People, we need to talk.
But first, some ground rules. Please, no eye-rolling, stifled yawns or repeated assurances there’s no stigma to seeking mental-health care. In return, not once will I yell “Wolf!” And there’ll be no mention of Taylor Swift or either Kelce brother. The issue here is not what’s buzzing through the grapevine, but what’s not being said: Unions are finally finding traction on their dream frontier, the chain restaurant business.
And no, we’re not talking just about Starbucks or the half-dozen regional coffee chains that have been organized over the last two years. Those gains for organized labor are significant, but not as worrisome as the recent developments only big brands’ government-affairs departments seem to have noticed—if even they have.
That’s because organized labor has money, smarts and powerful allies. It’s figured out how to penetrate a business that had been insulated by franchising, a young workforce and constant employee turnover. With considerable self-infliction from the industry, those drawbacks have been turned into advantages for unions that have the trade in their crosshairs.
Forces no less potent than the federal government are eroding the protections afforded by franchising. To organize a chain, they’d have to woo the staffs of one franchisee after another. The National Labor Relations Board, as much of a pro-union force as you’ll find, has been trying for eight years to kill that natural impediment to unionizing.
Despite significant setbacks, it’s pushing the crazy notion that the employer of a franchised restaurant’s staff and the brand whose uniform the workers wear are virtually one and the same. Organize a mom-and-pop licensee and you can in effect drag the franchisor to the bargaining table as well. That’s what the controversy over the definition of “joint employer” is all about.
There have been plenty of battlefield dispatches from that front since the NLRB took the controversial tack in 2015, as I can personally attest. What’s lesser known are the strides organized labor is making in organizing whole classes of restaurant workers, a phenomenon known as sectoral bargaining. Instead of focusing on Romeo’s Salami Salon, unions are proposing that salami sandwich makers throughout the Northeast stand as one to wrest better wages from their respective employers. That’s why most fast-food workers in California will be paid at least $20 an hour starting next month.
The situation in California is far from the only instance of sectoral bargaining catching hold. The union behind California’s first minimum wage for fast-food workers has followed up that triumph with the launch of a union for all fast-food workers in the state. The California Fast Food Workers Union has been dismissed as more of an empty scare than an actual union. The talk sounds an awful lot like the early dismissals of proposals for a $15 minimum wage.
No, an employer of a member doesn’t have to engage in collective bargaining with the group. But a framework has been set to harness the power of what California Gov. Gavin Newsom has estimated at nearly 600,000 workers within his state. The group is already trying to stir the pot by trumpeting research that shows employees are unaware of their rights under California labor law. But instead of attributing any responsibility for that ignorance to the workers, the group is putting the blame solely on employers.
The California group is one of two cross-employer unions the Service Employees International Union has hatched. Along the country’s other coast, workers from all sorts of restaurants are being invited to join the Union of Southern Service Workers, or USSW. Starbucks’ union issues have been drawing the spotlight, but the venerable Waffle House chain is also getting the attention of organized labor. That focus is coming from the USSW.
The group is also taking the whole restaurant industry to task over a failure to provide back-of-house workers with protection from temperatures that routinely soar beyond 100 degrees.
It’s not an unreasonable demand, which brings us to employers’ responsibility for organized labor’s advances. As a source remarked to me in a recent story on union salts, an old maxim holds that companies get the union they deserve. For eons, the industry has lent credibility to organized labor’s argument that restaurant employees need unions as a safeguard against management excesses. It’s acted as if job applicants were lined up, waiting to take the next available position. If an employee felt they were disrespected or exploited, a replacement was ready to step in.
That hasn’t been the case for about 40 years now, but many employers in the business don’t seem to realize it. Things really came apart during the pandemic, when many companies treated their workers as if they were automatons. Resignations soared.
That churn was once seen as an advantage for the business. How could a worker be coaxed into voting for a union when they’d move on to a new position in a matter of weeks or months, or before a vote could even be held?
Now that turnover is a big attraction for organized labor. If a restaurant is unionized, a position is likely to be held over the course of a year by several individuals. Each hire is required to pay an upfront initiation fee before they begin paying dues—if they even get to that latter stage.
Youth has also morphed into an advantage for labor. In explaining why 400 units of Starbucks has been organized, observers often note the coffee chain’s idealistic and socially aware young workforce. The baristas fitting that description tend to be sympathetic to unions.
Despite all the topspin those factors add, the industry largely yawns when reminded of its potential to be organized. Operators say they have more pressing issues, like inflation.
It seems lost on them that a key threat to their profits is the soaring cost of labor.
Did we mention that fast-food restaurants in California are about to see the minimum wage jump by 25%?