Sarumathi "Saru" Jayaraman (born April 3, 1975) is an American attorney, author, and activist from Los Angeles, California. She is an advocate for fair wages for restaurant workers and other service workers in the United States. In the aftermath of September 11, she co-founded the non-profit public service organization Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. And in 2013 she founded a new organization to work on these issues, called One Fair Wage. Jayaraman is a recipient of the Ashoka fellowship in 2013 and the Soros Equality Fellowship in 2020.
Early life
Born in 1975, Jayaraman was raised in a primarily Chican neighborhood in Whittier, California. Her parents emigrated from India to the United States when her father was seeking work as a software engineer. They settled in the Los Angeles area, but Jayaraman's father lost his job when she was a teenager. She was made aware of her class and race at a young age. Her family frequently endured racial slurs and insults. One incident from her childhood occurred when many mechanics refused to service her family's car when it broke down while they were road tripping across Utah.
Higher education
Jayaraman was accepted to Harvard at the age of sixteen, but her parents wanted her to stay close to home . Sixteen-year-old Jayaraman attended UCLA instead, where she earned her B.A. in International Development Studies and Political Science and graduated summa cum laude in 1995. She continued her education at Yale Law School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In 2000, Jayaraman was admitted to the State Bars in California and New York. During her time at Yale, Jayaraman studied under MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winner, Jennifer Gordon. Jayaraman was hired at Gordon's organization, the Workplace Project, where she dealt with training and organizing mistreated Latino immigrant workers to become their own advocates in instances of labor abuse.
ROC United
After September 11, 2001, thousands of workers from the World Trade Center were left jobless. The restaurant at the top of the World Trade was named Windows on the World. Jayaraman worked in partnership with Fekkak Mamdouh, the former chief server of Windows, to represent the displaced workers. The organization Jayaraman and Mamdouh founded together was named the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York. Although it was originally established to help those affected by 9/11, the ROC evolved and became an organizing center for all immigrant restaurant workers in New York and eventually nationwide. Jayaraman headed the expansion effort and became the co-founder and director of Restaurant Opportunities Center United in 2007. ROC United, currently has over 18,000 members across 15 states. The organization deals with workplace justice campaigns, establishing living wages, and protecting workers rights. Jayaraman has been a key player in major advancements for low wage workers across the country. ROC United has won back more than $10 million for its members, and Jayaraman is continuing the fight for fair wages and working conditions through a newer organization, ONE FAIR WAGE. There are two federal minimum wages in the United States: $7.25 for untipped workers, and $2.13 for tipped workers, as of 2021. Jayaraman spearheads the One Fair Wage campaign which seeks to eliminate this two tier system. Seven states have already ended the subminimum wage and enacted One Fair Wage legislation:California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Montana, Minnesota and Alaska. There, all workers earn a full fair minimum wage with tips on top. In early 2020 as restaurants were shuttering during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jayaraman launched the One Fair Wage Emergency Fund, raising $22 million to grant to out of work service workers. Later in 2020, the new Biden-Harris presidential administration announced its support for ending the subminimum wage and increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and these policies were introduced in the Raise the Wage Act in early 2021, still pending action in Congress. ROC United was also instrumental in the passing of Washington's Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act, which assures that all workers can begin accumulating sick leave after one day on the job.