“When one comes to think of it, it is strange that thousands of people in a great modem city should spend their waking hours swabbing dishes in hot dens underground” – George Orwell, Down and Out In Paris and London.

The cook is one of the oldest professions. The process of collecting, preparing, cooking and finally sharing food is inherent to the human condition. It is a ritual of union, based on a need, made into a defining pleasantry. But under capitalism this social relationship, like any other, is commodified and turned into something almost unrecognisable. The process of bringing satisfaction and joy to the diner involves sucking the joy out of the score of people involved in bringing food to their plate. In modern capitalism the kitchen and ‘front of house’ are highly exploited and put under a system of intense pressure requiring production to happen faster and faster. In an industry where it’s commonly said ‘50% of businesses fail’ those who own these failing (and succeeding) businesses try to pass the losses on to those of us who work.

Hospitality as a working career tends to mean one of two things to modern Australians, either it’s what we really want to do, or something we get stuck doing while trying to move on to other industries. As such, the industry is full of transient workers: people studying, travelling, or just filling in time while looking for more meaningful work. This is often quoted as an argument against attempts to organise workers in hospitality. However, for another good portion of us, this is our career, and for many a chef, it’s a passion too. We have the lowest award rate for a trade qualification, and the industry is rife with people who are paid under the award rate, in exploitative conditions. It’s not uncommon for workers to do 16+ hour days, sometimes without breaks, or hours per week well in excess of double the normal working week. Conditions that make for potential rebellion and an opening awaiting organisation.

In my experience of hospitality work, workers ‘resistance’ to this extremely exploitative and intense situation is based on informal methods of direct action. The industry has no culture of unionism, and often relies on people in difficult circumstances who may have little experience in traversing the difficulties of legal avenues and negotiated bargaining to achieve better conditions.

So, for example, in one café a worker was electrically shocked, and when we informed the boss he said that she should keep working. We closed the kitchen, threw out the faulty equipment and collectively told the boss we wouldn’t work that section until the problem was fixed. In another example, a waitress who had to work long hours for little pay, servicing a large dining room night in night out, developed the idea that she could ‘book’ in huge tables for the night’s service, bookings that didn’t actually exist. The table would sit empty and we could all work an easier night because of it.

The industry also has a romanticisation of hard work which is difficult to overcome. When people complain about the long hours, working all weekend, no breaks, hot and dangerous conditions, or a lack of appropriate equipment, it often gets written off with a ‘harden up’ attitude. Everyone knows deep down that it’s an impossible situation, but people find it hard to admit it to one another. If we all admitted how horrible the industry is, we’d probably have a breakdown. Though that often happens. I’ve seen four head chefs and two floor managers have break downs through the 6-7 kitchens I’ve worked in. From locking themselves in the coolroom to literally collapsing and vomiting blood from over-work, stress, and the mandatory drug habits that come with achieving impossible levels of output.

The bourgeois press often decries workers in hospitality struggling for better conditions and pay. Cries of ‘you it will bankrupt us’ abound. If a business cannot even afford to pay a living wage, it should not exist. It is not socially useful. It is not even worthwhile in the capitalist-liberal sense. But this is the logic of capitalism.

Melbourne being the ‘food capital of Australia,’ we are particularly attuned to the fancies of the market and trends amongst foodies around the world. A current headline is the excitement over Heston Blumenthals ‘Fat Duck’ moving to Melbourne. And do you know why he chose Melbourne over, say, New York?

“We wanted to open there. I’ve got some good chef mates in the business in New York and they all said the same thing: ‘If you can’t be union-free, don’t touch it’”- Heston Blumenthal

That is, in Australia you have a thriving market, and low labour conditions. Even worse than New York apparently, though America has a world reputation for horrible hospitality conditions.

But things can change. A number of years ago a small group of activists attempted to import the concepts behind the New Zealand “UNITE” union to Australia, with some small successes. While being nominally a ‘fast food and services’ union, they organised a variety of hospitality workplaces. From Bakers Delight to the Carlton Club, 7-11’s and a succesful campaign organising Brunswick Street. The responses from workers shows that potential for organisation exists. UNITE was extremely small, and not well financed. It relied heavily on the activity of a few core activists. As such I would say UNITE’s weaknesses are obvious. United Voice (formerly the LHMU) is technically the union for hospitality workers. The LHMU had two ‘sections’; the ‘Miscellanious’ (Cleaners, Security Guards, Ambos etc) and the ‘Pissos’ (basically restaurant/cafe workers.) The Misco section is well organised, and runs consistent campaigns involving workplaces all over Australia. As for the ‘Pissos’, besides the Casino, I do not know of any workplaces in hospitality they have organised. However, I think this is because of material conditions. Few workers I’ve ever met in hospitality were ideologically left or unionists. It makes for a hard starting ground in Australia’s union/political structure for a union to simply walk in and start organising workers. UV’s lobbying actions to ‘defend our penalty rates’ etc will go nowhere without on the ground organisation and direct action.

United Voice, like most of the union movement is fighting back against the Abbott government’s workplace relations laws. Specifically in regard to hospitality, this means an attack on weekend rates. If one reads the bosses ‘Restaurants and Catering’ reports, every year they recommend a slashing of weekend rates, penalties and awards:

“The system further disadvantages the services sector (and in particular restaurant and catering businesses) by enshrining penalty rates based on industry-wide traditions. Penalties for working on Saturday and Sunday (and after 7pm) when restaurants and catering businesses do most of their trade makes no sense. Employees want to work these hours and businesses need to have them work, yet the business in penalised.”

Removing penalty rates would put incredible stress on suffering workers should it succeed. Many people around Australia rely on those ‘weekend rates’ to help them get by. They sacrifice parts of their weekend for an elevated rate on sunday. Often these Sunday shifts mean the difference between paying rent or not, especially for those who work part-time and have other commitments etc. Think of single mothers and the under-employed, etc. Should the Liberals succeed in slashing penalties, a lot of us will be fucked. And we will be giving up a part of our life (weekends and nights), missing out on important social life, for no reward. These attacks are coupled with an increased tendency towards casualisation and part-time work. Couched in terms of ‘flexibility’, much like other industries, hospitality thrives on discplining the working class and giving them few rights.

We know that methods of organising exist, and opportunities will present themselves. As for what action we should undertake, that is to be debated. I think it’s possible to begin to build unions amongst hospitality workers, however transient or resistant they may be, and use the resources available through United Voice to assist self-activity and negotiate better contracts to back up the sporadic direct actions that break out. I believe workers – not in the ‘glamourous’ restaurants, but rather your day-to-day cafes, pubs, bars and restaurants frequented by the working class – are where the beginnings of self-activity will occur. Workers here have less of the ‘I will make it as a celebrity/top chef’ attitude. They are disgruntled line cooks, wait staff, dishwashers and baristas who’ve been trapped by the lack of opportunities in neoliberal Australia.

Further Reading: Revolting Kitchens – The Red Chef’s perspective on the food industry

Tom is a hospitality worker and member of Anarchist Affinity. First published in the Spring 2014 edition of The Platform.