The Virginia Worker

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The following interview is with a front of house worker and organizer with Workers Siam on their recent efforts to win better scheduling, higher wages, and respect from Mom’s Siam in Richmond

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The Virginia Worker: How did this all start?

Workers Siam: We had our first initial meeting or maybe a couple meetings, after that I reached out to the Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC) in DC and we had an organizer provide us with the legal knowledge of what we’re doing and support around organizing and we met weekly for the past three months. So that’s how it all started really just by talking to co-workers. It really felt like it was just a very ripe workplace for that because we had that rapport with each other and

it has felt like something had to be done. It was not necessarily that we were looking to organize, but we felt like we needed to out of necessity.

VW: So from there ROC informs your co-workers on what your rights are to organize and then you determined the next step. We saw the petition trying to gather signatures in support. Was that the next step?

WS: I’ll just give the quick timeline. So from the first couple meetings we started to narrow down our grievances, like a list of potential demands or asks from our employer.

Eventually we narrowed it down to four main demands: one was an increase in hourly wage for all front-of-house staff; second was having a third-party accountant or just a different system for payroll because we were having issues with our paychecks bouncing, we’re having issues with our paychecks not being correct. It comes down to we want to get paid correctly and on time, and so a different system for that. Another demand was fair and equal scheduling and that really stemmed from one server in particular working doubles almost like six days a week and it would affect his performance obviously and it was starting to affect the workplace environment because  – we get it, he’s saying he wants to work that much, but it’s affecting all of us when his work ethic is declining. It’s crazy working doubles six days a week, nobody should really be doing that and so just wanting a fair distribution of shifts across the board. The last demand was around room for growth and raises every six months and Spacek Lee having some sort of system in place to retain good quality employees that want to be there. So those are our demands.

We drafted all that into a letter, we requested a meeting with the owner through the manager, we had this meeting probably late May where the manager told us that owner would be there. The owner did not show up, so we used that opportunity to present the letter to the manager and talk to her about why we were bringing these things up, but this has been a recurring issue – the absence of the owner and her presence in the restaurant. She doesn’t know most of the employees at the restaurant. People have been working there for over a year and she had no idea who they were. That all just shows a lack of investment on her part. Right now I feel like the workers at this point are more invested in the restaurant functioning and doing well than she is. 

After we called for that meeting we felt it was weird, like you’re [the owner] not even talking to us. We got to get your attention somehow, so other things that we did we went to all her other restaurants (because she owns multiple restaurants across the city) left letters there with the employees and eventually we gave a copy of the letter to managers, so eventually the letter made its way to the owner and she was made aware what’s going on.

Pretty quickly in response we did see they agreed to a 50 cent raise every six months – which is not much, we probably should have asked for more – we did see raises for the bar staff and for the support staff – which includes the host and the food runners at the restaurant – so we saw a pretty substantial raise.

Hosts, bartenders were all making around $9.50 or $10 an hour plus the tip out and they raised that to $14 for bar staff and $15 for the support staff. So that was definitely cool to see. I think it was a tactic on their part to stem the growing organizing. Basically try to just get us to be quiet. Of course we weren’t satisfied with that because the servers saw no increase in their hourly wage and for me in particular that is a pretty big demand because that is something we want to change the narrative about, right? The tipped minimum wage is still $2.13 an hour, so basically they’re not even paying us enough to be there. That’s not enough. We did get a meeting with the owner this last Wednesday (Jun 21), so a little over a week ago we had our first meeting with the owner. We had 15 or more of our staff there and I think she was intimidated. Immediately on the defensive she spoke to us pretty disrespectfully, she implied that the staff was too large anyways and she wanted to cut the staff down in half. She repeatedly told us “if you don’t like it here, find somewhere else to work”. It was very disrespectful.

We wanted to come to the table in good faith and offer actual solutions to these issues. We weren’t trying to escalate unnecessarily, but after that meeting we had a rally on Sunday (Jun 25), it was across the street from the restaurant, we had a good turnout, probably 30 to 40 people in the community came out to support like IWW, DSA, Richmond Workers Assembly, and other industry people. You know, restaurant workers that had heard about it and came out to support the day of that rally. 

We kept it on the down low for a little bit, but a couple days beforehand we started publicizing the rally. Management and the owner definitely knew what was happening and we were receiving texts that day just like “don’t follow through with this” trying to get us to cancel the rally. We were hearing threats of the restaurant being shut down and that’s exactly what they did. It was almost immediately after the rally ended that they closed the restaurant down. There were people working there the entire time of the rally and just “coincidentally” they shut the restaurant down that afternoon with no communication from the owner. They supposedly closed it down because “the internet was down” and then they also “wanted to use it as a chance to do some repairs in the restaurant”, but obviously the timing is too coincidental. The repairs have needed for months and they notoriously take a very long time to respond to any sort of repairs. So it was a clear response to us taking action. That was only four days ago and since then we still have not heard any official word about when the restaurant is reopening. 

Somebody in our organizing committee did manage to get a conversation with the owner and she said that everybody that participated in the rally will not be rehired – which is illegal – and so we are waiting to see if that’s true and if so we’ll figure out our next steps from there. So that’s where we are now. I was really proud of the rally because to show that Richmond and in Virginia there is a labor presence and people do support workers and workers should continue, you got to keep that spirit alive of workers organizing.

In particular the restaurant industry is a large part of the economy here in Richmond and so hopefully starting the conversation around that – as well and urging other restaurant workers to organize and eventually change the narrative about how we’re treated at work. I think a lot of the narrative – the reason why restaurant organizing it so difficult – is because it can be a transient job. There’s a high turnover, but it’s not always the case. I think the narrative is it’s like younger people, like all the students or whatever working during the summer and while there are certainly those people (which is besides the point because they are workers as well – and just because you know they’re college students working over the summer doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the same rights and be organized as workers and class conscious), but that narrative is not entirely true as well.

I’ve been working there for over two years, this isn’t a temporary thing for me, I’ve been in the industry for a very long time. I’ve got co-workers that have kids. So just shifting that narrative, demanding more respect in our workplace, demanding collective bargaining – whether or not there’s an official legally recognized union. The union is the workers coming together and asking for a voice at the table and asking for demands collectively.

VW: When did this start in terms of the organizing efforts? 

WS: It started about four months ago, which feels both like a short and a long amount of time. It’s definitely been a learning experience I think for all of us and  just goes to show how much work it really takes, how much work it takes to build trust with people to get on the same page about things. Even looking back now there’s lessons I’ve learned about maintaining more one-on-one contact with all of our co-workers beyond just our core crew of the organizing committee, because it takes work on both ends and you can’t make anybody do something they don’t want to do.

I’m not really trying to convince anybody, but yes I’m trying to agitate you, I’m trying to get people to see that there are issues and that we agree that there are those issues. It’s been a great experience in terms of building solidarity, building that shared consciousness in forming our opinions collectively. It’s been really powerful knowing that we can rely on each other and check up on each other and check in about certain things and that we stand firm together in a four month timeframe or maybe even less honestly.

VW: How much do you think the pandemic influenced workers to want to organize? 

WS: For us I don’t think it was so much of a factor and I know there were organizing efforts in Richmond prior to the pandemic around restaurant workers. Eventually the momentum was killed because of the pandemic. I also know during the pandemic there were organizing efforts across the country, you know specifically around restaurant workers and setting up relief funds for workers that were suddenly out of a job. We worked pretty much through the pandemic, it unfortunately kind of comes with the territory of working in the service industry. Just like the whole thing is public facing, interacting with the public, so you kind of have to learn to roll with the punches and call out of work when you need to. But ultimately most of us couldn’t afford to not work even if we wanted to like morally or ethically whatever – if we wanted to social distance more it’s like okay, but then now you’re balancing that with having to pay the bills, so you’re still having to go to work. It was probably a factor in the sense that the management communication started falling apart then.

VW: Were Starbucks Workers United or Amazon Labor Union any source of inspiration for y’all to do this or was it just kind of like okay the conditions are just getting worse and we need to do something?

WS: They’re definitely inspiring. I’ve kept up and love to see workers anywhere organizing. For us it came out of necessity, we weren’t trying to organize. I have experience with organizing in the past, but I did not come into this job with the intention of organizing. I don’t think any of us really wanted to. It was born out of necessity. It was born out of these issues not being fixed in any way so we have to take it upon ourselves to say something in office to offer suggestions.

I think the Starbucks Workers Union in particular is inspiring because it’s a similar job, slightly different environment, but yeah just to see service workers know that it’s possible. There’s a small scale and a big scale. For a small scale we’re really trying to fix these tangible issues at a restaurant and make it better a workplace. And then the bigger picture is sort of the larger conversation restaurant workers in general needing to organize and I feel very grounded knowing that we are like a part of history. We stand on the shoulders of the labor movement of decades past and decades into the future even after we’re gone, it’s all about keeping that spirit alive of organizing.I know that the Amazon workers, Starbucks workers are all part of that same fight, it really is one fight.

In the two years that I worked at this restaurant I never got a raise, I never saw anybody get a raise and so it’s just not adding up really. How am I making pretty much the same and everything around me is getting more expensive? Seeing that it is possible to pay more, that’s the one thing I keep coming back to. When people talk about well she’s [the owner] doing everything right legally, she’s paying you correctly legally, she’s paying you according to the industry standard – that’s what it is, all of these things are made up, the laws made up, the industry standard, these are things that are human made and don’t have to be this way. They’re very low standards. I remember when I was in college I was involved with Fight for $15 campaign. That was eight or nine years ago and even then $15 an hour wasn’t a livable wage. Now eight or nine years ahead with inflation, rising cost of living, and the minimum wage going to $15 with like three more years left, and it wasn’t enough then and it certainly is not enough now. So it’s always an uphill battle. But yeah, trying to use that and also something I learned at the beginning of the organizing campaign is that seven states in the u.s. do not have a tipped minimum wage. So their minimum wage is the same across the board and tipped workers make that minimum hourly in addition to the tips. So if we’re looking at the law there is precedent. There’s other ways that the system can be set up where we are paid a fair amount from our employer. It’s absurd except in the sense that if you’re a restaurant owner, then you get super exploited cheap labor, servers especially.

The tipped minimum wage comes from the Jim Crow era. It comes from people not wanting to pay newly freed slaves and  was also used as a way to discriminate. Not having certain people work at certain restaurants. It’s a nasty history. I don’t really have the solution. I don’t have all this figured out as the best way forward, but I do definitely think that the workers that experience that today should have a say in what the solution is and know that there are better alternatives. And just again have a voice at the table to come up with those solution so that everybody feels respected and makes a fucking living wage.

VW: Why was the initial strategy to go directly to the owner with demands versus filing for a union election?

WS: Yeah that’s a good question. We’ve definitely talked about what it would look like to formally unionize. The difficulty for us with a union election is when are union you need to have over 50% of the workforce vote and agree. Well for one there is sort of a barrier between the front of house and the back of house at our restaurant. On the back of house the majority of them speak only in spanish and little to no english. There’s a kind of a communication barrier and then also to my understanding they organized a couple years ago and asked for higher wages and they got that, so there’s a slightly different dynamic. It would be ideal for our restaurant organizing that the front house and back of house are together and collectively come up with the demands, like have all of those included as one united workforce, but we just didn’t have that foundation built in here, primarily again because of the communication barrier.

Also we just we wanted to like I said earlier like, the union does provide a legal framework to collectively bargain, but ultimately the workers coming together is the union and so we were hoping that we could act in good faith with the owner.  Looking back now it seems a little far-fetched, but it’s very unlikely that most restaurant owners would ever act in good faith, like really listen, but we wanted to extend that hand at least you know we wanted to assume best intentions, give her the benefit of the doubt and just tried to implement basically collective bargaining on us by ourselves.

VW: How are you all overcoming the language barrier between front of house and back of house?

WS: So the morning of the rally or a couple days before the rally actually we had someone translate our demand letter into spanish and one of our members went and gave everybody in the kitchen a copy of that and then day of the rally before I started actually we had some folks from ROC come down that are spanish speaking. So they went in again with some of my co-workers and talked to the back of house explicitly and were like “we’re about to have this rally, how do you guys feel about that? Are you okay with it?” And they were all good, you know some of them even support it, like “yeah do what you got to do.”

Since then we have one of the servers, she probably speaks the most spanish out of all of us, and she has an existing relationship with a lot of the people in the back of the house and she tried to reach out to them, talk to them about it. I think they’re more not eager to necessarily get really involved with the efforts but are supportive. From what I’m gathering it seems like the restaurant will be open in the next week or two hopefully and I hope that the back of house everybody gets to continue working and remain unaffected by what’s going on and then the focus will probably shift towards what’s going to go on. What’s going to happen with some of us that are going to get fired most likely or not rehired? I will have to go from there. So then in terms of the current situation they’ve sort of closed the store and say they need to do remodels or whatever

VW: Where do you see the campaign going from here?

WS: I think what will most likely happen is the restaurant will reopen and maybe a week or so and I don’t know. We haven’t received any explicit communication from the owner. Alll I’m going off of is one of my co-workers having a conversation with her where she told them that anybody at the rally will not be rehired. I have not been communicated that directly, so I don’t know how she’s going to go about this. I don’t know if when it reopens a schedule comes out for example and suddenly I’m just not on the schedule, or if she will actually have the guts to talk to me personally and the other people that were at the rally and say that we’re not going to be rehired. But that does seem to be her intention. She might be bringing in a new manager completely and probably trying to cut down. She said cut down half the staff, so when we deliver that initial letter we had about 20 or 25 people that work front of house and we had 22 or 23 signatures. So we had like a huge majority of people sign on and say yes these are our demands that we think are reasonable and changes that we want to see here.

I feel like if she fires any number of us it can definitely be seen as direct retaliation for signing the letter, for participating, for speaking out, for trying to have a meeting with her for any number of things. But to me it’s a very clear correlation of like personally I’m a great employee, I think I’ve worked there for two years I’ve got regulars at the bar that know me, come to see me. I’ve worked every front-of-house position. I know how to fill in the holes on a busy night to make sure everything runs smoothly. So there’s definitely nothing in my performance. I’ve never been or very rarely late. I don’t know when in two years there I’ve never missed a shift. I’m always there so say there’s nothing performance-based wise that would warrant me getting terminated, but I am bracing myself for that to be the reality and like I said, if I do get confirmation of that I will probably file an unfair labor practice and we’ll have to figure out what we want our response to be.

VW: This owner has other enterprises across the city, is there any sort of effort to reach out to those folks to organize?

WS: Yeah we’ve definitely discussed it. It’s difficult because the working conditions and management are all different at each location and so we’re going to try to start reaching out to some individual contacts at some of the restaurants near us, but it does seem like she has a different relationship with some of her other employees. We’ve been doing more research, she’s also a landlord with over a dozen properties in the city. I think she wants to turn some of them into Airbnb’s. It’s ridiculous. 

The money is obviously there, she’s investing in opening a new restaurant. You know that’s not my responsibility what you do with that money, but obviously that money is there. She’s playing around with millions and millions of dollars and saying she can’t pay us more. But yeah, a long story short we have not really made contact yet with any of the other establishments. It’s been a lot of work just in our one restaurant alone trying to get on the same page. So if there’s already existing energy at some of the other restaurants we can definitely try to get them to see our viewpoint, but if there’s not somebody there that’s trying to be a leader and showing support or organizing the workplace that’s kind of outside of our scope. We really are focused on trying to get what we want at this restaurant. So hopefully we are inspiring other people, other restaurant workers, and Richmond to get the ball rolling and get the conversation started around the larger picture.

VW: It sounds like you have community support, what has been the general response from the community and patrons of this restaurant?

WS: I would say overwhelmingly positive especially in person and especially from my customers. We’ve had customers come in and say “oh I am here because I saw the petition and wanted so I support y’all” and so that’s been really awesome to see. I think the internet is such a weird place. A lot of discourse does happen on the internet these days and so you’ll definitely see some more negative comments there. I think people are also like yeah, it’s the same right-wing sort of talking points and empty arguments, and so my take on that is don’t even give them time of day. It’s really not worth it.

We have to conserve and protect our energy and our time and what is most wise to put our energy into. It’s most likely not trying to argue with people online. Especially when they’re not coming in with an open mind and are not actually willing to be convinced, like what is the point? You might as well just save your breath. But yeah, I think like at a rally we had a server and a bartender from other establishments in Richmond that spoke and both of them had been in the industry for a long time. There was a Starbucks worker there whose location is not currently organizing, but he’s very interested in trying to get that off the ground. I think that’s awesome and it’s just great to have an event where people could come and be active in their support for labor and I just really feel this is possible. People are still trying to do this, no matter what happens it could end pretty terribly for some of us, but no matter what it’s worth taking a risk for and you got to stand for what you believe in otherwise it doesn’t really mean much. I mean even if there’s a direct failure in the campaign I think overall it’s a positive and a win because it inspires other workers across other industries, we can do something about this right. And maybe you don’t get the win you want now, but that could lead to a win somewhere else in another sector and another work place down the line. 

VW: What do you all want to see happen these next several months?

WS: what we would like to see happen is job security, not being in fear of losing our jobs over the next couple months, and collective bargaining. Have our demands taken seriously and met. They said they have halfway met some of our demands, but we really see that as trying to appease us, trying to keep us quiet. And it’s not enough because it doesn’t really get at the heart of why we’re doing this. I can’t say or speak for everybody in terms of what exactly we want, but I think maintaining the raise for the front of house and a change in the system somehow for servers.

We’ve had different options thrown out there, but it stems from sometimes servers will come in during a slow lunch shift and walk out with $50 or $60 bucks after working there for five hours. That’s not worth any of their time, really. So we want more stability and pay as well again getting paid correctly and getting paid on time, equal distribution of shifts and I think ultimately just more investment in the restaurant.  We’ve really been running the show for two years. 

VW: How can supporters help you all in your efforts?

WS: Right now I think the most tangible way is we have set up a venmo for relief funds, like a solidarity fund that’s just at work. So just sharing that and donating if possible. We really want to support back of house at this time especially and make sure that people are able to get some sort of funds while the restaurant is closed. There’s that and following us on the Instagram account Workers Siam as well and just staying updated, having conversations with people about why these things need to change.

And there’s a definite possibility we’ll have more public facing actions in the future. Follow our lead with how things go. One unfortunate thing that happened was after they shut down the restaurant somebody with a red paint marker vandalized the doors with “the owner sucks”. I don’t know if it’s somebody that was overzealous or like there’s a conspiracy that the owner herself told somebody to do it, but it did make us look bad. We’re not responsible, we don’t condone this type of action. I think people are quick to escalate and agitate especially when they don’t have skin in the game. I always say it’s kind of a sexy thing right, like to have like a big bad enemy. People are super gung-ho. But this is real different. Our necks are on the line, and I have co-workers that were really pissed that are like “dude like I’m out of a job now and like scrambling to find other means of income” and I take that seriously and I’m not trying to burn the business down. We have maintained from the beginning that we like working here and we want to stay working here. So yeah I think it’s following us online and follow our lead, coming out and showing support whenever possible.

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