Posts tagged Union of Southern Service Workers
Diner Chain Waffle House Underpaid Workers, Union Alleges in Federal Complaint
September 24, 2024 // According to the complaint, servers spent on average two to three hours of a seven-hour shift performing non-tipped work. The USSW estimates servers lose as much as $46.8 million in unpaid wages annually due to the alleged violations. These infractions are not uncommon in the industry: a 2012 Labor Department investigation of more than 9,000 restaurants found more than 84% of them violated tip credit rules, resulting in millions in lost wages.
Georgia Today: Waffle House workers try to unionize; Chatham County DA race; Ocmulgee Mounds park
May 3, 2024 // Workers attachment to the system and commitment to tip earning, is exponentially higher in the fine dining sector, where menu prices are higher, and tips are higher too. Amanda Andrews: But a 20% tip on the Waffle House All Star special is just $2.30. Goldberg says the instability of the restaurant industry in general is another reason wages are low.
Different kind of union campaign targets Waffle House
February 22, 2024 // The Waffle House campaign does follow several years of growing union action, some of it successful, including high-profile national contracts with American automakers, the film industry, American Airlines and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Georgia wins among grad students at Emory, truck drivers at Georgia Tech, bus-maker Bluebird, and about a half-dozen Starbucks locations. There have been failures, too, including rejection of a union at a hip Athens brewery. At the same time, legislators in Georgia — where laws already tilt against unions — are now pushing a bill that would further crimp efforts at organizing.
‘I don’t think it’s too much’: Waffle House workers push for $25 an hour
October 16, 2023 // John Schuessler, a Waffle House worker in South Carolina, explained that due to the low wages, he struggles to afford groceries, clothes for his child, are behind on mortgage payments Pauletta Dillard, a Waffle House server in South Carolina, said the $3 an hour pay plus tips has been roughly the same pay for the past two decades, while more work is put on workers. Workers also explained the security issues they face working the third shift, where customers are often intoxicated and violence in the restaurant between customers or directed at workers has occurred and fights at the chain have often gone viral.
Unions seek gains in hostile territory: ‘If you change the South, you change America’
September 15, 2023 // The Union of Southern Service Workers, an SEIU-backed group, is organizing low-wage workers from across the service industry. The National Domestic Workers Alliance, a non-union membership organization, is mapping blue-leaning Southern jurisdictions, such as Miami-Dade County, that could be open to enacting a floor of labor standards for homecare. That effort has already led to the passage of “Bill of Rights” legislation in 10 states and four cities. And the Southern Workers Assembly, an advocacy group for both union and non-union workers, is trying to educate and organize workplaces across the region.
Dunkin’ faces first union push in 12 years
September 5, 2023 // Recently, SEIU’s Union of Southern Service Workers has begun working toward a new model of unionism that relies on a combination of organizing across industries in specific cities, shop floor actions and regulatory pressure campaigns. The USSW’s strategy resulted in a strike at a South Carolina Waffle House earlier this summer, and a march on the boss at an Atlanta Dunkin’ earlier this month. Why BCTGM, which is not affiliated with SEIU, chose to pursue a union election at a 23-person Dunkin’ Donuts in Ohio is not clear. But it could signal that the upsurge in labor activity at the margins of the restaurant industry has not yet dissipated. BCTGM members struck Kellogg’s plants in 2021, and a Hormel plant in 2022.
A FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND UNION RAMPS UP EFFORTS TO SWEEP THE SOUTH
August 30, 2023 // The Union of Southern Service Workers began making headlines last fall after formally christening themselves during a rally in Columbia, South Carolina. This union holds some familiar attributes, given that it began as an offshoot of Raise Up, the Southern leg of the SEIU’s Fight for $15 initiative. Yet this is no ordinary effort by the SEIU, for the USSW purports to not only be “built by and for low-wage workers” but also stretches across many industries. A key distinction: The union frames itself as a cross-sector organization, designed to retain members even if they job-hop between industries, i.e., fast food, retail, hotel, nursing home, warehouses, etc.
Summer of labor: Why unions win pay hikes and new clout
August 10, 2023 // This year’s bargaining sessions tell the story. The mere threat of a strike won longshoremen, UPS drivers, and other blue-collar workers big pay raises. The 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, by contrast, have been on strike since May. Last month, the actors union joined them on the picket line. It’s the first time the two have jointly struck the studios since 1960 and the most closely watched labor action of the year. Almost 3 in 4 Americans say they’re aware of the strike, according to a Los Angeles Times poll released Aug. 3. Among the issues are revenues from web streaming and the use of AI to generate actors’ likenesses.
Union of Southern Service Workers rallies at Labor Department to protest unsafe work conditions, deliver complaint
April 6, 2023 // The new Union of Southern Service Workers and affiliated workers staged a rally outside the U.S. Department of Labor’s downtown Atlanta office on Tuesday to demand stronger workplace protections and federal enforcement of safety regulations. About 50 USSW organizers and workers from Family Dollar, Waffle House and other companies converged on the Department of Labor’s office at 61 Forsyth St., before marching to Centennial Park.
Workers at Columbia SC Sonic restaurant set to strike soon.
February 6, 2023 //