Restaurant Worker News

01/10/2026

On This Day In History (2023):

Union of Southern Service Workers

327 likes, 20 comments. “TODAY: Bread workers held a sip-in near Atlanta to deliver a demands letter management for fair and consistent scheduling, an end to discrimination, higher wages, and more. Worker Brandon Beachum shares why we’re organizing!”

01/10/2026

On This Day In History (2007):

"On 10 January 2007, workers in Guinea began a general strike, calling on president Lansana Conte to resign. One group of workers taking part in the strike were customs workers, who blocked the exportation of food. This resulted in thousands of tonnes of fish being denied export permission, and so having to be sold in Guinea itself, resulting in lower prices for local consumers.

On January 22, strikers marched towards Parliament in the capital, Conakry, but were stopped by security forces at the 8 Novembre bridge, who then opened fire. At least 11 workers were killed and 100 injured.

After 18 days of the strike and between 56 and 90 deaths, the strikers won significant concessions. These included substantial reductions in prices of fuel and rice, and the president agreeing to accept the position of a prime minister with executive powers."

Working Class History

01/10/2026

On This Day In History (1977):

"On 10 December 1977 around 40 mostly women workers at the Continental Hotel in Kokor, Palau, walked out on strike in pursuit of numerous demands.

Their demands included: a minimum wage of $1 per hour, a 40 hour workweek rather than 32, the abolition of pre-employment police checks, for training materials to be available in Palauan and more. Palau was at that time nominally under the control of the United Nations, but effectively was run as a US colony.

On the first day of the strike, the hotel manager called the police, then drove his car into the picket line, injuring several workers. The police failed to take any action against him. Later, the hotel fired all of the workers, but they kept up the struggle for at least four months.

As time went on, it developed into a pro-independence struggle, with strikers holding banners with slogans like: "Tia Beluad!" ("This is our country!"), "We Don't Want Foreign Exploitation!" and "Justice to the Workers!"

Police, who were trained in the US, repeatedly arrested and harassed the strikers, and threatened to shoot them."

Working Class History

01/10/2026

On This Day In History (1894):

"On 10 January 1894, the Donghak Peasant Revolution began, as more than a thousand Korean peasants rose up and seized a county office in the town of Gobu, freeing wrongly convicted prisoners and returning the government’s harsh levies on local produce to rice farmers. Although the uprising started as a response to local problems, such as the construction of a water reservoir that was used as a pretext by a corrupt local magistrate to collect heavy taxes, it quickly spread throughout the southern regions of Korea, thanks to the influence of the egalitarian and syncretic Donghak religion, which was persecuted by the Neo-Confucian Korean state for preaching the dismantling of social hierarchy.

The peasant army defeated several government forces sent to put down the rebellion, and demanded land reform, the punishment of corrupt officials and the abolition of slavery. Unwilling to give in to the rebels’ demands, the Korean government requested the Qing dynasty for military intervention, which further prompted Japan to send its own troops to protect its imperial interests in Korea. The rebels, now motivated by an anti-colonial mission to liberate Korea from foreign influence, engaged Korean government and Japanese forces, but were decisively defeated at the Battles of Ugeumchi and Taein in late 1894, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of peasants and the capture and ex*****on of leader Jeon Bong-jun who wrote before his death, “I have done no wrong but the justice of loving the people”.

Today, the uprising is remembered by Koreans as a watershed, in which the minjung (a Korean term for “oppressed masses”) rose up to fight injustice and corruption, and to defend their country from imperialist influence."

Working Class History

01/09/2026

Un día como hoy, el 9 de enero de 1945, nació en Trinidad la bioquímica y radical negra Altheia Jones-LeCointe. Más tarde se trasladó a Gran Bretaña, donde en la década de 1970 se convirtió en una destacada activista de los Panteras Negras británicos y fue una de las personas detenidas y absueltas en el juicio ra***ta de los 9 de Mangrove. Nueve personas de raza negra fueron acusadas de 39 delitos tras una redada policial en el restaurante caribeño Mangrove, en el barrio londinense de Notting Hill, con el objetivo de desmantelar la organización antirra***ta de la comunidad negra. Jones-LeCointe y su coacusado, Darcus Howe, se representaron a sí mismos durante los 55 días que duró el juicio, que terminó con la primera declaración judicial que reconocía que la policía británica perseguía a la población negra por «odio racial».
Estos hechos aparecen en la película de 2020 Mangrove, de Steve McQueen, en la que Jones-LeCointe es interpretada por Letitia Wright.

01/09/2026

On This Day In History (1933):

"Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. Its target audience was the middle- and upper-class members of society—those who were more likely to be well educated—and it exposes the poverty existing in two prosperous cities: Paris and London. The first part is an account of living in near-extreme poverty and destitution in Paris and the experience of casual labour in restaurant kitchens. The second part is a travelogue of life on the road in and around London from the tramp's perspective, with descriptions of the types of hostel accommodation available and some of the characters to be found living on the margins...
..Down and Out in Paris and London was published on 9 January 1933 and received favourable reviews from, among others, C. Day Lewis, WH Davies, Compton Mackenzie and JB Priestley. It was subsequently published by Harper & Brothers in New York. Sales were low, however, until December 1940, when Penguin Books printed 55,000 copies for sale at sixpence."

Read More Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London?fbclid=IwAR2tCqM3MyxeL445AHXBVhwlKJzWow23u3Rh5ogwr4XjBVd1rIQUHFNUEG8

01/09/2026

On This Day In History (1945):

"On 9 January 1945, biochemist and Black radical Altheia Jones-LeCointe was born in Trinidad.

Later moving to Britain, in the 1970s, Altheia was a leading activist in the British Black Panthers, and was one of the people arrested and acquitted in the racist trial of the Mangrove 9. Nine Black people were charged with 39 offences following a police raid of the Mangrove Caribbean restaurant in London's Notting Hill, which was undertaken in order to disrupt Black anti-racist organising efforts. Jones-LeCointe along with her co-defendant Darcus Howe represented themselves during the 55-day trial, which ended with the first official acknowledgement that British police targeted Black people due to "racial hatred", in the judge's closing statement.

These events were featured in the 2020 film, Mangrove by Steve McQueen, in which Jones-LeCointe was played by Letitia Wright."



Working Class History

01/09/2026

On This Day In History (1931):

"On 9 January 1931, a riot broke out in Adelaide, Australia, against the government decision to remove beef from unemployment rations. A group met at the union office at Port Adelaide, however union leaders declined to support the march. So the group headed off with red flags and were met by 1,000 unemployed people who had marched from the Labour Exchange. They headed to government buildings, where clashes occurred with police, including by women participants, and the crowd fought police with bricks and sticks."

Working Class History

01/08/2026

01/08/2026

Union members at the Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency hotels ratified a new three-year contract on Thursday.

01/08/2026

Un día como hoy, el 7 de enero de 1913, una huelga por la jornada de 8 horas empezó en Perú luego de que los trabajadores rechazaron las propuestas de los empleadores. En el Callao, hubo un paro total de la industria, ya que los trabajadores del gas, trabajadores de molinos, tipógrafos, panaderos y otros sindicatos se declararon en huelga. Esta huelga se sumó a otras posteriores y, tras una lucha de años, los trabajadores consiguieron en 1919 la oficialización de la jornada laboral de 8 horas.