CW: While there is not explicit detail of any circumstances this article does make mention of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at work.
In March 2020, the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic based layoffs in the United States, a trend on Instagram and Twitter took off; restaurant and retail workers sharing experiences and mistreatment in the industry. From personal campaigns against former employers, to anonymous publicization of some of the worst, of-whispered about abuses in kitchens. Stuff that Anthony Bourdain long described as the hyper-macho “Pirate Crew” culture of a kitchen. It should not be surprising for basically anyone who has read that book (or worked in a restaurant) that harrowing tales of sexual abuses, emotional manipulation, violence, and wage theft have long been the norm in the industry. Nearly nine months later, the horror stories continue to flow in.
The Techno-utopian (read: liberal, but cyber) vision of The Internet being a great equalizer, a voice for anybody, a democratizing force capable of toppling oppressive regimes, seems rightfully silly in the year of our lord 2020. The heads of these Silicon Valley firms have stood before the Senate on numerous occasions because their algorithms are easily manipulated, benefiting the conspiracy minded right-wing; or, because their entire business model relies on gathering nominally private data for marketing purposes. And from a political perspective for the “left,” social media has not fulfilled its promise of evening the playing field. Time after time massive online campaigns with passionate young activists led to brutal losses to people that constantly post-cringe. Bernie lost to Biden, and here in Portland, Ted Wheeler fended off Sarah Iannorone and #WriteInTeressaRaiford. Again and again, the social media hype machine provides an inflated sense of autonomy, while servicing those in power. A new “grassroots” funding model for Democrats to make it seem like working-people get a say one $27 donation at a time. Bernie please stop texting me.
A Voice Without A Fist
Outside of the electoral wasteland these sophisticated online campaigns deliver similar disappointing results in the workplace. In cities all around the United States 86’dList Instagrams popped up for workers to anonymously submit workplace horror stories, in return the Instagram accounts would begin to wage an air war campaign against employers. Mostly they ignore it and some anti-survivor trolls attempt to cast doubt on the stories. Really the best case scenario is a local newspaper covering the “controversy,” and the boss just gives a public apology of some sort. But most often the buck stops here. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook comments blow up for a few days until the boss turns off comments. It probably even sends the owner into a panicked spiral for a bit, but then some time passes. Maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe not even a day. The company stays open, makes money, and the conditions are unchanged. The loud bark faded into an unfortunate echo. The story wasn’t what ignited others to rise up. While the Internet is a voice for the voiceless, it remains a voice without a fist.
Many of these stories had been whispered about for years, sometimes printed in best-selling books, and now food blogs write about the “Restaurant World’s Reckoning.” Naturally it is an outpouring of righteous anger and rage at bosses in an industry that covers up abuse, an industry held up by hyper exploitation of immigrant workers they performatively pretend to support. But without organization, without solidarity, without worker power callouts are at best cathartic, but at worse retraumatizing and numbing for the restaurant worker in the scroll hole. Either way it puts the cart before the horse. Something that could be an agitational issue or better yet leverage for an organized group of workers, and lets management off the hook. Capitalists understand the PR fight all too well, and they understand the futility of “what can one worker do?” as we have to burnout and move onto another job to survive.
The Instagram air battle typifies a “mobilization approach” to change, a style that Jane McAlevey describes in her book No Shortcuts as a strategy that avoids what’s necessary to empower a mass movement of working people to become agents in political struggle. McAlevy writes:
“too often they are the same people: dedicated activists who show up over and over at every meeting and rally for all good causes, but without the full mass of their co-workers and community behind them.”
While this is complicated by these Instagram don’t entirely line up with the union/non-profit staffer definition, they borrow the same framework. The poster substituting for the non-profit or union officer advocating for others and attempting to generate online buzz. It relies on the same model of drumming up numbers of already engaged people, often low in numbers, industrially dispersed (not direct co-workers), and more willing to advocate for others rather than take risks on the job themselves. As McAlevey goes on to further demonstrate:
“it matters little who shows up, or, why, as long as a sufficient number of bodies appear—enough for a photo good enough to tweet and maybe generate earned media.”
We can recognize that these stories are horrible, the way bosses treat workers with impunity should itself move people to say enough is enough. But it also begs the questions—why aren’t things changing? Why is it that amidst all these callouts the White elite owners remain relatively intact?
From the muck of an industry like food service something new is needed to shift this. Well new as in over a hundred years old, but mostly forgotten for the past fifty. McAlevey contrasts the mobilization approach with organizing, or better put, deep organizing, where, “specific injustices and outrage are the immediate motivation, but the primary goal is to transfer power from the elite to the majority.”
This is not accomplished through agitation alone, it requires patience and commitment with a complicated working class that isn’t yet involved. The goal is not to seek recognition and to shame individual bosses, it is to bring everyday working people into the process of strategizing and building a democratic organization—a union. Our co-workers may not be commenting, but nonetheless together we uphold the industry by making the food. Everyday workers in the kitchen, taking orders, and delivering food necessarily need to see each other as the solution to our collective problems. That takes building consensus. One on one conversations where we really listen to our co-workers problems and deliberate solutions to take back the power rather than hope we can change the boss through our words or “brand damage” among fellow extremely online twenty-somethings.
Organizing is scary, it absolutely is a risk, but to build the deep trust and to fundamentally move people to take action directly, organizers must personally understand the risks they ask others to take. Our co-workers are smart, people understand how far righteous anger has gotten us. If we are going to take that risk together we ought to make a plan to win together.
#NotMyStellas
This is not to say that these callouts do not serve a purpose. Workers need to feel heard. Workers want to feel recognized when bosses did them wrong. Knowing that other people are listening can be a revelation when bosses attempt to silo information and “get ahead of the narrative.” To truly hold the hospitality industry profiteers it takes long sustained organizing. Conversations between co-workers that lead to action in the shop, that hits bosses where it hurts. Workers need to build that organization that can turn amorphous issues and abuses, turn them into collective demands widely and deeply felt between co-workers, and turn those demands into a strategic, actionable timeline of increasing escalations to extract concessions.
These stories can play a role in agitating co-workers, riling up community support, and getting word out to more and more workers across the industry. But it would be even stronger if instead of anonymous adhoc callouts, it was in conjunction with a set of goals. If workers could follow up these calls of malfeasance by letting the boss know these conditions must be changed or the food stops coming out. Things might be different if when workers make a threat they show the boss they can follow up and execute it too.
One case of spontaneous Instagram campaign against abusive management turned into an organizing campaign is Stella’s, a chain of bakeries/cafes in Winnipeg, Canada. In 2018, @NotMyStellas was created to try holding predatory managers accountable for “sexual harassment, sexual assault, and unfair labor practices. This was a sustained effort of current and former members at the restaurant, building support amongst workers, and even after successfully getting the Vice President of the company fired, workers kept organizing. In 2019 workers ultimately decided to form a union to continue to bring the boss to heal. Workers continued to build sustained militancy and now are on an open-ended strike for better wages and working conditions as part of UFCW Local 832.
Did the wave of Instagram posts need to come first or the union effort? Impossible to say, but also impossible to separate the two. Here the callout and shop floor actions work together. A bark and a bite.
#MutualAid
With rising COVID cases, and another shutdown (coupled with more layoffs), it is abundantly clear that the government and bosses of the world are not coming swooping down to save us. The first time around many bosses took the PPP loans and ran: some chains opened new stores, some remained open for takeout, but others just cut their losses and closed up shop. Workers got $1200 once and long ass afternoons listening to hold music at the unemployment office. For working people this means another round of posting their Venmos and Gofundme accounts, where workers pass around $50, having to shout traumas and levels of marginalization as a beg for scraps. These mutual-aid projects haphazardly fill a hole the bosses of the world refuse to provide, but the truth is it will never be enough.
While undoubtedly necessary, social media mutual-aid efforts force workers into a bind: continue recreating the same systems of charity and social service, except without any capital. Even when someone puts “BIPOC to the front” it is inherently unequal as individuals have to rely on word of mouth in the activist scene and existing chosen social connections. This isn’t to say stop doing this, it just means the vicious cycle of tragedy-charity-rinse-repeat has to end. If not only because it just leaves workers a little poorer each time. It really would be a shame if activist platforms, even with the best intentions, continued to be relegated to recreating the advocacy and mobilization service model. Try to generate outrage and administer small donations full time, in the same futile online economy created to sell us the brunch we make.
Bosses don’t respond to what’s “right”
Workers need to feel like it’s possible to win. It is time to stop accepting being right all the time, being upset, and correctly identifying that conditions are abhorrent. Stop trying to make the boss listen, and start taking power back. This means we have to be stronger, solidarity from the line to the reg. This means not only going beyond individual “bad bosses,” but beyond Instagram DMs. The road forward is a long one full of one-on-one conversations with co-workers about the issues most affecting them, meetings, and small actions on the shop floor to show workers mean business.
This will inevitably lead to complicated conversations that might lead issues and campaigns in different directions. This is good. Institutions are built on trust, the goal of organizers ought to be to get our co-workers to believe in each other instead of believing in the boss. And while one step is getting co-workers to stop believing that the bosses of the world can help us bring about positive change for workers, we also need our co-workers to believe change is possible at all. Bosses need to understand that their fear tactics and claims that “this is just one disgruntled former employee” are dogshit. However righteous we may be, the long and painful burden of change always necessarily rests on workers acting collectively. It’s our only way.