Workforce Diversity 3

Workforce Diversity 3

Role of workforce diversity in design of goods and service in the food and beverage industry

Sheriff Osni

Harsha Natarajan Hariram

Texas A&M University-Commerce

The challenges operational management faces in the engagement of the dynamics of blue-collar workforce diversity and its effects on the design of goods and service in the food and beverage industry.

Role of workforce diversity in design of goods and service in the food and beverage industry

Abstract

Many management textbooks have provided theoretical literary sermons for decades about the financial benefits to the corporate bottom-line when embracing and applying workforce diversity in their organization, but without offering effective applicable solutions on the dealings with the ubiquitous issue, and without facing the real-life issues in the field where it matters the most, with the people who matter the most. This research sought to distinguish the blurred lines between the textbook hypothetical and the field real life, and also to expose the misguided pitch that the benefits of workforce diversity is in improving the corporate bottom line. The research found that workforce diversity within the blue-collar minimum-wage employee in the food and beverage industry, while honorable in principles, is a fallacy, and a misnomer, that is not only affecting the corporate bottom-line but also costing people's lives.

Introduction

What's in a name? That which we call diversity by any other name would be as adversary. This quote that I reworked is based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597, Act ll. Scene II) "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare's quote encapsulates the central struggle and the tragedy of the relationship between Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet and how their love was doomed from the beginning. The phrase illustrates the long-standing feud and hatred between the Montague and the Capulet families, and questions what does it matter what's in a name? Wouldn't a rose by any other name still smell just as sweet? In other word it doesn't matter what it is called, the fact remains that it is what it is. Similarly, my reworked quote is meant to illustrate that in many organizations, the relationship of the workforce diversity and the organization is doomed from the very beginning during the in-processing of every new employee, the struggle is immediate, eminent, and the tragedy is as constant as a revolving door of hiring, and firing, and of quitting diverse workforce. Stedman Graham, bestselling author, in his book Diversity, Leaders Not Labels: A New Plan For The 21st Century (2006), summed it best by saying "Diversity is more than just 'politically correct.'...Diversity is about our role in ultimately moving civilization forward and freeing ourselves to forge alliances..." and "we are transcending our old racial barriers to move with the flow of humanity and are transforming into a valuable commodity."

De.fi.ni.tion

L. Ron Hubbard (1950), founder of Scientology and Dianetics, at the very beginning of all of his books and materials consistently emphasized a datum titled Important Note where he emphatically advised against never going past a word that is not fully understood, have been clearly defined, and profoundly grasped, especially the regular, common, and usual words. He attributed his basis for reasoning as the chief culprit for the inability to learn and grasp the true nature of a subject that ultimately leads to confusion, abandonment, and trouble. So it is only befitting to heed the warning and take a defined look at what is the meaning of diversity specifically at the blue-collar workforce in the food and beverage industry in Dallas, Texas.

Real-life definition of di.ver.si.ty

Diversity is a noun that dictionaries show a literal surface-level synonyms such as mixture, variety, and assortment of different elements, but in real-life the word has a problematic deep-level definition that is manifested through society's and individuals' actions and words that show a stronghold of rigid adversity in terms of not accepting, not tolerating, not including, discriminating, and a hatred towards people who are different, and it is in all organizations of all shapes and sizes where these diverse individuals exercise all the aforementioned prejudices putting everybody inherently at odds creating never ending opportunities for conflicts and controversies.

Diversity and diverse and are two different things

Workforce diversity and diverse workforce are two different things. A lot of organizations have diverse workforce, but not necessarily workforce diversity. Diversity is not a skill; it is an attitude, an interpersonal process, and a perspective, and therefore requires a different type of training than the one used by many organizations. We are all diverse individuals living, for the most part, in a non-diversity society that is heavily, and rightly so, regulated by civil rights laws. To claim to have workforce diversity should mean that all the singular elements of what makes each and every individual diverse are recognized, and respected, and that there is a purposefully effective on-going training to nurture respect, tolerance, and inclusion in order to establish a community of cohesiveness and synchronicity. Diversity therefore requires a training that is designed to achieve a shift in modality, to become aware and achieve awareness. Marilyn Loden explaining in the preface of her book Workforce America! Managing Employee Diversity As A Vital Resource (1991) "In the early 1970's, while working as an organization development specialist at New York Telephone, I was assigned a project that I thought would occupy a few years of my professional life. That project, to raise the organization's consciousness about gender issues and increase career opportunities for women in management, turned out to be far more challenging than I had anticipated (sic). It forced me to look critically at many assumptions and institutional policies I had heretofore accepted as 'givens.' It also challenged me to look at my own values, at relationships in my own life, and to acknowledge both the discomforting limitations and the intriguing possibilities for change."

Diversity is a problem and trouble

A quick online search on Amazon for Diversity in books, brings-up close to one-hundred pages, with each page containing about eleven published books addressing the many facets of the subject dating as far back as 1920, a clear indication of the complexity of comprehending the subject and the difficulties in the ability to properly and successfully apply it. In fact diversity became so troublesome that it required the American government to intervene and create an agency, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) better known as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to administer and oversee workplace diversity. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 interprets diversity to include race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, and genetic information. In 2011, the Commission expanded and defined "sex" to include lesbian, gay, and bisexual. And in 2012, the Commission added transgender and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Knowing that government generally does not act fast, and the fact that the Civil Rights Act was created in 1964 tells us that the issue is historically deep-rooted with long-standing adversity, and the continuous federal legal expansions and clarifications shows that the issues are still as vibrantly troublesome as they were in the 1960's, and getting worse as time goes on. Also, let's not neglect the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not created to moderate between individuals but rather between individuals' equal rights and organizations, and the individuals referenced are not necessarily the white-collar workforce but certainly the blue-collar minimum-wage earning workforce. These facts reveal a society that has performed, is performing, and, if past performance is an indication to predict future behavior, will continue to perform contrary to L. Ron Hubbard's datum - there is a fundamental lack of comprehending diversity and therefore a fundamental lack of properly and successfully adhering to and applying diversity in many organizations. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a surface-level diversity line of defense of which organizations learned not to wrestle with head-on, in open-air, and rather hide their discrimination practices underground on a deep-level where the battle is more obscure, but still discriminatory.

Blue-collar diverse workforce in the food and beverage industry

Professional and well-educated diverse workforce with trained workforce diversity still face some challenging environment as evident by the existence of the ever-expanding federal laws and companies policies and procedures, and generally blue-collar diverse workforce has an even more challenging environment than that of the professional and well-educated, and yet the blue-collar diverse workforce in the food and beverage industry has an even much more complex, elusive and troublesome challenges than that of any other workforce.

The makeup of the blue-collar workforce in the food and beverage industry

No one exactly aspires to make a career as a minimum-wage worker living below poverty level performing jobs such as dishwasher, or busboy, or janitor, or delivery driver, or food expediter, or prep cook, or a cook, or a cashier, or a greeter, or a hostess, or an order-taker, or even worse a server making $2.12 per hour plus tips that are distributed amongst a team and then taxed. The food and beverage industry in general relies on blue-collar people with little academic endeavors and valuable skills, ranging from the legally coming of age high school students, the dropouts, the underachievers, the elderly, people down on their luck, unemployable anywhere else people, people going through hardship, and people with less than stellar background to include criminal offenses, and the newly integrated into society after being incarcerated.

The omnipresence of food and beverage

Food and beverage industry is more omnipresent than we realize, it does not consists only of McDonald's, Subway, Pizza Hut, and the likes, but also in all the grocery stores, day care centers, academic institutions, government, social services, corporate buildings, churches, hospitals, hotels, movie theaters, fairs, gas stations, truck and travel stops - food and beverage exist wherever food and/or beverage is prepared, stored, served, and/or sold.

The proof is in the pudding: the goods and services

Food and beverage goods and services are the most regulated by the federal, state, county and local government beginning with the Center For Disease Control (CDC), the Food And Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the State, the county, city ordinances, and company's policies and procedures that follows the national guidelines set by SerSafe, and HACCP to safeguard against foodborne illness. According to the CDC website (http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/) "it is estimated that each year roughly one in six Americans, about forty-eight million people get sick, hundred-twenty-eight-thousand people hospitalized, and three-thousand people die from foodborne illness and diseases." These catastrophic facts show that the safety and well being, the balance of life or death, of the consumers of the goods and services in the food and beverage industry are in the hands of a diverse workforce of uneducated, uninspired, lacking ambition, impassionate, irresponsible, and to top it untrained minimum wage earning blue-collar who commit heinous acts of mishandling food and beverage, and posting it on Facebook, YouTube and other digital outlets for all to witness. The renowned chef, author, and television personality Anthony Bourdin testified to much more in his book Kitchen Confidential, Adventures in the Kitchen Underbelly (2007) and provided many advices to the reader as to what days and times are best to visit a restaurant to ensure freshness, what are the correct questions to ask to navigate "truth in menu", and how to read a menu like a chef would read it.

Dallas is number two

Dallas, Texas, is the second largest city per capita in the United States of America in terms of food and beverage businesses; Houston, Texas, being number one in the nation. Therefore, the need for food and beverage blue-collar workforce to sustain the ever expanding and revolving door industry is always high and extremely crucial especially since it has severe impact on the economics of the city.

The number one, two and three employers in the United States of America

Walmart, who also owns Sam's Club, is the number one employer in America, with a workforce of nearly two-million employees, followed by Yums Brands who owns Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut with more than half-million employees, and in third place is McDonald's with about four-hundred-forty- thousand employees. The common denominator amongst all top three conglomerates is their vast majority of workforce is the minimum-wage earning blue-collar.

HISTORICAL PROSPECTIVE

The industry for a variety of reasons believed that for an effective and a successful organizational behavior, diversity in the workforce is necessary for a competitive market. Though many define ‘Diversity’, there is no conclusory answer. Diversity is classified into surface level and deeper level. The surface level includes age, ethnicity, and gender while the deeper level includes religion, education and marital status.

HISTORY OF DIVERSITY

To understand diversity and its course of history in the civilization of human mankind it is important to understand history. Globally every country faces diversity in the nature of color, caste, creed, occupation and sex. The discrimination of humans based on the working force or the labor force and the ruling force or the managerial force lasted for three millennia. The rise of modern civilizations like Mesopotamian, Indus valley, Egypt civilizations and the Greek cultures records discrimination based on working force and labor force. According to Plato in ‘The Republic’ the Egyptian civilizations constantly had 12000 workers for the pharaohs and 12000 working in agriculture. The roman civilization is the first milestone in democracy. The discrimination in the roman cultures was based on color. African slaves are used for hard manual labor while the fairer sex where involved with higher political functions. The Indus valley civilizations discrimination was based on occupations.

The modern world such as the United States of America was born 700 years ago. The multi-cultural diversity in the country was recognized all over the world; hence it was called as “Land of the Free” and “Land of Opportunity”. Despite being young country diversity in the work labor force happens to be an important subject of controversy for the past 100 years. The emancipation act by the Lincoln freed the slave from the cotton fields to pursue their individual life in freedom.