The Restaurant Opportunities Center is a labor union front group disguised as a restaurant industry employment center and watchdog. ROC regularly issues factually flawed reports, files ridiculous lawsuits, and leads protests that harm many of the restaurant employees they claim to represent, all in an effort to attack and harass non-unionized restaurants. ROC’s tactics have been compared to mob-style shakedowns, often employing intimidation and outright extortion in an effort to force restaurants into submission.
Consider just a few facts:
- ROC is currently under investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives for its “history of intimidation towards opponents and management problems.”;
- ROC was sued by its own members for, among other things: expelling members who voiced views that “differed from those of the leadership and staff of ROC-NY,” “engaging in a campaign of intimidation and expulsion of members,” and “intentionally failing to pay plaintiffs a minimum wage”;
- ROC’s harassment of restaurants led a judge to issue a restraining order against ROC;
- A ROC-run restaurant has been cited for serious health and sanitation violations, citing evidence of “mice or live mice present in the facility’s food and/or non-food areas,” and;
- Despite ROCs attempts to distance itself from labor unions, ROC’s hidden agenda is clear: it seeks to skirt U.S. labor laws in its quest to unionize the restaurant industry.
Given ROC’s checkered past, its hidden agendas, and its illegitimate or even illegal tactics that can harm the very same employees it claims to protect, ROC has no credibility to speak on behalf of restaurant industry employees.
