The Nation’s Worst Restaurant Chains to Work For

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/manthatcooks/52414321/sizes/m/in/photostream/">manthatcooks</a>/Flickr

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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.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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