Don’t Ask For A Seat, Take It!

“The Great Resignation” has been inescapable. If you scrolled through social media at all in 2021, you probably saw headline after headline about short staffed companies, pictures of signs on the windows of businesses begging for patience and forgiveness for their slow service, and of course our favorite: posters blaming “government handouts” for the staffing issues of restaurants who were simultaneously collecting tens of thousands of dollars in government handouts through the PPP loan program. 

The companies who run our food system are always the culprit whenever there’s an outbreak of food borne illnesses like salmonella, hepatitis or norovirus. We all have stories of working alongside a coworker with pink eye or some other contagious maladie. Due to a lack of living wages and paid sick leave, the restaurant industry has been known for helping create a phenomenon known as “presenteeism” (the opposite of “absenteeism”) in which there is typically an alarming number of workers on the job who shouldn't be, especially workers who should be home sick or at a hospital. So it comes as no surprise then that these same captains of industry fail to acknowledge the fact that the COVID pandemic has been giving workers no other option than to not come to work, especially the nearly 1,000,000 among us who are now deceased.

Aside from one infamous Fox News interview, the business press predictably did little to nothing to give the perspectives of workers, so we took to social media to have our voices heard. We shared our experiences about getting sick, losing coworkers and loved ones, and dealing with maskless customers. We discuss topics that never see the light of day in the mainstream press such as the  life-altering disabilities workers have been experiencing as a result of contracting the coronavirus. We also cheered for the high turnover rates in our industries, watching gleefully as our current and former employers lost their collective shit while trying to keep their operations running. 

Not only have workers been walking off on an individual basis, but we saw several instances of workers quitting en masse. The windows which once displayed signs saying “Nobody wants to work!” were redecorated with new signs proclaiming “We all quit!” Members of labor unions went on strike, withholding their labor until their employers negotiated with their demands. Individually, collectively, permanently and temporarily, the withdrawal of labor has been a hot discussion topic among the working class.

The withdrawal of labor, if exercised properly in a concerted manner, is one of the most powerful weapons we have as workers. Staying on the job can be a weapon as well, but like any sort of job action, it has to happen on our own terms. As mentioned earlier, bosses want us on the job even when we are sick, tired, and even dying. But there are examples of workers staying on the job when the bosses didn’t want them there who seized company property for their own purposes. 

I’m writing this in Detroit, Michigan in the United States of America. One of our most infamous labor events was the 1936 Flint Sit Down Strike in which auto workers occupied a General Motors plant for 3 months so that they could ultimately win the first union contract in the auto industry. Another powerful yet relatively unknown strike (even in the Motor City!), was the Woolworth’s Sit Down Strike of 1937 in which waitresses and retail workers occupied the nation’s largest retailer until their union was recognized and their demands were met. All in all about 150 women participated in this event and it is said that due to the size and scope of the company at the time, the strike would be comparable to having a strike at McDonald’s, The Gap and Walmart at the same time today. Unfortunately it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that we don’t hear about the Woolworth occupation with the same reverence as other actions, largely because- even in some labor circles- our jobs aren’t viewed as “real jobs” and our unions aren’t viewed as “real unions''. 

But nonetheless, restaurants have been the sites of front line struggle for all sorts of social issues. In 1960, once again at a Woolworth’s, black students in Greensboro, North Carolina defied segregationist laws by sitting at the lunch counter and refusing to leave when they were denied service. This wasn’t the first lunch counter sit-in, but it was one of the most pivotal in the US, resulting in the desegregation of lunch counters nationwide. 

Throughout the month of February, Restaurant Worker News will continue to report events as they happen, but we want to pay special attention to the heroes and martyrs who came before us who stayed where they were and refused to leave, who stood their ground, and who shook the systems of power and domination to their core. They didn’t ask for a seat at the table, they took it. As historian Howard Zinn famously said, “What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but “who is sitting in.”

February events that shocked the restaurant industry:

February 26, 1906: “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclaire is published (link)

February 27, 1937:   Woolworth Sit-Down Strike begins in Detroit, MI (link)

February 1, 1960:    Lunch Counter Sit-In in Greensboro, NC (link)

February 13, 1960:   Lunch Counter Sit-In in Nashville, TN (link)

February 29, 1960:  Lunch Counter Sit-In in Tampa, FL (link)

February 22, 1980:  Burger King Workers in Detroit, MI win first fast food union election (link)

February 12, 2005:  IWW Strike at Pizza Time in Olympia, WA (link)

February 22, 2019:  Employees walk off the job at three Sonic locations in Ohio (link)