The Books
Books by Saru Jayaraman, President and Co-Founder of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley. They trace the U.S. restaurant industry, the subminimum wage as the longest-running legacy of slavery in U.S. labor law, and the multiracial worker movement that is ending it.
Coming next
A new book from Saru is in the works.
It picks up where One Fair Wage (2021) left off — the worker-led campaigns of the past five years, the wins in D.C. and Chicago, the federal Living Wage For All Act, and what it takes to end the subminimum wage in America once and for all.
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Notify me when pre-orders open →Or email info@onefairwage.org for bulk-order, classroom, or event inquiries.
One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America
The New Press, 2021 · ISBN 9781620974827
One Fair Wage is the namesake book of this organization and this campaign. It tells the story of the seven million Americans who are paid below the federal minimum wage by law — tipped restaurant workers, incarcerated workers, workers with disabilities, and youth workers. It traces the subminimum wage back to its origin: a deliberate 1938 carve-out of the Fair Labor Standards Act, designed to keep newly emancipated Black workers in the same positions of dependence that defined slavery and the post-Reconstruction service economy.
The book is also the source for many of the named worker stories that appear across this site — including Adrinne Hicks (airport skycap, Houston, $2.13/hr), Yenelia (undocumented nail salon worker, NYC), Debbie Leggio (formerly incarcerated, Albion NY), Marshan (formerly incarcerated, Pontiac IL, sentenced at 16), Angel (Uber driver, Philadelphia), Frances Mablin (Goodwill worker with cerebral palsy, Memphis, paid $1.50/hr), and the origin story of the whole movement: Fekkak Mamdouh, a Moroccan immigrant restaurant worker at Windows on the World who co-founded ROC United with Saru after 73 of his coworkers were killed on 9/11.
Order
- The New Press (publisher) →
- Bookshop.org (supports indie bookstores) →
- Also at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and through your local public library — ask them to add it if they don’t carry it.
Forked: A New Standard for American Dining
Oxford University Press, 2016 · ISBN 9780190066345
Forked grades the country’s largest restaurant chains on wages, sick leave, and the gender and race makeup of their workforce — and tells the stories of the workers and high-road operators inside the industry. It’s the field guide to where you eat, and the case for changing the standard. Forked is the source of many of the named owner quotes on the High Road program page, including Tom Colicchio (Craft, NYC), Vimala Rajendra (Curryblossom, Chapel Hill), Paul Saginaw (Zingerman’s, Ann Arbor), and Rosanne Martino (COLORS, NYC).
Order
Behind the Kitchen Door
Cornell University Press, 2013
Saru’s first book. The founding text of restaurant worker organizing in the United States — an inside view of the industry that revealed how it actually treats the people who feed America, drawn from years of organizing with ROC United. Behind the Kitchen Door is the book that introduced “the other NRA” framing for the National Restaurant Association and that laid the analytical groundwork for the whole One Fair Wage campaign.
Order
Bulk orders & event copies
For bulk orders for restaurants, classes, conferences, or events, contact info@onefairwage.org. Discussion guides and classroom curriculum for any of the three books are available on request.