Piaget Ventus had been working in the New York restaurant industry for several years when her manager informed the staff one day, circa 2015, that they all needed to take a ServSafe course. The employees met at a sister restaurant, where they watched safety videos, took practice tests and had to pass a final exam to get certified. The course cost Ventus $15, for which she was reimbursed, but it consumed about three hours of her day, which she was expected to surrender without pay.
As a server, Ventus rarely had to handle food directly. There were runners for that. Nonetheless, she took the course at face value. She figured her managers just wanted to make sure everyone had a firm grasp of food safety basics. But after the New York Times reported this month that the ServSafe program also raises money for the National Restaurant Association, Ventus felt something akin to betrayal. The NRA — occasionally called “the other NRA” — is a multimillion-dollar trade association that lobbies for the restaurant industry, sometimes at the expense of workers when it comes to the tip credit, sick leave and raising the federal minimum wage.
“I wasn’t too upset about doing” the course at the time, Ventus told The Washington Post. “But now, knowing that it was done more so under the guise to keep minimum wage down, using our time and our money, it kind of feels like I’ve been duped.”
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