Posts tagged food service workers
Two Groups of Sofitel DC Lafayette Square Hotel Employees Officially Win Efforts to Free Themselves of Unwanted Unions
March 12, 2026 // Two separate groups of employees of Sofitel Washington DC Lafayette Square have prevailed in their battle to free themselves from the “representation” of Unite Here Local 25 and International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 99 union officials. Their victories were cemented after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) officially certified the results of their votes to remove the unions. Sofitel Lafayette employee Mwandu Chibwe spearheaded the Unite Here “decertification” effort for the more than 60 food service workers, front of house workers, room attendants, and other hospitality workers. The engineers’ and painters’ decertification of IUOE Local 99 was led by Yuri Lishchenko. Both workers received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation.
Rady Children’s Hospital challenges a vote to unionize by frontline workers
January 20, 2026 // Rady Children’s Hospital is challenging a vote to unionize by more than 1,500 frontline workers, including environmental services attendants, patient care assistants, patient access representatives, food service workers, medical interpreters, and medical assistants. The workers cited staffing shortages and working conditions they say affect patient care as the reasons behind the vote to unionize on Jan. 6.
UC Santa Barbara Service and Patient Care Workers Join Strike over Wages, Housing Inequality
November 19, 2025 // The union — American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents about 40,000 food service workers, custodians, hospital technicians, and patient care assistants across the UC system, including around 600 at UCSB — has been in contract negotiations with the university for 22 months. Members of the California Nurses Association who work at UC hospitals also went on strike in solidarity. The key issue: affordability. The union says average frontline workers, who make between $40,000–$60,000 a year, now earn 10 percent less in real wages than before the pandemic.
Op-ed: Can Zohran Make NYC a Union Town Again?
September 9, 2025 // The new mayor could host big online unionization trainings with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have already done. If this led even a small fraction of Zohran’s 60,000-plus volunteers and over 6 million social media followers to start organizing their own workplaces—or to take a strategic job to unionize it—this could potentially generate thousands of new unionization campaigns. And were Mamdani to act upon our proposal to launch a broad Movement for an Affordable New York (MANY), then the pool of new potential workplace organizers would grow significantly.
All major Las Vegas Strip casinos are now unionized in historic labor victory
August 5, 2025 // For 25 years, her employer, the Venetian, had resisted organizing efforts as one of the last holdouts on the Strip, locked in a prolonged standoff with the Culinary Workers Union. But a recent change in ownership opened the Venetian’s doors to union representation just as the Strip’s newest casino, the Fontainebleau, was also inking its first labor contract. The historic deals finalized late last year mark a major turning point: For the first time in the Culinary Union’s 90-year history, all major casinos on the Strip are unionized. Backed by 60,000 members, most of them in Las Vegas, it is the largest labor union in Nevada. Experts say the Culinary Union’s success is a notable exception in a national landscape where union membership overall is declining.
House food service workers, Democrats stage boycott in fight to keep union jobs
July 24, 2025 // Congressional Labor Caucus co-chairs Reps. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) joined food service employees in front of the Capitol building after final votes Thursday to protest the new vendors’ delay in recognizing the Unite Here Local 23 bargaining unit’s existing agreement. Union members are asking lawmakers, staff and Capitol visitors to boycott six of the new venues: Starbucks, Pakistani food restaurant CHA Street Food, Jimmy John’s, Common Grounds, Java House and PX Tacos.
Syracuse University employees to hold public rally after voting against contract offer
August 26, 2024 // According to a spokesperson for the union, workers feel that management has not acknowledged the difficult work employees performed through COVID-19 to keep the university running. The four-year contract would have provided a 3%raise. When juxtaposed with the university's $1.85 billion endowment and the recent rise in total enrollment costs to $88,000 per year per student, union members felt it was an unfair proposal.
Aramark workers at Wells Fargo Center announce strike for 1st home game of Sixers-Knicks playoff series
April 22, 2024 // On Thursday, the Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution to support food service employees in their contract negotiations. The document "urges Aramark to negotiate fair and equitable contracts that provide these workers with a standard minimum wage and healthcare coverage." At Thursday's City Council meeting, union members announced another strike for Thursday, April 25 -- Game 3 of the Sixers-Knicks playoff series and the first time the Sixers will be at home in the first round of the NBA Playoffs.
Workers at Philadelphia sports stadium hit picket lines for one-day strike
April 11, 2024 // The union — which represents people who work at the Wells Fargo Center and neighboring Lincoln Financial Field and Citizens Bank Park, where the Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies, respectively, play — say their wages and benefits are not keeping up with inflation. The union said some staffers who work at all three stadiums make different hourly wages at each site, and union members say they are treated as seasonal workers rather than year-round employees, based on each sport’s season.
Struggling to ‘bring food to our families,’ Olathe schools hourly workers want a union Read more at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/education/article286587730.html#storylink=cpy
March 14, 2024 // Arellano was among more than 70 custodians, paraprofessionals and other hourly workers who packed Thursday’s school board meeting, wearing red, “Union Power” T-shirts. The group of employees, who are not certified so cannot join the teachers union, said they are organizing to form their own union, to advocate for better pay, respect and working conditions. If successful, it would be the first union of its kind in a Johnson County school district. Hourly workers have formed unions in other large Kansas districts, in Lawrence and Wichita. The union, Olathe School Workers United, would be a part of Communications Workers of America, Local 6400, which organized workers in the Lawrence district.