Madison Burns said she was cautioned about the owner’s questionable behavior when she first became a server at Acme Food & Beverage Co., an upscale take on classic Southern comfort food down the street from the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill in Carrboro, in May 2021.

 

“Everyone sort of warned me when I started that Kevin was kind of creepy, and it's just something you have to deal with in this particular job," said Burns, 25. 

 

The person she was told to avoid was Kevin Callaghan, the owner and head chef. He would make inappropriate remarks and be very touchy with his female staff members, causing them to feel uncomfortable to be at work, she said.

 

Concerns about Callaghan were among the reasons Burns and other workers at the restaurant went on strike for three months, from November 2021 to February 2022, ultimately causing her to quit because of the unmet demands. 

 

The number one demand of the striking workers, a majority of whom were women in their early 20s, was that Callaghan not be present on Acme’s premises during pre-shift or service hours. Burns felt like he treated the young female staff like they were people he wanted to date.

 

But the problem, Burns said, was that the alleged harassment was “pretty hard to enumerate or prove that was happening.”

 

They also demanded a public apology from Callaghan, which was met and is still accessible on Acme’s webpage, and a copy of any investigative reports regarding sexual harassment which was unmet. Acme was unwilling to give an actual copy, but allowed the attorney to discuss the information from the reports with the strikers.

 

Strikers also demanded a concerted effort to hire a more diverse staff, anti-harassment and anti-discrimination trainings for management, and revised anti-harassment policies. In addition to trainings and new policies, they demanded clear ways to report sexual harassment and a poster displaying that sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation are unlawful and where these things can be reported. Acme confirmed that it met these demands.

 

Acme stated that Callaghan could only be out of the restaurant during service for 30 days after re-opening for dine-in service. Per his apology, Callaghan neither confirmed or denied the claims about himself, only stated what the report found. He remains the sole owner and head chef of Acme. Acme did not respond for comment on this story.

 

“Morale was really low,” said Burns. “Everyone had to pretty much get new jobs just to support themselves anyways. It just didn't work out and the counter-offers they kept coming back with were just insulting. So only one person out of the like 20 or so people on strike went back to work there.”

 

There’s a pervasive culture of unwanted sexual behavior in the workplace in the restaurant industry, due to a lack of boundaries and standard system for reporting incidents. A recent study by One Fair Wage, a national non-profit organization that works to advance minimum wage policies, surveyed women across the nation 31 years and older who have worked in restaurants about sexual harassment. The study found that 71% of female restaurant workers have been sexually harassed at least once during their time in the industry, and 44% have been harassed from someone in a management or ownership role. 

 

There are oftentimes no real boundaries between a person in a position of power in a restaurant and their employees, which normalizes their behavior, as Burns says was the case at Acme.

 

“Men just don't even see that as harassment. They see that as just normal bro behavior, which can be true, but also does not make it right,” said Burns.

 

Of the women that experienced sexual harassment in the One Fair Wage study, only 48% said they actually reported the incident, and only 7% of those workers reported it to HR. Local establishments often lack a real HR department to report incidents, such as Acme.

 

For the Triangle area, what happened at Acme was reminiscent of a similar incident at another beloved restaurant in nearby Raleigh.  

 

Lack of Boundaries in the Workplace

 

Amidst the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, current and former employees of Raleigh sister restaurants Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana came forward with numerous allegations of sexual assault publicly on social media against people in upper management, including against one of the owners.

 

“I feel like most of the stuff that I witnessed was—looking back now—very blurred boundaries of what is okay to happen at a workplace and what is part of the personal life, and there's just no separation of those two things at Bhavana,” said Marrah Justice, a former head host at Brewery Bhavana.

 

Justice herself was never affected by any unwanted sexual behavior at work, but recognizes now that what she at first thought as just normal behavior for service industry workers was not, or should not, have been the norm.

 

“There were a lot of genuine relationships, but there were also a lot of casual hookups–some of those were between managers or superiors and employees,” said Justice. “Looking back now, I think, ‘Okay yeah, that was really weird and probably not a normal work environment.’ But I didn't realize that at the time, it was one of my first service industry jobs.”

 

Justice said she never witnessed anyone ever getting directly assaulted or harassed, but after hearing everyone come forward with their allegations and stories, she was concerned that she wasn’t at all surprised.

 

“I came to the realization that in theory, if I'm hearing all these stories, and I don't, for a second, question any of them—maybe I was more aware subconsciously than I realized, because I was having fun and getting free drinks after work, that it wasn't necessarily a healthy work environment,” said Justice. “There were definitely a lot of people taking advantage of others.”

 

Unlike Acme, all of the owners and management in question at Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana quit after the allegations. This allowed for new leadership to step in and create a new work culture. Similarly, these two situations highlight the challenges for Southern establishments to demand workplace safety. Collective organizing efforts can affect change, but that isn’t always the case.

 

North Carolina’s Barriers to Unions

 

Labor unions are one way workers have better job conditions in restaurants and other service jobs, where there isn’t a set of standardized rights in place. Being a part of a union could allow workers in restaurants like Acme, Brewery Bhavana and Bida Manda to have a space to report their incidents followed by a corrective action. In other states, service workers have the freedom to unionize in order to demand these rights regarding safety in the workplace. 

 

North Carolina is one of the 26 states which have a  right-to-work law. The right-to-work law significantly limits the power of labor unions within the state by prohibiting the “closed shop,” in which union membership is a condition of being hired, and the “union shop,” in which union membership is a condition of employment but the employer can also hire non-union employees as long as they become union members during a designated time period. 

 

The right-to-work law essentially makes it illegal for any employer to require union membership to get or maintain a job. North Carolina has the second-lowest union membership in the country, according to MaryBe McMillan, president of the NC State AFL-CIO.

 

At workplaces where there is often no real HR department, such as restaurants, there are few protections against sexual harassment. Organizing to demand safety from the workplace is the next best thing, like the Acme strike.

 

Skye David, attorney at North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said that there are no worker protections outlined in a statute regarding sexual harassment in North Carolina. David said that when she receives calls of this nature she works through them on a case by case basis, first asking the victim to send over their specific work policies–but there are no standardized safeguards in place.

 

Organizations such as the NC State AFL-CIO exist to coordinate and support the labor movement in North Carolina.

 

“We're happy to participate in the action and put the pressure on all decision makers to make whatever changes are necessary to help work,” said McMillan.

 

The Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), which has roots in the Fight for $15 movement in the South, recently became an official union last November and has representation from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. 

 

“[The USSW] are doing a very innovative model where it's not your traditional union that was formed through a National Labor Relations Board Union Election and not bargaining a contract with their employer,” said McMillan. 

 

Helping the USSW’s case is the Fight for $15’s demonstrated track record of success. Though the federal minimum wage has not increased from $7.25 an hour since the first Fight for $15 strike in 2012, three states and D.C. have since increased their minimum wage to $15 or beyond. 

 

“The Fight for $15, generally, which is what that union was born out of, has had tremendous impact, by workers going out on strike and taking action,” McMillan said. “They forced companies to begin to raise wages.”

 

Jamey Gunter is a USSW leader and current McDonald’s employee in Madison, North Carolina. 

 

“We are there to help the low-wage working people and help them get better health insurance and better wage, better pay. And know their rights and know that they can strike and organize,” Gunter said. “They need to know because a lot of people don't know their rights that they can do this.”

 

Prevention On the Rise

 

In lieu of legal protections against sexual misconduct for workers, some groups have tried to fill the gap. The state-wide organization Our Voice, based in Asheville, is one such group that provides prevention programs for restaurants and bars. 

 

86 It–a play on the phrase that industry workers use when the restaurant is out of something—is an anti-sexual harassment program for restaurants. Establishments can request a program by simply filling out a form on their website. Our Voice recognizes that harassment often includes tricky power dynamics and respects confidentiality if the requesters of the program want to remain anonymous. The 86 It program is offered in-person for Western Carolina establishments, and in other parts of the state virtually. 

 

Maria Suarez, Director of Prevention Programs at Our Voice, walked me through a typical 86 It program. It always starts by acknowledging sexual violence as an umbrella term, then goes through the definition of sexual harassment specifically. 

 

After an introduction to sexual harassment, the program helps workers see what it can look like and how they can report it through an activity ‘Flirting vs. Hurting,’ with an emphasis on certain populations that are at higher risks of experiencing harassment because of -isms.

 

“We talk to them about what does flirting feel like versus what does harassment feel like, that way we can open the door for the conversation of you might think that you’re flirting and if this person feels these harassment feelings then the flirting isn’t mutual, and that’s what matters is the receiver and how they’re feeling in the situation,” said Suarez.

 

Following the activity, they run through slides of people in different interactions and ask if they think it’s flirting or sexual harassment, with an emphasis on non-verbal expressions and body language, but the ultimate conclusion that nobody really gets to decide. If one person in a situation feels they are being harassed–that’s what matters.

 

The program moves from interactions to boundaries and consent, using Planned Parenthood’s consent FRIES–an acronym that stands for Freely Given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, and Specific. They walk through the 5 D’s of bystander prevention from Right to Be, a nonprofit that aims to end harassment of all forms (formerly known as Hollaback), asking participants which type of intervention they would feel comfortable using. Suarez shared that they are thinking about adding a section to include additional power dynamics, including how people coming from different places of privilege can step in and help regarding identity.

 

Our Voice is fulfilling a state-wide need by trying to 86 sexual violence in restaurants. North Carolina may have restrictive union laws, but workers from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Triangle are continuously fighting for safer conditions for service workers.

 

Although the Acme strike was unsuccessful in meeting its key demand, it led to the formation of the Carrboro Workers Coalition. Burns and Town Council Member Danny Nowell, who supported the Acme workers during their strike, founded it to support workers in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill area. 

 

Burns now lives in Durham and works full-time as a statistician, but still keeps a part-time job as a server. She organizes the Coalition's monthly meetings where they aim to help other service workers in the area organize and fight back against unfair conditions at their jobs–a constant battle for North Carolina workers.

 

“We formed the Workers Coalition, because we want to help people that are going through similar things that the Acme staff went through because it happens all the time.”