An organization called the Restaurant Opportunities Center last month called on the public in Los Angeles to choose restaurants by what it thinks of their labor practices, not by the quality of their food.

Diners beware: ROC is a labor union front group with an unpleasant history and an ulterior agenda.

ROC was founded in New York as an extension of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union. Though not technically a union, ROC uses union-style tactics in its quest to unionize “the 99 percent of the industry that doesn’t have a union,” as said by its founder.

At first glance, this online and print Diner’s Guide is little more than a tool to compare restaurants’ pay scales, benefits packages and treatment of employees. Restaurants that meet ROC’s standards get a favorable rating, while restaurants that don’t are called out for their supposed moral failings.

But a closer look yields some unusual findings. For starters, this guide to restaurants actually has very few local listings outside of national chains. Unsurprisingly, those national chains receive failing grades – even though they meet all of the workplace standards set by the federal government.

Meanwhile, the guide gives passing grades to smaller or regional restaurants that have signed on to ROC’s mission. That includes restaurants like Colors, based in New York, which is a ROC-sponsored effort to create an ideal restaurant for employees.

Details omitted

What ROC does not tell readers is that the Colors model failed. If it were not for no-interest loans and a steady stream of cash from ROC, the restaurant would long since have gone under.

That’s not the only detail ROC omits from its Diners’ Guide. Nowhere does the guide list the survey questions or the methodology that yielded the information, which is a standard practice for any reputable poll or survey. Consumers are supposed to take ROC’s word on the findings. Yet ROC’s researchers were instructed to “know the agenda” of its reports and “prompt people” to elicit responses favorable to ROC’s position, according to their employee guidelines.

There’s also the matter of the hypocritical method that ROC used to garner the guide’s information. The data for the guide that laments the pay and benefits in the restaurant industry was collected in part by unpaid interns. ROC also doesn’t mention that it’s been sued by its own employees for infractions like failing to pay a minimum wage.

One former ROC employee put it best: “I’ve spent my whole life working in city restaurants, but nothing was as bad as the three years I spent with ROC.” In other words, ROC has no credibility to lecture restaurants on pay and benefit practices.

The ultimate goal of ROC is to pressure restaurants to provide across-the-board benefits like paid sick days that will ultimately raise costs for employers and kill jobs. ROC’s earlier tactics like arriving at a restaurant during dinner service with a list of demands and staging rowdy protests if the restaurant owner did not give in to those demands might have won them a few battles, but failed to endear them to consumers. 

The Diners’ Guide is silent on ROC’s history. Nonetheless, faulty research, questionable motives and despicable tactics speak to ROC’s true agenda. And with that kind of record, it makes sense for L.A. diners to take the guide – as well as ROC itself – with more than a grain of salt.

Alison Harden is communications director for ROC Exposed, which was founded and is funded by a coalition of restaurants.