As anyone who has ever passed through town knows, Chicagoans like to eat. In 2008, during the height of the recession, the region's food service industry still generated $12.7 billion in gross domestic product. As a result, while employers in Illinois are shedding jobs at a rapid pace, restaurants are holding steady. The sector now employs 250,000 people statewide (171,000 in Cook County) and constitutes 6.8 percent of the total labor force. By 2016, the Illinois Department of Employment Security estimates that food providers will add another 70,000 jobs. It's one of the few local industries on the rise.

Yet little is known about restaurant labor practices. Anecdotally, most patrons are aware of the disparity in pay between the servers in the front of the house and the employees who prepare food and wash dishes in the back. But specific data about prevailing industry standards is difficult to obtain, in part because restaurants are one of the few sectors that provide employment opportunities to undocumented immigrants. The Chicagoland Restaurant Industry Coalition (CRIC) has set out to change that.

As part as a multi-city effort, the coalition released a new report (PDF) today authored by DePaul professor Ted Smukler and LaMysha Adams of the Restaurant Opportunities Center. Titled "Behind the Kitchen Door," it is perhaps the most comprehensive report of its kind, compiling public data from the census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics with 582 original surveys and 60 one-hour interviews with both restaurant employees and employers.

"This finally puts some data to what we already know is going on, especially behind the scenes, often to people of color and immigrants," said community activist and recent state representative candidate Rudy Lozano at a restaurant industry summit in Chicago today. "They deserve better."

What does the research show? Instead of providing a living wage and benefits to many of its employees, restaurant operators are competing by holding down wages and violating labor laws. Over 76 percent of employees in the region earn less than $16.48 per hour while only 9.5 percent receive health insurance through their employer. (More than half lack insurance entirely.) Only 3.8 percent are provided any sick days and almost 76 percent reported working while sick, which endangers the health of their fellow employees -- not to mention the diners. And conditions in many restaurants are dangerous.  Those risks are only exacerbated when 32.6 percent of employees work overtime and 28.5 percent work "off the clock" without extra pay.

Advocates for CRIC emphasized this morning that they're not out to demonize restaurateurs. Rather, they seek like to shine a light on labor practices that are troubling and all too common. Furthermore, they want to provide a framework for addressing some of the disparities without suffocating employer's bottom lines.

Among their policy recommendations is a proposal in which municipal governments like Chicago would provide incentives like property tax credits to employers that offer living wages, a cost they argue will be at least partially recouped by reductions in the use of public health care and other government aid. They are also lining up behind HB 3665, known as the Healthy Workplace Act, which would require employers who do not currently offer paid sick leave to pay up to seven days per year. Approximately 43 percent of all workers in Illinois would be affected by the legislation. State legislators are trying to pick up the slack on this issue after a similar bill at the federal level stalled. The Illinois House Labor Committee will hold a hearing on HB 3665 tomorrow at 10:00 am.

Chicago Ald. Rick Munoz (22nd Ward), who called the report's findings "unconscionable," sees the movement to add some wage regulations to the food services industry as an extension of the living wage fights in the City Council, first with city contractors and now with big box retailers.  This morning, he declared:"We want to make sure that if the industry is growing and business is thriving, workers are growing and thriving."

For a bit of background on the Restaurant Opportunities Center, which has a fascinating history and just expanded into Chicago within the past two years, revisit Curtis Black's piece here.