Organizing the Postindustrial Work Force: Lessons from the History of Waitress Unionism

Unionisation in the Dublin hotel industry

“…Such was the signi®cance of this drive that by the end of the 1940s most craft workers in union strongholds such as New York, San Francisco and Detroit worked under union contract. Even unskilled female waitresses became signi®cantly unionised, their union ranks expanding nationally to almost a quarter of the total workforce in this period (Cobble, 1991). Similarly there are sporadic references to the participation of hotel workers during periods of heightened class activity elsewhere (Orwell, 1938;Danos and Gibelin, 1986;Robinson, 1999).…”

“…Like their American counterparts (Cobble, 1991), the organisation of the union was initially based on craft divisions amongst workers. Through the use of extensive apprenticeship training and the ability to be able to control recruitment into the industry, such as through the vetting of prospective porters, the union was able to exert considerable control over employers.…”

“…Historically, New York provides the most signi®cant example of this, where 90% of the city's hotel and restaurant workers had become unionised by the 1950s (Horowitz, 1960). This level of unionisation was particularly sharp amongst certain jobs within the industry, such as waitressing, and was mirrored in other key cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit (Cobble, 1991). The signi®cance of hotel unionism in the USA was such that by the 1970s the Hotel, Restaurant and Employees International Union (HERE) was the eighth largest af®liated union to the American Federation of Labour Committee for Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), with some 400 000 members (Hyman, 1975).…”

“…As Cobble (1991) poses in relation to the USA hotel and catering industry, what sort of union appeals to a workforce, employed in decentralised service operations rather than large scale goods production, and ªcasualisedº with only marginal attachment to an individual employer' (p. 420)? In addition, unions in the past have been more accustomed to organising within a production led rather than a predominantly service led environment (Riley, 1985).…”

The Future of Work

“…Moreover, these data also raise questions about how union membership could be made more "portable" especially for workers changing jobs within the same occupation or industry. Thus it is important for unions to explore occupational-based membership, different membership categories, and an increased range of employmentrelated services that workers could carry into non-union workplaces (Freeman 1995: 533-534;Cobble 1991;AFL-CIO 1985;Chowcat 1995).…”