It was just five months ago when workers at three Starbucks locations in Buffalo cast their votes on whether or not they wanted to be represented by Starbucks Workers United (SWU), an SEIU affiliate. The success of workers at the Elmwood location in December 2021 led to an explosion in union activity at Starbucks stores across the country.

The history of the labor movement holds great lessons for the working class, which is why we must sum up its key episodes in light of our current tasks. The 1912-1913 restaurant strike serves as a high-water mark for labor activity in the restaurant sector even more than a century later. What follows is a sum-up of this key reference point for class-conscious workers in the restaurant industry.

"Paid sick leave" is the right of workers to both job security and continued pay when we get sick. This right exists in almost every country in the world, but not at the federal level in the US.

Not long ago, the president of the bureaucratic and anti-worker RWDSU, and the New York City Council took to the press to congratulate themselves on a historic achievement: the “Labor Peace” bill that sailed through City Council on November 23rd. This ‘historic’ achievement has amounted to little more than a footnote in the news of the past month, having hardly been reported at all. However we feel it necessary to revisit this footnote, as it clarifies the function of anti-worker bureaucratic trade unions in relation to the employers’ political organizations.