I should start by saying that I don't work at some small family restaurant. I work at a very well known chain. Im going to be vague, but this is one of the very most popular chains in the US. There are about 1500 locations for this chain alone, and it belongs to a publicly traded holdings company, currently ranked #681 on Fortune. Revenues are over 4 billion. CEO pay ratio is 460 to 1 according salary.com.
I could go on, but I just wanted to illustrate the size of this company. As the title says and as is probably common knowledge, workers in the food service industry are among the least unionized workers in the US, which of course is not unionized well to begin with. It is well within this company's ability to fight any union effort or concerted activity. I also can't understate how against all odds it is to organize a restaurant. What makes it hard is high turnover rates and from what I can tell probably some common perception of restaurant work. Serving is largely seen as a gig for college kids or some side job. Somehow too, employees here are effectively too divided to ever organize.
This corporation is a donor to the NRA (no, not the one you're thinking of). The NRA is responsible and boasts its part in stalling minimum wage changes in many state and local governments. The federal minimum wage was decoupled from regular minimum wage in 1991 and has remained the same ever since, thanks to lobbying from the NRA. We were definitely paid that. What's more, Im actually not a tipped employee. I am not a server, but a host. I am not tipped directly, but servers are made to pool a percentage of their tips and that is distributed among hosts, while we receive the lowest sub-minimum wage allowed, 2.13 per hour. The fact that this kind of greed is legal is egregious, but real nonetheless.
Hopefully, Ive illustrated enough about the size of this company and the lengths it goes to save on labor. Ive been there now for almost 5 years, which is longer than I ever thought I would be. I started at 18 and none of this was on my mind. As I came to the realization as a leftist that I am now, sometime in the last few years I took a real hard look at this company. All the reading in subs like this got me thinking, and I decided to give organizing a thought. The odds are obviously against any success but I couldn't rationalize doing nothing. I actually took a six month hiatus to live on a commune, and then they [foolishly] rehired me. People cant be forced to organize, and there is a certain strategy for different workplaces.
The first issue I raised to organize around was the tipshare system. I began chatting with my coworkers, spreading the idea that perhaps we should be earning more than 2.13. Perhaps I was being incognito enough with these discussion, or perhaps it was coincidence, but we got a raise to a base wage of 5 an hour. Im not sure If I can claim any responsibility for it, but it was very curious. Without a doubt management knew. One of our managers slipped that they knew. Some of my coworkers, even the ones who were skeptical of my union talk saw a connection were surprised. This definitely galvanized more interest in action. I could have stopped there, and I may have if not for a few big things.
- How am I to know if this was a coincidence or not?
- Why would I let go of any momentum we had?
- I do care about my coworkers.
It became my personal mission to organize. I contacted the IWW and EWOC. I did stay in contact with them for a while but they were unfortunately hard to reach. When we did speak though, they did discuss with me strategy. Some shops go right for union votes, others just repeatedly use concerted activity.
Thinking strategically, I picked one issue we could universally agree on solutions to. It is actually one that doesn't affect me too directly, but did prove to be the best issue I could have chosen. Im talking about the absence of any kind of automatic gratuity.
Oh yea, when this company went public, they did a lot of streamlining which included getting rid of gratuity. The majority of the restaurant staff are servers, and they all have suffered rude customers and being stiffed. Being stiffed on very large tables made many servers walk out and quit before. It is a very terrible part of the job…of course only if you just accept it. The solutions to this are obvious, unlike the issue of tipshare, where I think it should remain and base wage increase, servers want to get rid of it entirely.
It dawned on me finally after one of our servers was stiffed by a part of 20 people. Nobody made up for it and he went home making nothing. I went home and penned a petition. Printed it and began collecting signatures. There was actually very much support. We were planning a march on the boss, where we will all deliver the petition to our proprietor. This is where this gets interesting.
That plan was absolutely foiled. Somebody may have told on us, perhaps we were heard discussing it. I suspected were still under the radar until one day Im called into the office and had a phone call with HR way over at corporate HQ. I was speaking to the big guys, and they explained why we don't have gratuities. “We believe here that the guest experience is most important and is maximized if the server is incentivized with a tip…” absolutely disgusting. They explained that if I were doing this on company time, it would constitutive a violation of some solicitation/distribution policy. That also asked that if I were passing around a petition, that I stop immediately. They offered their email if I had any further question. I took the email, and I immediately knew the next course of action.
That day, signs ended up on the wall of the kitchen that were never there. One about discrimination laws, state and federal, another about reporting discrimination, one about worker protection laws. None of the literature contained the U-word of course. It was important now that we gather signatures more discreetly, if at work never in a cameras view, only when it is easier to hide, and not to talk about it too much. I was being watched very closely. I know doing this at work is a bad idea. I know it is very risky and we did sign outside of work sometimes, but its very hard to plan this sometimes and it felt as if time is of the essence.
One day someone was definitely caught discussing it, and the bosses were absolutely livid.
Other day I had small talk with a coworker, and after it, they questioned her so hard about it she called me that night worried and concerned about the trouble we were in.
That next day several other coworkers told me the exact same thing, that there are very sternly questioned about any conversation they had with me.
A server/keyholder who signed told me one day that the proprietor called them late one night asking so many questions. What we talk about, why there is still a petition, what we are trying to do with it, why nobody is talking to them…
If it isn't obvious that this is getting to them, well one day the Regional Vice President of Operations paid us a visit. Apparently he is very high ranking and should be feared, or at least that is how management was acting. The man drove his escalade all the way from corporate HQ. He spoke to each and every one of us and was there for several hours. Every conversation was clearly geared to proudly exciting the “This is a family” attitude. Honestly I'm smiling now while thinking about how when he left that everyone talked about bringing up gratuity to him. It was talked about several times and that night, we gathered the last few signatures we needed. We now had 30 signatures. I emailed a digital scan of the paper to HR, and Joint Venture Partner.
Apparently that was it. Thats where the effort was enough. The next day, our proprietor announced to us that we will have gratuity of 18% for any table of 6 or more. Honestly I expected more fighting, and it is not true autograt which appears on the tab, and more like making up the difference that a table doesn't tip. However, this was undeniably winning a concession. This proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you guys are right, everything I've come to understand about the economy and corporations must be right.
TL;DR. Even though restaurants are difficult to organize, my coworkers organized and successfully got itself raises and automatic gratuity.