Opinion | The Welfare Condition of Restaurant Workers - The New York Times
Ms. Tse has worked on both the culinary and the business sides of restaurants in New York, Copenhagen and Hong Kong. I’ve seen a rise in diners’ questions about food — whether ingredients are local, seasonal, organic, grass-fed, free-range or regeneratively farmed. At a restaurant where I used to work, a guest once asked me how many grams of sugar the cow that became her Wagyu beef dish was fed per day. Diners don’t hesitate to ask about the welfare conditions of the pig that became their pork chop. But what about the welfare of the people sourcing, cooking and serving that pork chop? Guests generally don’t ask if the staff members get paid time off, sick leave or pay that’s above minimum wage. (Often they get none of the above.) Diners certainly aren’t asking about the number of people who cried in the walk-in fridge last week. Perhaps people are afraid of broaching impolite topics while dining out. Or maybe they just don’t know how — or what — to ask. The abuse that runs rampant in h