People, Profiles

Bittman talks to Saru Jayaraman about restaurant workers’ rights

By Public Affairs

The fight for a $15 wage for restaurant workers is a hot topic, but that hasn’t always been true. A sparkplug of the movement is Saru Jayaraman, who is director of UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center.

In the fourth episode of his online video series “California Matters,” UC Berkeley journalist-in-residence Mark Bittman interviews Jayaraman about her work for restaurant workers’ rights both nationally and at Berkeley.

Bittman, a New York Times food and opinion columnist, has teamed with the University of California’s Global Food Initiative for the food-focused series, which is covering wild edibles lining Bay Area streets, the role of pollinators in crop production, the effects of pesticide exposure on mothers and children in the agricultural Salinas Valley and other dimensions of sustainable food.

In the upcoming academic year, Bittman will be teaching the popular Edible Education course during the spring semester, as well as an opinion-writing course in the Graduate School of Journalism. He will also be co-leading an online effort to put the Edible Education course online.

The “California Matters” videos are appearing on the New York Times website as well as on UC’s.

More about Saru Jayaraman can be found on the Labor Center website.

Read more about the Global Food Initiative.