We lost 2 workers at coffee bar: one who had put in two-weeks notice and one who hadn’t, and the reasons were of course to do with the dysfunctional way this place is run. They gave us a replacement supervisor, but instead of a barista that also focuses on orders and running day-to-day stuff, she leaves every moment she has the chance to go to office work or walk around the cafeteria. They hired one guy who we were hearing about for weeks, but when he finally started, despite the promises that he would be working at coffee bar, they decided last minute he would be primarily do catering. They send him over when we’re busy though! So we get to shove him on register for 2 hours while we’re completely slammed, and then have absolutely no time to teach him anything else.
The only 2 rank-and-file staff members who are consistently at coffee bar are working 10 hour shifts every time we go in. This has been the complaint for months, and every time there was an end in sight the goalpost was moved. Finally we have been promised another barista to start this week, but only the one! Just enough to have a full staff on some of the days and not enough staff on the days when the part-time worker is off or if someone calls out. The managers feel no urgency to hire more people, and the looming “credo week”- the busiest week of the year for the client- we are left worrying if we’ll have enough people to handle it.
This past Friday, the general manager approached us with a bonus- an extra 8 hours worth of pay on our next paycheck. While more pay is obviously appreciated, she clouded it with the instruction to keep it secret, which comes off as an attempt to hide wages since there is already significant differences in pay between all employees. But ultimately this attempt at bribery never even mattered; a few more wage-hours won’t change that we are burnt out and cannot continue to work the way we have been.
We at coffee bar agree that we are slowing down, letting the wait times build up. For now, this action is informal in that there is no formal bargaining or demands that we have presented to the managers, simply that we are sick of busting our asses when no one cares to give us staff or support. But there is clearly an opportunity to raise this spontaneous action to organized struggle through growing this campaign. We need workers at Eurest to come together to formalize demands, to form strike committees so we can take actions to leverage our power, unite as one, and achieve our demands.