Nationally Acclaimed Speaker to Address Fair Wages in the Restaurant Industry

Nationally acclaimed author and activist Saru Jayaraman will give the talk “One Fair Wage: The Fight For a Fair Wage in the Restaurant Industry,” at Knox College on October 22 at 7 p.m. in the Round Room of the Ford Center for Fine Arts. The event is free and open to the public.

Jayaraman’s talk will explore inequality and poverty in the American restaurant industry, one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the American economy. Saru will detail the fight to bring fairer wages to the restaurant industry and why it matters to all American workers.

Jayaraman is the co-founder and president of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. ROC United has more than 30,000 worker members, 500 employer partners, and 23,000 consumer members in a dozen states nationwide.

Jayaraman is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was listed in CNN’s “Top 10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, and a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015.

Jayaraman is the author of Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press, 2013), a national bestseller, and Forked: A New Standard for American Dining (Oxford University Press, 2016). She has appeared on CNN with Soledad O’Brien, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, Melissa Harris Perry and UP with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the Today Show, and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

Jayaraman’s talk is sponsored by the Cultural Events Committee and the Department of Environmental Studies.