North Carolina Jewish High School Gets Approval for Fair-Labor Practices
A Jewish high school cafeteria in North Carolina became the first pre-collegiate institution to obtain an Orthodox social justice organization’s seal certifying its adherence to fair-labor practices.
The American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, which touts itself as the only international Jewish college prep boarding school, recently received Uri L’Tzedek’s Tav HaYosher, an “ethical” seal for kosher establishments.
The academy was the first pre-collegiate school to seek the seal in a program that was launched in 2009. The Tav HaYosher program certifies 86 establishments, mostly restaurants in New York City and Los Angeles.
Several campus-based kosher dining halls, including at Barnard-Columbia, Yale and Ohio State universities, have the Tav HaYosher seal. Others are in the pipeline.
Yael Keller, Uri L’Tzedek’s director of programming, told JTA that the boarding school initiated the certification process after one of its board members saw a Tav HaYosher sign in a restaurant window.
“Until American Hebrew Academy contacted us, I had not thought about Jewish day school as a possibility, largely because the Jewish day school I attended didn’t have a cafeteria,” Keller said, adding that day schools are now an area that Uri L’Tzedek hopes to explore further.
The program enlists volunteers to visit kosher eating establishments and interview their employees to ensure their employer is in compliance with state labor laws concerning pay, overtime and safety.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
