Restaurant Chains Cut Estimates for Health-Law Costs

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Arkansas Restaurant Cancels LGBT Center’s Fundraiser, Just Like It Would For The KKK

The River Valley Equality Center is a support group for LGBT people and their allies in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Recently, the organization scheduled a fundraiser at the Sisters Gourmet Bistro, but now the restaurant has canceled the event because owner Richard Hodo opposes the group’s support of LGBT equality, just like he opposes the KKK’s white supremacy:

HODO: I called them and told them that I — we’re not going to have that at Sisters, we had no plans for that and there were no reservations to hold any kind of fundraiser or anything like that. I told them that I do not support their cause, that if they want to do that that’s their business. I do not care, but I don’t support their lifestyle and their cause.

What I told the lady on the on the phone, look I said if the KKK came here and wanted to hold a fundraiser rally and all that, I wouldn’t allow that either. This is a private club and I have the right to refuse service to anyone.

It’s unclear how Hodo was able to cancel the event if there was supposedly no reservation to cancel. To raise awareness about his discrimination and offensive comparison to the KKK, the group will hold a demonstration on the street corner by his restaurant later this month. The River Valley Equality Center formed just last year and is trying to raise enough money to obtain non-profit status. (TP: Queerty.)

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California Restaurant Owners Pocketed The Money Intended To Fund Their Employees’ Health Care

Over 50 San Francisco-based restaurant owners are under fire for prioritizing their own profits over their workers’ health care coverage. A city-wide investigation revealed that, after the restaurant industry collected a total of $14 million in worker health care surcharges in 2011, just a third of that money actually went toward providing low-wage workers with insurance.

Under a city-wide requirement, businesses in San Francisco are supposed to set aside some extra money — about $2 dollars an hour for each worker — to help their employees afford their insurance costs. When the rule first went into effect in 2008, some restaurant owners avoided raising the prices on their menu by tacking a surcharge onto the bottom of their bills and explaining to their customers that the fee would help fund workers’ health care.

But according to San Francisco Supervisor David Campos and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who helped conduct the investigation into the restaurant owners’ practices, those customers were being deceived. “I can’t say all of them, but for some of these restaurants it was a marketing ploy,” Campos said. And that marketing ploy came at the direct expense of their workers, some of whom didn’t have health insurance at all:

In some cases, not only did the surcharge money go back into owners’ pockets, but employees were denied health care altogether, Ammiano and Campos said.

The inconsistencies were caught after the health law was amended in 2011, requiring city audits of the surcharges. Last year, 3,652 restaurants turned in their paperwork to the labor office, which found oddities in the accounting. The documentation was then turned over to the city attorney for a full-fledged investigation. [...]

For Campos, it’s a consumer-trust issue. “These diners thought they were paying for workers’ health care. Instead these owners were gaming the system,” he said.

Low-wage workers like the employees in San Francisco’s restaurant industry typically don’t have access to health insurance — in fact, more than half of low-wage workers at small firms were uninsured in 2010. And workers’ health care costs are continuing to rise while their wages are stagnating, so it’s nearly impossible for them to afford their own insurance on the private market if their employers choose to deny them health coverage.

Obamacare will help address some of these issues in a similar way as San Francisco began doing in 2008. Starting in 2014, the health reform law will help ensure that employers can’t deny their workers health care simply to protect their own profits, and require businesses with more than 50 employees to offer basic health benefits. Nonetheless, profitable members of the restaurant industry like Olive Garden, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s are already using Obamacare as a convenient excuse to keep perpetrating their anti-worker labor practices and avoid giving their workers any benefits.

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Mexican Restaurant Defends Racist Shirts As ‘Witty And Comical’

On Monday, ThinkProgress reported about a Mexican restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina whose employees wear T-shirts (pictured below) showing a wooden trap with tacos as bait and the caption “HOW TO CATCH AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT”.

Now, Taco Cid issued an equally offensive response on its website, flagged by the Palmetto Public Record. The eatery defended the shirts as “witty and comical,” arguing that “Taco Cid and it’s [sic] employees are not racist.” The restaurant insists that the shirts, which show a pair of tacos under a trap and singles out “ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS,” contain “NO racial nor hate remarks towards any specific ethnic group.”

But it also goes on to articulate a false political argument, claiming that undocumented workers cause everyone to “pay more in taxes in support of their illegal activities.” In 2010 alone, unauthorized immigrants paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes and pump billions in purchasing power into the economy. This output and spending generates jobs and opportunity.

Taco Cid finished the rambling statement with a plea for those who are offended by its views not to come enjoy their tacos: “If you do not agree with our views on ILLEGAL immigrants, please do not visit our establishment.”

See the full statement below:

Judging by the Taco Cid’s reviews on Yelp, many people are taking the restaurant up on their plea to stay away if they don’t agree with the racist shirts. Nine of the ten reviews gave Taco Cid one star, in large part due to the shirts. “Racist shirts and the food sucks, too,” wrote Corvus S. User K.G. followed up with, “The racism’s world class! Awareness of tax policy, immigration law, and social justice is disappointing, along with an embarrassing level of self-awareness.”

The restaurant posted on its website that it will no longer advertise in the Columbia Free Times after its reporter, Corey Hutchins, first tweeted a picture of an employee wearing the racist shirt. They write that Hutchins “has acted in a reckless and slanderous way towards Taco Cid.”

Taco Cid is now selling the racist shirts to the public on their website.

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