Service workers facing cuts

I HAVE worked in restaurants for seven years and have often been the victim of wage and benefit cuts whenever the bosses are not satisfied with their profits.

Currently, I am a service worker for a company that owns several restaurants in Western Massachusetts. In the midst of the current economic crisis, the owner is trying to force my fellow workers and me into submitting to his demands for wage cuts and slashed benefits.

This week, in lieu of a face-to-face meeting (likely because the owner knew he would face outrage and confrontation), a memo was sent to the managers of all the company’s restaurants laying out the new rules of operation.

The wait staff and the kitchen staff are no longer allowed to eat any food or have a beer on the house, even on the busiest of nights. While this may seem insignificant, getting food as an employee of a restaurant is part of the wage. As a result, this amounts to a pay cut. We are now responsible for feeding ourselves after working anywhere from eight to 13 hours on our feet without a chance to eat. Even with our employee discount, the owner is still making a profit off our food and beverage purchases while we work.

The middle management is now forced to work seven days a week (whereas they used to be able to take a day or two off) with no pay raise, and are no longer allowed to have a host on shift because this drives up labor costs. This has also led to layoffs of those who used to host and are now unable to get any hours due to the cuts, and makes more work for managers and servers.

In addition, managers and people who work in the kitchen used to be entitled to a paid vacation once a year--which is hardly a privilege for people who have worked for more than a decade for 60-80 hours a week for this company. Losing this vacation is especially devastating for those who work almost every day of the year so that they might visit their family in Central American for a small amount of time.

The same week the memo came out, the general manager left for Mexico for a two-week vacation, a slap in the face to every worker at the company. The general manager’s car was vandalized the night we found out about the cuts, left with a broken taillight and a homophobic slur scratched into the paint on the side.

While few of us are shedding any tears over his car, homophobia must be combated at the workplace, even when it is used to denigrate a boss. As Black Panther Huey P. Newton once said, “We should not attach names normally designated for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people.” There are plenty of names the general manager deserves to be called that don't single out oppressed groups.

It is unclear who committed this act of vandalism, but it would be an outlandish coincidence for it to have been somebody outside of the company. Although it did not improve the situation for the workers, it is an indication of anger and the sense of injustice that we all feel.

The general manager not only makes more money than any employee or manager, but also has the most control over the decisions that affect workers most. While servers and cooks are at the restaurant day in and day out, we have no say in what time we open, how much staff should be on, whether or not we deserve a meal during our shift, etc. I cannot speak for all of my coworkers, but I think that the cuts should come from the general manager's inflated salary and from the owner's deep pockets.

Resistance to these cuts so far has been limited to independent acts of defiance, such as a de facto slowdown in the kitchen due to lowered morale, and the manager allowing us to eat food for free on occasion even though we are not supposed to. These acts are representative of the rage that workers feel, but the economic crisis has created a contradictory climate where the line from bosses, politicians and the mainstream media is: "You are lucky to have a job at all."

One rumor going around is that the owner is hoping everyone will quit so that he can hire a new staff at lower wages. With record unemployment levels, bosses often try to use the unemployed as a “reserve army of labor,” which drives wages down and curbs the ability of workers to fight back for fear of being easily replaced.

We know that the bosses can certainly afford to exploit us less. The number of vacations they take each year and the fancy cars they drive are a testament to that. However, as long as workers are divided and unorganized, bosses will continue to use the economic crisis as an excuse to pocket more of what we produce.

We are all scared of losing our jobs in the worst economy since the 1930s. But the 1930s bore another lesson: that of the need for solidarity. Often, restaurants are decisively divided along gender and race lines. While my boss employs women and men, native and foreign born, there is a divide between the front and the back of the house along these lines. The kitchen works longer hours (sometimes for less pay) than the front of the house, and sometimes these workers voice resentment for the front of the house on this basis. But it is not the U.S.-born servers making the wage cuts that we are experiencing, it is a direct order from the top.

Without a clear understanding of the real oppressor, the restaurant employees will be unable to fight back at all. These divisions serve to divide and weaken our power while strengthening the bosses' hand and deflecting blame away from him.

Only a united struggle of the wait staff, kitchen staff and even middle management that transcends race and language barriers and refuses to concede to any excuses from the boss will win us higher wages and benefits. This is the lesson we need to learn from the recent successful sit-in by workers from the Republic Windows & Doors—a lesson that service workers in restaurants across the country should be discussing and debating as the economy gets worse and the bosses try to compensate for their lost profits by taking even more from workers.

It is our obligation as socialists to convince our coworkers that we, the people who keep the restaurants up and running, are the subjective factor in determining whether or not we are forced to make do with less in order to maintain our bosses' lives of luxury.

Service workers unite!
Anonymous service worker, Northampton, Mass.