Wave of Restaurant Worker Organizing Rolls On

Workers at three high profile Minneapolis restaurants – Kim’s Uptown, Colita, and all four Cafe Ceres locations –  have recently gone public with campaigns to unionize. These developments make it clear that December 2023’s First Avenue victory was not a fluke but rather the start of a growing wave of restaurant and entertainment industry organizing in the Twin Cities. As with First Avenue, the Confluence-supported partnership between Unite Here Local 17 and Restaurant Opportunities Center Minneapolis (ROC) set the stage for these workers to come together and build power.

Cross-racial solidarity at the center of both campaigns

Restaurants are notoriously difficult workplaces to organize. High turnover is one factor. Another is the common division between front of house and back of house workers. As ROC Minnesota Executive Director Sheli Stein said:

“In this industry there’s a stark racial division between front and back of house workers. Front of house means servers, hosts, bartenders, and these are the higher paying jobs held by more White people, versus the back of house workers in the kitchen who make less and are largely Black and Brown people, including a lot of people with immigration concerns. Generally speaking, the back of house people have a lot more to lose.” 

Stein went on to explain how helping to build solidarity between front and back of house is a key focus of ROC’s leadership development with restaurant workers. “Maybe you could win [with just front of house workers], but that’s not the organizing we’re doing. That’s the racial justice framework: unless we’re seeking to bridge that division that the boss uses every day, it’s not the organizing we want to do.” The groups from Kim’s, Colita and Cafe Ceres have embraced this mindset as key to succeeding in their union campaigns.

Service fee + short shifts = small paycheck

Workers organizing at Kim’s, Colita, and Cafe Ceres are all calling for respect, higher pay and a voice in setting workplace policies. At Kim’s, predictable scheduling is also a major issue, and the reasons for this illustrate why it is so important for workers to have a voice in the workplace.

Kim’s has a no tipping policy and substitutes a 21% surcharge on each bill, which translates to a steady hourly wage. While purportedly meant to benefit workers, the workers themselves say that the surcharge actually makes their pay less predictable. Restaurant shifts often don’t have a hard ending time; for example, a shift may start with 8 servers to cover the dinner rush, then as business slows down toward the end of the night 5 will be cut and 3 will stay until closing time. In a tipping establishment, a short, busy shift nets a server a similar amount to a longer, slower shift, but under the system at Kim’s, getting cut early significantly reduces a worker’s pay, making predictable scheduling critical for these workers. This type of unintended, negative consequence is unfortunately common when workers lack a voice in shaping workplace policies, as summed up in the organizing slogan “Nothing about us without us is for us.”

What happens next?

Back in December, a delegation of First Avenue workers presented owner Dayna Frank with a petition showing that 74% of the workers at First Avenue Productions’ 7 Twin Cities music venues wanted to join Local 17. Confronted with this reality, Frank voluntarily recognized the union and the two sides are now in the process of bargaining their first contract. Indeed Brewing made the same decision in April when their workers announced their plan to unionize.

So far neither Anne Kim, owner of Kim’s, or Daniel del Prado, owner of Colita and Cafe Ceres, have done the same. Del Prado has remained silent while Kim has released a public statement rejecting her workers’ assessment that they need a union. So the next step for both of these groups of workers will be a formal vote. If a majority of them vote for the union (as they did at the informal petition stage), the bosses will have to recognize their workers’ decision and begin contract negotiations. 

As to what’s next for the Twin Cities restaurant and hospitality industry, the wave of organizing facilitated by the partnership between ROC and Local 17 shows no signs of slowing down. 

Additional reading:

Workers at Daniel del Prado’s Colita, Café Cerés seek to unionize (startribune.com) 

Here’s Why Workers Are Pushing to Unionize at Kim’s – Eater Twin Cities

With her workers set to vote, Ann Kim says she doesn’t think a union is needed – Bring Me The News

Leaked messages show Ann Kim’s Uptown restaurant urged workers to reject union (msn.com)