<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/manthatcooks/52414321/sizes/m/in/photostream/">manthatcooks</a>/Flickr
Last December, a group called Restaurant Opportunities Centers United came out with a new kind of restaurant guide—one that ranks eateries not on the deliciousness of their food, but the way they treat their workers. It was about damned time, because restaurant employees form a vast part of our nation’s workforce, and they largely get treated like dirt. We welcomed it here at Mother Jones—Jaeah Lee mashed up its findings with quality rankings from Zagat and Yelp, and I weighed in with anecdotes from my own youthful stint as a line cook.
Now the ROC guide is back, updated, and freshly heralded by Mark Bittman. (Hat tip, Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan.) For a broader look at conditions face by the workers who feed us—the people who work in restaurants, farms, slaughterhouses, supermarkets, etc—see this post from Mother Jones‘ Maddie Oatman on an important new study.
