plus
–    Additional language skills a plus

COMPENSATION
Negotiable based on experience. Immigrants, women, and people of color encouraged to apply.

TO APPLY: Contact Fabricio Rodriguez at 215-703-8313 or at Fabricio@ROCUnited.org