Diversityworking - We are the largest diversity job board online, career opportunity and news source resource and job search engine for the cultural diversity marketplace.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Restaurant Jobs Mostly Filled In By Minorities and Women, Yet Diversity Gap Still Exists


Minorities and women fill in a great number of restaurant jobs, according to findings by the National Restaurant Association, yet a diversity gap still exists especially in terms of pay, promotions and better opportunities.

Foodservice companies are responsible for hiring more minority managers than any other industry, National Restaurant Association research finds. In addition, women represent 55 percent of the industry’s workforce and more than one-fourth of all managers are foreign-born. See more here

However, there also exists a diversity gap in pay, as one report says. With almost 11 million employees, the restaurant industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the United States, but it is also one of the lowest paying—restaurant workers in general are three times as poor as the rest of the U.S. workforce. Within the industry, workers of color are even worse off. They are twice as likely to live in poverty than their white counterparts. This is because people of color are far more likely to be relegated to the lowest-wage and back-end jobs in casual restaurants, instead of fine-dining opportunities that pay better, according to a recent report from Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. Read more here
 
Here are some excerpts from the ROCU report:
A culture of favoritism, informality, and a lack of infrastructure to guide hiring, training, and promotion perpetuate workplace biases in all phases of restaurant employment, from when a worker first seeks entry into a workplace, to how he or she is treated while working, to the worker’s future in that workplace.
Workers of color in lower-level positions are oftentimes not able to obtain promotions to the living-wage jobs in the industry, regardless of whether they have qualifications, experience, and seniority in a particular workplace.
Lack of promotions for workers of color cannot be explained by a lack of qualifications.
A culture that tolerates discrimination results in a hostile work environment for workers of color and women.












No comments: