Running Head: Workforce Diversity 1

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.

Workforce Diversity 2

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

Workforce Diversity 3

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,

Workforce Diversity 4

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

Workforce Diversity 5

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

Workforce Diversity 6

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

Workforce Diversity 7

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

Workforce Diversity 8

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

Workforce Diversity 9

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.

TYPES OF BLUE COLLAR INDUSTRY

Workforce Diversity 10

Blue collar industry involves sectors like petroleum industry, auto industry, logistics, electric

industry, food services, and retail services and so on. The highly paid blue collar jobs are the

nuclear industry auto industry and the technical services like repairs in elevators and electrical

systems. The average salary of a blue collar employee is $82,270. The food and beverage

industry lies in the last of line with a minimum payment of $7.25 of hourly wages. The main

reason behind such a vast difference is the necessary of education and practical training.

IMMIGRATION AND ECONOMY

In the United States of America more than 72% of the population has worked in the food and

beverages industry. Food is one of the basic components of mankind. The rules and regulation in

the federal system is very unique in the world. Despite the fact discrimination of the workforce

in the food and beverages is very high. It is identified by economic scholars that two main

reasons are the reason for the diversity in the 19th century. One is the immigration of global

population and changing economic policies of the world economy. Immigration and economy

goes hand in hand in the federal system. On the global scale, India is a country with multiple

cultures and multiple languages. The discrimination based on caste and creed lasted for hundreds

of generations. The reason for such a diversified country to face discrimination is because of the

history of the country’s faith itself. The government took initiates to make sure every other

citizen is given proper education thereby the self-realization will happen at one period of time so

the discrimination among individuals will reduce and men will be equal. The discrimination in

the latter soviet era and the communist Chinese government was nullified because of the socialist

policies of their respective government. Discrimination was quite common between the working

class and upper class society in Asian countries because of socialist ideals.

INSIGHT IN IMMMIGRATION

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The immigration of labor force in the United State began during the colonial era. The immigrants

were initially seeking employment opportunity. One half of the European immigration was

primarily endured into slavery. The immigration from West Africa is referred to as black slaves

and was approximately 500,000 to 650,000 between the 17th and 19th century. The emancipation

act passed after the civil war freed 4 million salves throughout the country. The 19th century

found itself flooded with immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The Nationality act of 1965

passed by the congress was based on quotas from every nation and the earlier immigrants were

permitted to sponsor their relatives from their country of origin. The census bureau of U.S.A

stated that 80% of the population was White, 16% of Hispanic origin, 13% African American,

5% Asian, 1% American Indian and 0.2% Pacific Islander.

LEGISLATIONS ON IMMIGRATIONS

The modern equal employment legislation was introduced in 1943 and further initiatives were

proposed for another 20 years. Former President Truman signed the legislation order 9981 which

required equality in treatment and opportunity in armed forces. By 1953, 95% of African

American soldiers were working in integrated units. The passage of civil rights in 1960’s

prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion and sex. The increase in diversity

first occurred in agricultural segments followed by industrial revolution. The development in the

agricultural societies enabled a large scale production of food which allowed different cultures to

settle down in large fields and produce diversified crops. The industrial revolution of the late

1800’s in Europe, paved the way for the use of natural resources from various parts of the world.

the 1965 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished national origins quotas

and replaced them with a system of uniform national numerical ceilings that favored the

admission of relatives of U.S. residents.

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FOOD AND BEVERAGES DIVERSITY

The demand for diversified food increased as the immigration of different people entered the U.S

soil. The necessity for food businesses to produce new product for the rising Hispanic population

intensified. The states like Texas, New Mexico and California face high level of immigration via

land and sea from the Hispanic population and. Food and restaurant business depend on illegal

immigrants because; the illegal population can be paid low wages and without any benefits. The

loyalty of the populous working for low wages is relatively high than others. This leads to the

manager to recruit an ethnic foreman who allows him to recruit his friends and family who

migrated to this country. There were also important changes in immigration policy: the Bracero

program that had brought up to 450,000 temporary Mexican farmworkers annually to

southwestern agriculture over 22 years was ended.

FEDERAL LAW AND WAGES

It also to be understood that the migrants who work for low wages are either family or friends

shared similar village in the past. Such influences allow them to participate in the trade

effectively. It is quite common to identify a businessman depending on a bilingual supervisor to

be an intermediary. The employees can be trained quickly with little or no cost and can be laid

off during crisis. It’s always important for the business man to be in the good books of the

supervisor so as to rely on the reliability of the work force.

The illegal immigrants are always confined to kitchen and other back door activities in the

restaurant. The food and beverages industry involves constant cleanliness and housekeeping to

keep up with the federal laws. The practice of not advertising to recruit from a vast minority;

illegal immigrants are recruited privately. Agriculture is an ever booming business but it takes a

lot of hard manual labor. The fruit and vegetable market is a multi-billion dollar industry. But the

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wages for manual labor covers almost 60% of the cost of producing fruits like oranges, cherries,

strawberries and apples. A strawberry farmer potentially loses 75% of the profits to wages. These

certain high-cost, high-risk and potentially profitable enterprise look for immigrants to work for

fewer wage than an average worker provided no health benefits and other professional amenities.

The organization is the sole catalyst for the adversity of workforce diversity

As R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr. (author of Beyond Race and Gender and Redefining

Diversity) with Marjorie I. Woodruff, in their book Building a House for Diversity (1999), talked

about Phil Jackson, coach of the basketball World Champions Chicago Bulls, and his

extraordinaire ability to lead a team of stubborn, completely diverse, talented, and aging players

to seven titles in nine years, was no accident, but a deliberate, and clearly defined mission and

vision "...managing diversity is about putting collective objectives with individuals who are

qualified but significantly different..." Diversity has to be addressed as a conscious and

conscience practice because it is the right thing to do, it is the civil thing to do, and it is good for

the community, and therefore for the organization. Dr. Lisa Williams said it best in her book

Leading Beyond Excellence (2007), in the introduction "Leading beyond excellence is the

process of moving from fear-based self-denial to love-based self-appreciation." Workforce

diversity will continue to fail and suffer and adversity will continue to prevail as long as

organizations has limited understanding of workforce diversity that in turn leads to treating and

approaching diversity as fear-based practice, as a mean to an end, a blanket coverage, and a

smoke screen, denying themselves the true rewards of diversity appreciation. Cam Marston,

author of Motivating the "What's In It For Me?" Workforce, Manage Across the Generational

Divide and Increase Profits (2007) provides a good advice in the shape of four-step Practical

Workforce Diversity 14

Plans, Proactive Approaches: anticipate the expectations of the diverse employees; develop a

plan for personal growth and development with each of the employees; ask employees for

feedback on work policies; and reward according to each employee's perceptions and

expectations.

Diversity training or adversity training

True in intentions, hitting-the-mark diversity training is non-existent in many

organizations, and in the food and beverage industry it is not even on the radar screen. The

neglected fact is that an organization that is not actively training diversity, it is tacitly training

adversity, and reaping the outcomes.

Fight to the death

Many organizations' surface-level diversity training is the equivalent of during the

Roman Empire to quickly briefing captive people about fighting skills and arming them with a

dagger and a shield, while limiting their mobility by keeping them chained together before lifting

the gate and sending them out into the Roman arena, left to fend for themselves to the death

against the angry gladiators and hungry lions. The results were always dramatically entertaining

to the arena spectators but fatal to the newly released captives into the arena. However, the

current situation of the workforce diversity in the food and beverage is a vicious cycle, and its

impact on the goods and services is not at all entertaining to the spectators anymore, but rather

fatal.

Conclusion

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Contrary to all the facts provided I am not cynical about the future of workforce

diversity; I am hopeful and I believe it can improve, but in order for it to improve it has to

improve on the organizational molecular level. It is a fact that every member of an organization

spends at least 40-hours per week at work interacting with other members, and so we spend more

time interacting physically, visually, verbally, spiritually, psychologically, and sociologically

with more people at work then we do during our leisure time. Therefore, the organization is left

with the tremendous responsibility of making the social shift from fear-based to love-based, not

because it will have a positive effect on the bottom line, although it will, but because as Lama

Surya Das explained in his book Buddha Is As Buddha Does (2007), it is the enlightened thing to

do. Furthermore, the adversity of workforce diversity in the new millennium has manifested

itself beyond the workplace policies and procedures, the government oversight, and the federal

laws and into places of worship seeking advice, guidance and intervention from devout leaders

from all across the globe who authored books to address the multi-facets of this issue ranging

from John C. Maxwell of San Diego, California; Joel Osteen of Houston, Texas; the Southern

Baptist evangelist Billy Graham; Deepak Chopra; and even His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Diversity is an attitude, an interpersonal process, and a perspective, and to seek higher awareness

and consciousness people are knocking on heaven's door, looking for answers to their adversity,

in theology. I am hopeful the lesson learned will be "Namaste", meaning the divine in me honors

and blesses the divine in you, regardless and in spite of our differences.

References

Shakespeare, W. (1597), Romeo and Juliet (Act II. Scene II)

Graham, S. (2006) Diversity, Leaders Not Labels: A New Plan For The 21st Century

Hubbard, L. Ron (1950), Dianetics. Scientology. Important Note.

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Loden, M. & Rosener, J. (1991), Workforce America! Managing Employee Diversity As A Vital

Resource.

United States Code, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/

Bourdin, A. (2007) Kitchen Confidential, Adventures in the Kitchen Underbelly

Thomas, R. R. Jr. with Woodruff, M. I. (1999) Building a House for Diversity

Williams, L. (2004) Leading Beyond Excellence, Learn 7 Practical and Spiritual Steps to Spiral

Yourself to the Top

Marston, C. (2007) Motivating the "What's In It For Me?" Workforce, Manage Across the

Generational Divide and Increase Profits

Das, L.S. (2007) Buddha Is As Buddha Does

Pitt, M., & Nehru, J. (n.d.). The Discovery of India. Pacific Affairs, 230-230.

Robbins, S., & Robbins, S. (n.d.). Organisational behaviour (15th ed.).

Guérard, A., & Nehru, J. (n.d.). Glimpses of World History. Books Abroad, 438-438.

U.S. Labor Force Trends- Marlene A. Lee and Mark Mather

(n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2015, from http://www.prb.org/pdf08/63.2uslabor.pdf

The evolution of workplace diversity- Kate McCormick Houston

(n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2015, from http://www.texasbarcle.com/Materials/Events/6369/4079_01.pdf

Illegal Immigration and the Colonization of the American Labor Market. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2015, from http://cis.org/AmericanLaborMarket%26Immigration