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Hospitality
Unite Here is the union for Food Service Workers
UNITE HERE has been organizing waiters, waitresses, cooks, and bartenders for over a hundred years since it first received its charter from the American Federation of Labor as the Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Alliance in 1891.
Delegates to the 1893 convention.
Our membership includes over 90,000 food service workers employed in corporate cafeterias, airports, universities, school districts, sports stadiums and event centers, amusement parks, cultural institutions, and national parks. In addition, UNITE HERE represents tens of thousands of restaurant workers inside hotels and casinos.
UNITE HERE members serve food to fans in the stadiums of over half of all major league sports teams and take care of travelers at two-thirds of the large and medium hub airports in the United States. Across North America, food service workers have fought and won pitched battles, forcing this normally low-wage industry to provide affordable family health care, retirement security, and respect on the job.
Local 100 members on strike at the Oyster Bar
No longer employed by individual restaurateurs, our members, now primarily women, immigrants and people of color, face multi-billion dollar corporations. Three multinational companies—Compass, Sodexo and Aramark— employ 75% of all institutional (corporate cafeteria, schools, universities, etc) food service workers, excluding airports.
UNITE HERE has turned the consolidation of the industry to the workers’ advantage, bringing them together coast to coast to take on their common employers in a united campaign. Whether they prepare and serve food for bankers at Goldman Sachs in New York, or for the fans at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles, UNITE HERE members recognize that they work for the same set of employers and that their bargaining power grows the more they organize together.
Nationally, as members struggle in this tremendously difficult economy, we are unwilling to soften our demands. The poorest workers in our society deserve better from the wealthiest companies. We are mobilizing to win better contracts for food service workers and we continue to support the battles of unorganized workers, with our members committed to using their power to fight for the rights of other workers and to build a just economy and society.
UNITE HERE’s long history representing food service workers spans over a century and a wide array of locations. Read below (or click on a specific part of our history) for just a few examples of the struggles that have led to food service workers across North America having a voice on the job and raising standards for their families and co-workers.
- Airports
- Corporate Cafeterias
- Federal Cafeterias
- School Cafeterias
- University Cafeterias
- Major League Sports
Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Rally at LAX.
UNITE HERE in Los Angeles has represented the food service workers at the LAX airport for 50 years. The union’s “Respect at LAX” campaign, launched 15 years ago, has developed groundbreaking new strategies for improving the working conditions of airport concessions workers in North America.
When 300 UNITE HERE members at LAX lost their jobs in 1994 because the Airport Authority brought in new non-union operators, the union partnered with community and clergy leaders. Together they built a formidable coalition that over the next four years successfully lobbied the Los Angeles City Council and Airport Commission to pass a “Worker Retention Ordinance” and the nation’s first “Living Wage Ordinance.” All of the fired workers were also rehired.
Today, most of the food service and retail employees at the LAX, Ontario and John Wayne Orange County airports are members of UNITE HERE. Workers have become vocal and sophisticated players in the political process that affects their lives. Airport Commission meetings in Los Angeles are often packed with concession workers demanding decisions and policies that protect and improve their jobs.
Delaware North Airport Concession Workers
Delaware North workers rally in Los Angeles
UNITE HERE achieved a national Collective Bargaining Agreement with Delaware North Travel Hospitality Services (formerly known as CA One Services) in 1986. Delaware North employs food and beverage and retail concession workers at airports across the United States
The national agreement allows workers in such disparate locations as Nashville, New Orleans, Syracuse and Detroit to join together to negotiate their contracts. The members achieved affordable health insurance nationwide; something that they might not have won had each location been forced to fight the company on its own, particularly in smaller airports in cities with little union presence or in “Right-to-Work” states.
Local 100 workers
For over a century UNITE HERE Local 100 has represented waiters, waitresses, bartenders and cooks at some of New York’s most prestigious eateries. Today, UNITE HERE Local 100 also represents cafeteria workers who serve executives and employees at corporate headquarters and financial institutions like Merrill Lynch and Citibank, along with those who work in New York’s world-famous museums, universities, and cultural institutions.
Local 100 workers
The New York City campaign to organize the cafeteria workers in Wall Street office buildings and at major City landmarks hit its stride in the 1990’s when workers won a major fight against Aramark, the food service provider at investment bank Smith Barney. Supported by Local 100 members, religious and community leaders, the Aramark workers at Smith Barney won their campaign with rallies, civil disobedience actions, Workers’ Rights Board hearings at Trinity Church, and national actions at corporate offices around the country.
Washington DC Federal Food Service
UNITE HERE’s representation of food service workers at federal government buildings in the Washington DC area goes back over 50 years.
Today, UNITE HERE has collective bargaining agreements with the food service companies that run the cafeterias at the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Aviation Administration, Fannie Mae, Federal National Mortgage, the US House of Representatives, the FBI, the National Gallery of Art, the new Executive Office Building, the Old Executive Office Building, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Library of Congress, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Air and Space Museum, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the US Capitol.
Workers on strike at the DC Press Club
In the mid-1980’s, UNITE HERE won an organizing campaign at the upscale dining room and cafeterias at the US Capitol building. The workers, overwhelmingly African-American, voted by a large margin to unionize. They courageously challenged management at what they described as “the last plantation.” During the campaign the workers wore union buttons and staged a walk-out that alarmed Congress. They won respect on the job and major strides in wage levels and benefits.
Chicago Public School Cafeterias
UNITE HERE Local 1 has represented 3500 cafeteria workers at 650 schools in the city of Chicago for over 40 years. The union has fought for and won pensions, affordable family health insurance, and good wages for the mostly part-time employees. The “Chicago lunch ladies” have led the way for other non-teaching school district employees by turning their union into an activist organization. In recent contract battles, the Chicago lunch ladies they have hit the streets by the hundreds to leaflet the public and drew high profile press attention when they delivered a “healthy lunch” to the School District CEO to dramatize their demands.
USC Los Angeles
Demonstration at USC
The 4-year struggle of UNITE HERE Local 11 at the University of Southern California (USC) played a major role in defining Local 11 as a leader in the movement for social justice in LA. From 1994-1998, a coalition of workers, students, faculty, clergy, community organizations and elected officials took on the single largest private employer in the City of Los Angeles and won. Many in the fight called it a “David and Goliath contest,” pitting a university with an endowment that was worth $1.5 billion at the time, and a board of trustees packed with a host of powerful corporate leaders against a group of 500 mostly immigrant food service workers.
The USC workers went on strike four times during the three-year struggle and engaged in at least 10 civil disobedience actions at graduation ceremonies and University trustees’ offices.
The workers’ courage galvanized the community. As the workers fasted for three days at a time while still going to work every day, Local 11 President Maria Elena Durazo fasted for 11 days and then passed the fast to a succession of labor leaders, students and faculty, elected officials, clergy, celebrities and community activists in the “Rolling Hunger” campaign.
The USC Administration ultimately backed down. Today, USC food service employees continue to work directly for the University and have preserved all of their benefits. They recently renewed their union contract in 2009 with a guarantee of free family health care and great raises.
Harvard University
Organized since the 1930s, Harvard University’s nearly 500 food service workers rallied in solidarity with Harvard students when they occupied Massachusetts Hall in 2001 as part of the living wage campaign for campus workers. UNITE HERE Local 26’s Harvard dining hall workers, who were in negotiations with the University at the time, brought students’ meals to them throughout the occupation. UNITE HERE members also galvanized the students with rallies, including one with 500 workers and student supporters that shut down Harvard Square.
As student Allegra Churchill wrote from inside Mass Hall, “with the thud and rattle of people on the move, HERE Dining Services Union Local 26 came marching in through the wrought iron gates of Harvard Yard.... We crowded into the half opened windows to cheer and wave back, and the people who couldn't fit out the windows jumped up and down and hugged each other at the sheer energy of that mass of red T-shirts and the voices of solidarity that were unleashed outside.”(1)
Universities in Connecticut
UNITE HERE Local 217 has represented college and university cafeteria workers in Connecticut since the 1970’s. Through aggressive and ongoing organizing campaigns, the Local has reached over 80% density in the industry statewide, and has achieved excellent working conditions, including affordable or free family health care and wages around $20 per hour.
Workers on strike at Yale University.
UNITE HERE’s high-profile campaigns at Yale University in New Haven, where the union represents upwards of 2500 workers, have inspired workers at several other Ivy League colleges to stand up and unionize.
Unite Here on Strike at Vancouver GM Place.
UNITE HERE members and beer and hot dogs at major league sports stadiums go back a long way. UNITE HERE has been representing concessions workers at sports stadiums since at least the 1950’s. Today, UNITE HERE members staff the concessions for over half of all major league sports teams, and ongoing organizing drives aim to unionize the rest of the industry.
NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL—all four leagues count on dedicated UNITE HERE members to deliver the kind of service the fans expect. Despite the seasonal and part-time nature of the jobs, many of UNITE HERE’s contracts in stadiums include affordable health care, high wages and guaranteed hours. Some workers count on their part-time union stadium jobs for the health insurance they don’t have at their full-time jobs!
Unite Here on Strike at Vancouver GM Place.
As teams and cities build new state-of-the-art stadiums, UNITE HERE has protected the jobs of the concessions workers; winning agreements for them to be hired at the new venues with their union contracts intact.
Notes
1 Allegra Churchill, “Living Wage Sit-in Galvanizes Students, Community” Peacework Magazine, May 2001, online at http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0105/010516.htm
