The Service Industry Needs Unions

The Service Industry Needs Unions

Working in the food and beverage industry for nearly two decades has time and time again proven one thing; we need unions. The ever revolving door of staff, constant abuse and lack of worker’s rights, and growing corporatization should drive any well minded being to seek unionization. Workers need protection from corporate greed, workers need to be able to advocate for workplace safety, and workers need FULL autonomy of their role in the workplace. It is too often that we hear the saying work/life balance; we need to flip that around. Life comes first and always should. The grind culture is shit and produces nothing but tired worn out staff who have nothing to show for their numb bodies after years of dedication to a bar or restaurant. Your base hourly pay has never increased, benefits change year after year to best suit the employer; do not even think about getting sick or being in an accident that prevents you physically from working. We develop lifelong friendships, fine tune certain skills that pertain to your position, and a growing complacency for abuse. The idea is that the next place will be better and then the next and so on and so forth, but in reality every place is run the exact same way. Squeeze out every dime we can for the business to be successful and pay minimum wage to workers. Workers who will give everything they have: working on holidays, missing family gatherings, unable to attend major life events, and the list can go on. In return, a measly “minimum wage” with tip credit in most places, because the guest will pay the rest of your income. This creates a high stress low reward environment. Why? most guests do not believe that they need to tip for service accordingly because there is this facade by ownership (shops) that they “do right” by the staff. The only things shops do right by staff is provide family meal (an offering of food prior to opening for service which the employee pays for), and provide a platform for the servers and bartenders to do what we do best and provide hospitality. In return a gratuitous 20% is expected for good service, but 25% should be the new norm because minimum wage is still not helping anyone survive without being overworked. People have worked and will continue to work check to check. Unaffordable housing, groceries and an overall shit economy, tanking even further into the depths of no return, because we have for generations not fought back against the oligarchy. The hierarchical system in play with capitalism puts service industry workers in most markets of the US through the meat grinder. The wage gap will continue to grow until American’s decide to Unionize, in every industry.

This industry really is a shit-show:

There are companies like Gin & Luck, parent company to Death & Co, who want to claim they are small businesses, but operate on a world wide scale. Total world cocktail domination does not come with being a small business. When all of your communication is done via Slack, you have positions like CEO, CFO, COO, a head of HR, your small business card gets revoked. When you claim to take care of your staff boldly to the public through social media platforms, interviews, and other media outlets yet fail behind the curtain of the public eye and UNION BUST, you are developing a sense of corporate greed that needs to be met with resistance. You did not accomplish your growth without the ingenuity of the bartenders from your start and every service you were open since. Every research and development session, either on site or off–bartenders were not paid for–further developing your brand. Giving you all the information to fill pages of books to sell to fund more projects. These bartenders were never compensated for sales of their recipes which were a result of intense unpaid labor. Every teaspoon measurement in the ~500 cocktails served a night. Every heated situation fueled by alcohol diffused gracefully or aggressively (the staff was responsible for being security as well). Every broken toilet seat, bathroom door, clogged toilet and sink that was fixed during service. Every pile of puke, puddle of piss, and the occasional schmear of diarrhea that gets cleaned by staff. Every minute detail that gets overlooked by the guest, because it is expected in hospitality so it goes unpaid. Dealing with toxic waste/biochemical warfare, whatever you want to call the bathroom leave behinds, needs to become an up-charge that the so gracious guest leaves behind. When you sign up to bartend or wait on tables you are not graced with the conversation that it is your responsibility to get down and dirty to fix all of these things while mid-service, then go back to your table with a healthy bleach/vomit combo burning through your sinuses, and act like nothing happened and go sell another $20 cocktail.

You are expected to show up to work in 100°+ weather in the middle of a heatwave. The best part is the air conditioning unit does not work properly. Now you have to deal with unsafe working conditions for 12 hours. The air vents collecting so much condensation that it drips in sections on guests. Now there is a new job for you, on top of the infinite others throughout the night. Wipe down the vents periodically. Now we can continue band-aiding every issue without having to pay to actually fix it. Such dramatic heat inside that guests prefer to leave rather than sit and drink a cold cocktail to try and beat the heat. You are open on major holidays, even when historically guest attendance and sales are down drastically. Such dramatic heat that your electrical breaker, that box that controls all of the electricity in your shop, starts to spark and smoke, but the GM decides it is not a big deal so let’s get through service! Surprise surprise, this is a big deal, a really fucking big one.

Fireworks came early this year:

This actually happened the weekend before July 4th, a day that we were given off miraculously. All of the power went out and was out for about 48 hours. Upon arrival for the next opening service there was black mold growing in the walk-in (giant refrigerator that holds all of our syrups, citrus, food, perishables of any kind). The mold spores were airborne and floating around looking for a host body similar to The Last of Us. We were set to open later that evening and use “what we could.” Spoiler alert: NOTHING WAS USABLE. We could open with a very limited menu, but in a shop where 36 cocktails fill your menu, hacking that to about 1/4 is robbing the guests of the experience they came out for. So after about two hours of cleaning and trying to see what could work; we waited for the inside temperature to drop, it never did. We postponed opening until 7pm, maybe the sun slowly setting would help? That did not either, so we closed for the night. Now we were closed for 3 consecutive shifts with not compensation for workers or ownership. It always pays to fix things properly and not just band-aid here and there. Not only were all the workers exposed to unsafe work conditions, we were expected to suck it up and work, but for once we all banded together and said FUCK NO! This was the starting point of what would turn out to be a promising union drive that eventually went south real quick.

Passion and dedication manipulated at the owners behest:

You are expected to just be bounced around from position to position, in a system where they believe everyone is interchangeable, without much of your input. This happened with our door staff, servers and servers assistants (busser/runner). The server assistant position was eventually absorbed into server. There was less than a week notice, no training involved, and a shifting of roles for those who fell to the lower rungs of the hierarchy. The shifting of roles took money out of a few employee’s pockets and forced them to eventually quit and move back in with their parents. New York City, already unaffordable as it is but somehow manageable to scrape on by week to week, now became an unaffordable reality.

At the same time, the bar staff had been told that we needed to tighten up our cocktail ingredient cost. This is rich coming from an establishment that is know for using eau-de-vie (expensive distillate) as a modifier for full fruit flavor. Pull back on the EDV, use it in teaspoon measurements preferably, and try to lengthen that flavor as best as you can. The concept had now become: BIG BRAND’S (who were willing to pay for menu placement). This meant GIANT price breaks for product. The smaller niche brands could still be used, but only if there is nothing else like it. What does that mean? If you find a new an interesting distillate like a durian eau-de-vie and the cocktail is a banger, they will support the buying of the ingredient. If you prefer Tapatio 110° over El Tesoro, that sucks for you; Tapatio is too expensive. We are going to get El Tesoro to pay for menu placement. There was all of this backdoor negotiating that was never open and honest with the staff in a shop that claims to be fully transparent. (I understand the point of capitalism is to make money). The only honesty was when you presented a drink, ingredients would get changed. Usually in the moment to fit the narrative for money, not flavor. Change this to that. This is going to let us make more money than that. I am aware this all sounds like complaining, because it IS. This is a place that would adjust cocktail prices accordingly to meet their profit needs. $50 cocktails were not unheard of and the menu started at $19 and progressively went up. People would nonchalantly order the $50 cocktail because of the pricey ingredients involved: Japanese Whisky, rare Agave distillates, bespoke EDV, etc.

The thing about Death & Co. and bars alike, is that they would not run without the dedication and creativity of those willing to lend their hours outside of work. They would become stale, unwanted shells of their former self. Maybe this streamlined, McDeath & Co way is what corporations seek for progress, but the bar’s character and allure quickly vaporizes into the ether when creativity is put in a chokehold. Now, these types of bars are infested with the patagonia vests, the half-zip mock neck sweater, sunglasses on the head, agent smith, replicants, npcs, the type that does not seek out creativity, the type that does not like to be put out of their comfort zone. Old fashioned with bourbon, paper plane, last word, dirty martini, espresso martini, negroni (the edgy one of the group) are all the drinks these feeble minded capitalists love pouring down their gullet before they go home, crash, and wake up to sell your future from under you. If this is the new normal for you, then run with it. Do not try to reminisce about the past, you are no longer relevant like you used to be, which is fine for capitalism. You are trying to make capital. Do not post about caring about your workers, because you don’t. Do not post about how you “stand” with undocumented workers, because you fired your undocumented workers in one final push to fully corporatize your flagship shop in the east village. You fired them for being undocumented. Lean in fully to your corporate drive and stop pushing the small business narrative. It is ok to enjoy capitalism to its fullest; we here in the US do capitalism so well along with maintaining a patriarchal society, meddling in other countries affairs, and stopping the spread of any idea that does not reinforce the patriarchy.

Death & Co was supposed to be considered a trail blazer in the industry for creativity. Taking the familiar: old fashioned, martini, daiquiri, sidecar, negroni, tropical, highball, champagne cocktail etc. and creating a unique spin on it was the model for Death & Co and bars alike. The combinations and possibilities with this model produces endless riffs on classics, then riffs on a riff which sometimes backfires and becomes too derivative of the original. The model for cocktail making is so good that it has been adopted by at home bartenders and bars all over. (Not accrediting Death & Co for the mr potato head style of cocktail making, but they very much did put it on a globalized scale by publishing books). When I was first asked if I wanted to work there I was hesitant. Never really felt like I was down with that style of bartending, but the idea of creative freedom and ingredient exploration was very promising. I agreed to give it a shot, regretfully for the first six months or so, there was one exception: my coworkers. Once menu R&D was arriving I finally warmed up to the idea of being involved in the cocktail writing process, I was comfortable with the flow and execution of most things and figured out the system at play. What it turned out to be in the end was a burnt turd barely running on the fumes of cocktails past. Geeky scientific methods to create cocktails no longer existed, the machinery broke and was never repaired. When asked for new things that other locations had we were hit with either “no you cannot have a rotovap, they are too expensive.” All the while one of our other locations allegedly had more than one. Just fix the old centrifuge or “I think we can lend one of the four we have in Denver to you guys.” These things never made it to the shop while I worked there for nearly four years. What we were left with was our palates and our drive to find the right flavor combination that was relevant and interesting.

Limited tools, the downsizing of unique spirits, mandatory quarterly meetings, being told to sell merch during our shift, partnering with apps that allow for discounted checks (usually resulting in lower tip percentages). Squeezing every drop out of the shop for profit and expecting more and more out of staff while providing them with less and less was the new method to operating. The stylings of a corporation was looming in the air prior to my arrival, but seemed to ramp up full swing when the company created a chief of operations position, and boy oh boy is this dude squirrelly. We were incentivized with gift cards to our online shop, sorry but a horribly styled t-shirt or a $120 marie antoinette mug is not going to pay my rent. Incentivize us with an hourly raise, not the one mandated by the government, one because we are the ones who are making you money to open up other locations. You might believe it is the “investors” you rake in from your crowd funding techniques who are funding new shops, but these shops would only have the draw they do because of the talent the staff possesses. You are diluting the pool of a very niche market where not everyone excels. Note for your “investors” who are being duped into a sub-par membership to a chain of bars that are running the risk of becoming the next T.G.I.Friday’s, investing usually requires some sort of ROI.