Just published by Notes from Below: Class Composition in the Cafe Sector

“The circuits of capitalist accumulation also circulate through our bodies. This is even more true for those in the service sector and working in cafes. It is in these workplaces that we begin our inquiry.”

Exciting news! After a year of efforts our workers’ inquiry “Class Composition in the Cafe Sector: What do cafe workers in the United States think and do while at work?” has been published by our comrades at Notes from Below in the UK. Conducted by Alex Pyne of the Blue Bottle Independent Union, Anastasia Wilson, and Kevin Van Meter, Part 1 is on what cafe workers think and do while at work and Part 2 explores how cafe workers are organizing at work.  

“Cafes provide us with our morning coffee as well as places to gather and work. But, for workers in the service sector there are real challenges: low wages and high turnover, bullying bosses, and difficult customers. We worked through the pandemic and were called essential. We spend more time with customers and coworkers than we do with our friends and families. After our shifts, we talk with our coworkers about the good times, the hard times, and how we can improve our working lives.

Organising at your cafe is about wages, hours, and working conditions, and it’s about so much more, too. Cafe workers are organising to get a say in their workplaces; to address ‘the same, systemic problems: short staffing and unpredictable scheduling; low wages; unaffordable healthcare; harassment; broken equipment; unfair discipline’ and create unions that have the ‘directly democratic input of rank-and-file workers.’

In ‘Class Composition in the Cafe Sector’ we hope that by presenting workers’ narratives alongside our analysis of the sector, we can develop a framework for how workplaces in the sector are structured and what tensions exist within them that can aid organising for class struggle.”

Take a read here:

Part 1 (on what cafe workers think and do while at work): https://notesfrombelow.org/article/class-composition-in-the-cafe-sector-part-1

Part 2 (exploring how cafe workers are organizing at work): https://notesfrombelow.org/article/class-composition-in-the-cafe-sector-part-2

Are you a café worker? We invite café workers to respond to our inquiry at: www.workersinquiry.work