Restaurant Worker News

12/05/2025

On This Day In History (2003):

"More than 100 employees of the upscale Oyster Bar restaurant walked off the job December 5 and held a picket in blizzard conditions outside of Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan. Patrons were left annoyed and disgusted at the service they received as scabs and management tried to keep things running.

The strike was sparked by Oyster Bar management's demand for a pay cut and for new hires to pay $1,600 in annual health care premiums. Management's offer would reduce a dishwasher's pay from an already absurd $8 an hour to $7 an hour.

Jean Massillon is a dishwasher making $8 an hour even after nine years on the job. "Their offer is so unfair," Massillon told the New York Times. "It's extremely hard to support a family on $8 an hour, and now they want to cut dishwashers' wages and have new people pay $30 a week for health insurance."

This is the latest and toughest fight for Local 100, which just beat back city restaurant owners with two recent strikes at the restaurants "21" and La Caravelle. So far, 17 of 25 restaurants have settled since their contracts expired on October 31, 2003.

In addition to the issue of health care, workers are fighting to defend their hard-won union rights. "This fight is about getting rid of the union," said Michael Slater, a shop steward at "21." Now's the time to draw the line against their offensive."

OTHER STORIES BELOW: Congress Hotel Montpelier, Vt., union drive Metropolitan Transit Authority Teamsters Local 705 election

12/05/2025

On This Day In History (1928):

"The Banana Massacre (Spanish: Matanza/Masacre de las bananeras) was a massacre of workers of the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) that occurred between December 5 and 6, 1928, in the town of Ciénaga near Santa Marta, Colombia. A strike began on November 12, 1928, when the workers ceased to work until the company would reach an agreement with them to grant them dignified working conditions. After several weeks with no agreement, in which the United Fruit Company refused to negotiate with the workers, the government of Miguel Abadía Méndez assigned Cortés Vargas as military chief in the Magdalena department and sent 700 men from the Colombian Army to quell the strikers, resulting in the massacre of 47–2000 people (the range owing to the insufficiency of detailed historical records).

U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers' strike as "communist" with a "subversive tendency" in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State. The Colombian government was also compelled to work for the interests of the company, considering they could cut off trade of Colombian bananas with significant markets such as the United States and Europe."

Read More Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre

12/05/2025

The “Red Cup Rebellion” strike of Starbucks workers reached New Hampshire Thursday, when baristas set up picket lines at stores in Epping, Stratham, and Seabrook.

12/05/2025

Last week three Sky Chefs workers went all the way to Europe to have their message heard!

On Thanksgiving Day, our delegation of Sonia (MIA), Morris (MSP), and Leonid (SFO) visited LSG Group offices in Frankfurt, Germany where they sat with Sky Chefs' CEO of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. He listened to us and promised to share our message with Sky Chefs here in the USA, and with Sky Chefs' parent company Aurelius Group.

The next day, they visited Aurelius Group at their office in Munich, Germany but they refused to open the door! They did not want to hear what we had to say, so we made sure they got our message anyway and left our letter at their doorstep.

💪 This was a great success and there is NO DOUBT that Sky Chefs has heard us! We have all the momentum now and we need to continue mobilizing and fighting together this month. Let's keep going! Si se puede / Yes we can!

12/05/2025

Several hundred picketers gathered outside of the Empire State Building, the site of a Starbucks Reserve location and the company's regional headquarters.

12/05/2025

12/04/2025

Many immigrants in Louisiana are worried, including members of New Orleans’ deeply-rooted Vietnamese population: https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/politics/immigration-news/immigration-enforcement/how-the-immigration-crackdown-impacts-new-orleans-deeply-rooted-vietnamese-population/289-9134eec1-2e1e-4fda-be3b-e01f36263b96?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_WWLTV

12/04/2025

Un día como hoy, el 4 de diciembre de 1853, nació en Italia Errico Malatesta, un mecánico italiano y teórico clave del anarcomunismo. Puedes hacerte una idea de su eficacia como organizador a partir de los informes policiales de la época: "El regreso de Malatesta de Londres fue la señal para el despertar del movimiento anarquista en Ancona ... Malatesta se puso inmediatamente a reorganizarlo... En poco tiempo, en Ancona, los anarquistas y simpatizantes suman unos 600 individuos, constituidos predominantemente por portuarios, trabajadores y elementos criminales de la ciudad... sus cualidades de orador inteligente y combativo que trata de persuadir con calma, y nunca con lenguaje violento, se utilizan al máximo para reanimar las fuerzas ya gastadas del partido, y para ganar conversos y simpatizantes, sin perder nunca de vista su objetivo principal, que es reunir las fuerzas del partido y socavar las bases del Estado, obstaculizando su funcionamiento, paralizando sus servicios y haciendo propaganda antimilitarista, hasta que se presente la ocasión favorable para derrocar y destruir el Estado existente". Fue condenado a muerte en tres ocasiones y pasó muchos años en la cárcel o el exilio, pero vivió hasta los 78 años.
Entre otros países donde residió y organizó activamente el movimiento anarquista, tuvo un prominente paso por Argentina entre los años 1885 y 1889, donde fundó los sindicatos Sociedad Cosmopolita de Resistencia y Colocación de Obreros Panaderos. En 1887, como parte de una huelga organizada por el gremio anarcosindicalista de los panaderos, se decidió renombrar las famosas facturas o pasteles argentinos con nombres desafiantes al gobierno, los militares y la iglesia. Estos nombres, como "bolas de fraile" o "cañoncitos", perduran hasta el día de hoy.

12/04/2025

On This Day In History (2024):

https://www.instagram.com/cafastfoodunion/reel/DDLxaXVxYmR/

California Fast Food Workers Union

12/04/2025

On This Day In History (2014):

Read More Here:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/fast-food-strikes

12/04/2025

On This Day In History (1970):

"On December 4 federal marshals arrested Chávez and, for the first time in his life, César Chávez was put in jail. Two days later, he was visited in the Monterey County jail in Salinas by former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete Rafer Johnson and Ethel Kennedy, widow of slain Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy and Johnson were attacked by an anti-union mob on the steps of the jail, and only intervention by city police, Monterey county sheriff's deputies, and the Brown Berets prevented a riot and injury to the visitors. Chávez was released by the Supreme Court of California on December 23, but the next day called a strike against six additional lettuce growers."

The Salad Bowl strike[1] was a series of strikes, mass pickets, boycotts and secondary boycotts that began on August 23, 1970 and led to the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history.[2] The strike was led by the United Farm Workers against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Salad Bowl...

12/04/2025

On This Day In History (1969):

"On 4 December 1969, Chicago Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed by police in Chicago.

Hampton was murdered while asleep in his bed during a raid on his apartment by Chicago Police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton had been drugged earlier in the evening by an FBI informant, who also told agents the location of Hampton's bed, where he slept alongside his nine-month pregnant fiancée, Akua Njeri. Several other Panthers were injured.

Aged just 21, Hampton was an active, charismatic and effective organiser, who had been making significant inroads into making links with working class whites and building a "Rainbow Coalition" including Puerto Rican, Native American, Chicane, white and Chinese-American radicals.

Clark, aged 22, had been active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), before joining the Panthers, establishing a chapter in Peoria, Illinois, and setting up a free breakfast programme for local children. He was acting as security in the apartment at the time of the raid, and had a shotgun in his lap. He was shot in the heart and killed instantly.

Fellow Panthers Blair Anderson, Verlina Brewer, Brenda Harris and Ronald “Doc” Satchel were all wounded in the attack.

Hampton and Clark were amongst the most prominent victims of the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which amongst other things was instructed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to "prevent the rise of a Black Messiah"."

Working Class History

https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10413/fred-hampton-and-mark-clark-killed