The Enormous Restaurant Industry, the Huge Number of Lawsuits & the Role of OSHA.
OSHA, it is highly important, to say the least
Did you know that OSHA plays a very important role in nearly every restaurant and bar industry lawsuit and insurance claim? Well, it most certainly does, and it doesn’t matter if the person that got injured, harmed, sickened, maimed or killed was an employee or a customer of the subject establishment.
As a practicing attorney trying to make a living doing what you do, do you even realize the incredible size of the restaurant industry, the special circumstances that pertain to restaurants and bars, and the legal opportunities abound?
In this series of articles, we plan to help shine the light on the restaurant industry, the dangers that exist within them, and how nearly every law practice can benefit from taking on restaurant and bar industry law suits.
The restaurant industry is special for so many reasons. The enormous size of its workforce and the age and diversity of the workers makes it highly unique and complex. Restaurants have an extraordinary economic impact in markets across the United States, and the social influence that our industry has on the American way of life rivals all others.
The Enormous Restaurant Industry Workforce
The restaurant industry employs more than 14 million workers with
roughly 2.5 million designated management or supervisory personnel. To put
these numbers into perspective, this alone accounts for more than 10 percent
of the entire US workforce, making the restaurant industry the second largest
employee workforce behind the federal government. Further, it is worth
noting that more than 50 percent of the entire US population has worked in
the restaurant industry at some point during their working lives, and nearly 50
percent cite a restaurant industry job as their very first place of employment.
Beyond that, let’s not lose sight of the extraordinary ancillary employment
impact of the industry. Roughly 150,000 businesses nationwide provide various
products and services to the restaurant industry, and those businesses employ
millions of workers as well.
The Highly Complex World of Restaurants
Most of us have witnessed the wide variety of restaurants doing business
across the country, but what many fail to realize is just how complex these
establishments are to operate. Restaurants range from fast food to fine dining
and from national chains to mom-and-pop operations. The industry’s owners,
operators, managers, executives, support personnel, and hourly employees
have a huge number of differing job functions, titles, roles, and responsibilities;
and with those come a wide range of compensation and levels of training.
Take a moment, if you will, to consider what needs to take place in a
restaurant (any restaurant) to deliver a single meal to a family of four—not to
mention all of the things that must take place to provide foods and beverages
that are safe and fit for human consumption. Now do this several hundred, or
even several thousand, times each and every day, each and every week, month
after month, and year after year.
