Restaurant Worker News

10/08/2025

On This Day In History (1872):

"On 8 October 1872, Mexican teacher, revolutionary and feminist Elisa Acuña Rossetti was born in Real Del Monte. She wrote for radical newspapers, and was jailed for a time, after which she founded the Fiat Lux newspaper with Juana Gutierrez, whom she met in prison. Going into exile in the US, she formed a group of 300 anarchist women called "Las Hijas de Anáhuac", fighting for better working conditions for women. Acuña Rossetti then became part of the leadership of the anarchist Mexican Liberal Party (PLM) alongside the Flores Magon brothers. During the revolution she joined the partisans of peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, organising propaganda for them, then began editing the La Reforma newspaper with Gutierrez, which was the first Mexican newspaper to champion Mexico's Indigenous people. Much of the rest of her life was spent advocating for and organising education in Mexico's rural Indigenous communities."

10/08/2025

On This Day In History (1969):

"On 8 October 1969 Black Panther activists in New Haven, Connecticut, established the John Huggins Memorial Free Breakfast for Children Program, which served free breakfasts for poor children.
The programme was named after Huggins, a New Haven Panther who had just been murdered by Black nationalists who were being manipulated by the FBI's COINTELPRO operation.
It was established at the Newhallville Teen Lounge on Shelton Avenue, and served meals from 7 AM to 8:30 PM using food and equipment donated by local businesses. The Panthers provided free transport for children to get to the location and then onwards to school, and worked in conjunction with a group called Welfare Moms of New Haven.
It was one of several "survival programs" implemented by the Panthers to help improve the health of working class and poor Black communities, and help them organise for better conditions and radical social change. It fed between 70 and 80 children each day.
The free breakfast for children program eventually fell apart due to violent state repression, which saw many Panthers arrested and killed, but they likely pressured the US government to significantly expand their own free breakfast programs which had been very limited up to that point."

10/08/2025

On This Day In History (1897):

"On 8 October 1897, Antonio Soto, Spanish anarchist, was born. He was heavily involved in the Argentinian revolutionary movement and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA) in the 1920s."

10/07/2025

On This Day In History (2024):

"We realized we were all collectively experiencing many issues besides just the bounced paychecks. I suggested to the group the idea of a petition; it seemed like a good first step to collectivize our grievances. So, in the coming weeks, we continued to meet and workshop together as an informal organizing committee until we had a finalized petition on September 16th with a plan to deliver it to the corporate office on October 7th. It had four demands outlined in it:

1. An end to bounced paychecks and a resolution of payroll issues by the next payday, October 11th.

2. Guaranteed, consistent scheduling with sufficient hours to meet each individual employee’s needs starting November 2nd.

3. Updated and comprehensive training procedures for both management and employees by November 18th.

4. An immediate end to inappropriate comments from management. Management routinely belittled us and talked trash behind our backs to our fellow workers, in an effort to pit us against each other. Other times, they would talk inappropriately to the younger women on staff, using their positions of power to make predatory remarks."

Industrial Workers of the World

Bobcats United IWW Campaign, 2024. “Oh, I don’t know, Bobcat Bonnie’s just isn’t the right environment to organize in. No one else seems to really care enough to take a stand,” I told the facilitat…

10/07/2025

On This Day In History (2018):

Westin San Diego Gaslamp hotel workers, from housekeepers to banquet captains, began walking off the job this week, joining a nationwide protest targeting global lodging behemoth Marriott Internati…

10/07/2025

On This Day In History (2018):

Read More Here:
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2018/10/07/westin-book-cadillac-workers-strike/1557965002/

UNITE HERE Local 24

10/07/2025

On This Day In History (2005):

"Since October 7, workers in Düsseldorf of the worldwide multinational (according to a self-portrayal: “150 branches on five continents, with 26,000 employees”) are on strike. Out of 120 employees, 85 are actively on strike and stay at their strike-tent in front of the company’s gate around the clock. A saying against the strike breakers written with white paint on the street of the company’s ground (“Schleimspur für Streikbrecher”) loosely means continuing to work is the slimy way for scabs to kiss up to management. Passing strike breakers get cat-calls. But visitors who come in solidarity get coffee and rolls and information about the course and background of the strike."

Article from November 2005 with updates on the strike against catering firm Gate Gourmet in Germany.

10/07/2025

Un día como hoy, el 7 de octubre de 1975, el gobierno socialdemócrata del NDP en Columbia Británica, Canadá, presentó el proyecto de ley 146 en una sesión de emergencia para establecer un período de «enfriamiento» de 90 días con el fin de obligar a 50.000 trabajadores en huelga de los sectores forestal, ferroviario, gasístico y alimentario a volver al trabajo. «Acabamos de legislar para que todos vuelvan al trabajo», le dijo el primer ministro a su asistente. «No somos un partido obrero», declaró. «Nuestras raíces están [en] la clase trabajadora, pero no somos un partido sindical». Los sindicatos reformistas se quedaron impactados e indignados, pero cuando llegaron las siguientes elecciones siguieron apoyando al partido, aunque no con tanta energía.

10/07/2025

On This Day In History (1920):

"On 7 October 1920, seamen and firemen at the Dublin docks were on a wildcat strike demanding a pay increase. The stoppage halted exports from Ireland, which reduced the number of cattle for sale at markets by half."

10/06/2025

On This Day In History (1917):

"On 6 October 1917, leading civil rights and women's rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi. The youngest of 20 children, in 1961 Hamer became one of tens of thousands of mostly Black and other women of colour to be sterilised without her knowledge or consent, when a white doctor gave her a hysterectomy while she was supposed to be having minor surgery. Hamer (née Townsend) defied sackings, assassination attempts, arrests and beatings from employers, white supremacists and the police and registered to vote. She then became highly active in the civil rights movement, helping encourage thousands of other Black people across the South to register to vote as well. In 1969 she also founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative, an agricultural collective, to provide jobs and food to empower poor Black farmers and sharecroppers. Later in life she remained active, opposing the Vietnam war and advocating for the poor until her early death aged 59."

https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10661/fannie-lou-hamer-born

10/06/2025

On This Day In History (1971):

"On 6 October 1971, 30 people held a sit-in at the Chepstow pub in London in a protest organised by the Gay Liberation Front, in protest at the landlord refusing to serve LGBT+ people.

The protesters were forcibly evicted by police, after which some were strip-searched and sexually assaulted by officers, including Peter Tatchell.

However, in the wake of the action, the landlord relented and agreed to stop the discrimination."

https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/11403/chepstow-pub-sit-in

10/06/2025

On This Day In History (1932):

"On 6 October 1932, a "penny auction" took place in Nebraska during the great depression, in possibly the first use of this tactic devised by poor farmers. Across the midwest, many poor farmers were being kicked off their land by foreclosures. Local residents and radicals organised militant self defence to stop foreclosed farms from being auctioned off by bank agents and sheriffs. But if auctions couldn't be stopped, then farming communities devised the "penny auction". Farmers would ensure (sometimes by violence or the threat of it) that all attendees of the auctions were part of the action, and so they would make the only bids. One Nebraska resident, Harvey Pickrel recalled: "some of the farmers wouldn't bid on anything at all – because they were trying to help the man that was being sold out." When the auctions began, the foreclosed farmers could bid just one penny and buy back their land, equipment and livestock. The movement was so successful that authorities were forced to bring in legislation, with over 25 states introducing moratoriums against foreclosures to try to quell the unrest."