I'm very surprised to see Ruth's Chris on the list but my only experience has been as a customer where I see professional servers with much tenure several of whom chose Ruth's from other higher-end Knoxville restaurants like the Orangery and Bistro by the Tracks.

Per this February 2012 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 73% of employees in any industry receive paid sick leave--and 10% of those employees receive sick leave only on an "as needed" basis, not under any policy affording them a set number of days.

Frankly, I was surprised to see that the percentage of employees receiving sick leave had grown so high.

I haven't worked full-time outside the home for over a decade, of course, but when I did--and it was not in the restaurant industry--the benefit was not then one we could necessarily expect.

I specifically recall that when my children were young and frequently ill (from the petri dish that is private daycare), I often needed to use my vacation time to cover time off for their illnesses. At the time I ceased working, my husband and I had been unable to take any vacation days off for the purpose of actually "vacationing" for a full eight years.

What are others' experiences across industries, now and in the past?

I have not found Tennessee's regulations on sick food workers. It looks like some states require sick workers may not work with food or food-contact surfaces. I think that is loosely enforced.
That sort of business should have a tightly monitored sick employee policy.

Doesn't this also just mean, support local?

Most chains that are supportable, according to these guidelines, are relatively small and in few states.

Can't recall working somewhere that didn't provide sick leave. It could have been the case, but it would have to have been early on and many years ago.

A greatly shortened version of our company's evolution on employee benefits is that we gave the hourly folks the same program we gave ourselves. As we could afford it, we gave more paid holidays and sick days. At some point a line supervisor said his people were complaining that some folks didn't take sick days and others took days when they weren't sick and that seemed unfair. As a result of some research we came around to suggesting a program where there were no sick days period. Our hard nosed GM said we shouldn't pay people to be sick. We took the number of sick days we had been granting and made them floating holidays that could be banked or used as the employee saw fit or needed. Problem solved.
As for health insurance, if anyone wants to really create a massive explosion of jobs in America they can do two things: Eliminate employer based insurance and replace it with a public option. And...allow retained earnings to be reinvested in capital expenditures with no taxation. It is a huge burden for a young and growing business to come up with tax payments on the increase in company net worth when there is no actual money to the owners involved. (Yeah, it's off topic but I feel better now)

i'd like to see the list of the best restaurants to work for. or do i just read the list in reverse?

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

Let me tell you exactly how kitchen staff in local (non-chain store) restaurants are treated -- I have two sons who work as cooks in local restaurants, so yeah, I am qualified to speak on what happens in some of these kitchens.

Thanks, CE (and you, too, Michael).

To the rest of you, I have posted pretty authoritative data from the BLS (and for the current year) demonstrating that 27% of all employees across industries do not receive any paid sick leave days and that another 10% may or may not receive paid sick leave days, dependent on the whim of the employer.

If you are among those who have always received the benefit, you're pretty much in "the lucky half."

And more on the restaurant industry, in particular (where I did work for seven years in my teens and twenties, like most everyone I knew): Even among this smattering of restaurants at jbr's link professing to offer some of these various benefits, I daresay they offer them to three out of 50 or 100 employees, namely to their salaried management staff.

The rest of their crews are scheduled for 37 or 38 hours weekly, max, specifically so the employer may for all practical purposes work them "full-time" without offering them any of the benefits--sick leave, vacation leave, paid holidays, health insurance--their handful of full-time salaried managers enjoy.

The same thing happens in the hotel industry.

I attended a conference with my husband at Nashville's Downtown Hilton a month or so back, at which I learned 17% of his long-time employer's prior year income is now derived from outsourcing activity.

Employment issues being on my mind that weekend, I therefore spent my spare time, while he attended work-related sessions, interviewing the hotel staff as to their salary, benefits, and working conditions.

As I suspected, not a damned thing has changed in the industry since the 1970's.

Those folks a plumb pitiful, as was I back in the day.

Everybody should do a stint in the hospitality industry, if only to learn the necessity of tipping generously.

Dear CE, I'm not sure what we can do for the cooks...

My cousin is now a manager for Cracker Barrel. Over the years he's worked for Eva wide variety of restaurants in Knoxville and NYC. He's w/ a chain now b/c he has a wife and two kids and that means they need health insurance. He knows plenty of folks who don't have any insurance who are really good at what they do, and like doing it. Line cooks-- he had three call in sick the other day and found himself being the line cook at lunch. Those guys are all part-time, and something tells me that they will be answering some tough questions if they want to keep their jobs.

Unless some personal circumstance prevents them from working full-time (and enjoying the paid sick leave/paid vacation leave/ paid holidays/ health insurance/ possible retirement plan your cousin enjoys), I expect they DON'T want to "keep their jobs." I wouldn't, would you?

Let's face it, if minimum wage had kept up with inflation since inception of the FLSA, the rate would now be closer to $14.50/hour, not $7.25/hour.

and something tells me that they will be answering some tough questions if they want to keep their jobs.

With Cracker Barrel, one of those tough questions used to be, "Are you Gay?"

Tennessee Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

Food preparation and service related occupations
(link...)

one positive here is that the food and music businesses seem to complement each other, as least as far as schedules go. i don't know what the working conditions/benefits are like in the food coop, but i've occasionally had chats with one of the friendly cooks who regularly sets up the buffet (excellent, btw). he seems to really enjoy what he does, and is always willing to talk about the ingredients, recipes, etc. of what he prepares. in his other life he's a music student. i think you'll find lots of musicians and artists working in the food business for their 'day jobs.'

Yes, I remember the 'tea ins' at Cracker Barrels very well. I can still spent half a day nursing a few glasses of iced tea.

Thanks, again, Michael.

Frank, I don't have a cell phone, either, I have the $15 "basic" cable TV (only because we can't get any reception on this ridge without it AND our TVs are old analog sets bought at pawn shops and requiring the cable company's converter box). My family's used cars are also old, but I appreciate that we own any at all.

I do, however, employ my own car each and every week to offer rides to fast food workers tramping up and down Clinton Highway in their work uniforms.

I feel compelled to do that because in a previous life I was one of them.

I think you would approve of my family's disciplined money management and I do agree--to a degree--with your observations to the effect that some people, young and old, fail to set proper financial priorities.

What I think you're discounting, though, is that due to the stagnation of wages, any family's money doesn't go nearly as far as it did a generation ago. Think about the disproportionate rise in the costs of housing, cars, medical care, and college, for starters.

For example, Mom didn't work, but my dad nevertheless bought our home for about one year's income. Today, my family couldn't possibly do that.

Dad bought his last new car for about three month's income. Today, my family couldn't possibly do that, either.

He and Mom never anticipated that in her old age, after his death, she might spend 70% of her monthly retirement income on just a Medicare supplement and prescription drugs, so my husband and I are today extremely apprehensive for how much rougher our medical costs will be toward "the end."

And college costs? I'm sure you're aware that they've doubled in just the last ten years, to say nothing of the change over the last thirty.

Again, had the minimum wage kept up with inflation, its rate would be double that actually in effect. This circumstance affects all wage earners, really, in that the "floor" has dropped out from under all.

And why does the cost of living index exclude the costs of food and fuel, anyway? In my household, those two costs are tied with our top cost, namely our housing cost, which makes the index a joke.

Aside from the problem of the wage "floor" having collapsed, there is also the problem of tax policy and corporate boardroom policy having combined to widen and accellerate the wage "gap" between lower and higher earners.

So while I share your penchant for disciplined money management (and I also share some of your personal life experiences as someone who "started with nothing"), all the penny-pinching in the world is too little to compensate for these several external forces at work in today's economy to diminish workers' earnings and morale.

I don't think you're looking at the bigger picture.

...my son who has done repair work on Hope VI says he's surprised by the number of flat screens, big screens, etc. and jabs me for not having central H&A like all of Hope VI does.

I think you're forgetting some HOPE VI history, Al.

In Knoxville and across the country, what the HOPE VI project did was to reduce the number of housing units for the poor in a given locale, flush out of those cities the poorest of the poor, and make available for the higher earners among them a lesser number of pricier housing units.

Here is some coverage on what went down in Knoxville in 1998:

...Julia and other residents attended the scheduled committee meeting where an attorney, an architect and housing authority staff informed them that their homes would be demolished under a federal program known as HOPE VI. The 320 units were to be replaced by 149 houses for sale (which they couldn't afford) and about 50 mixed-income rental duplexes. After exhausting all legal challenges, Julia and a few other families decided to stay in their homes and refused to leave when formally evicted. After several days, the other families relented, but Julia and her daughters remained until the fall of 1998 when under a court order, sheriffs' deputies physically removed them from the property.

All this to point out that your son was not observing in those homes owning big screen TVs the standard of living among the poorest of Knoxville's poor.

The poorest were the folks displaced by the HOPE VI project.

I wish we still had ratings so I could + somebody's comment. Lets not forget to count among the welfare kings the factory farmers, arms dealers, and bridge to nowhere builders.