Activity

[...] Because women's work was often de-valued and its skills rendered invisible, waitresses had more trouble raising the societal estimation of their worth than did their male co-workers.38 Nevertheless, through unionization, waitresses gained many of the privileges reserved for “skilled” workers.…

Calls for eliminating tips and demanding a compensatory raise in cash wages issued forth frequently from culinary union spokespersons, especially during the Progressive Era.29 Food servers themselves, however, were divided over the issue, with the ranks of those interested in reforming the system t…

Men outside the culinary industry, however, saw female servers in a different light. Men from many different well-organized trades—longshoremen, logging, and mining—for example, frequented local cafes and restaurants, knew the waitresses personally, and saw the unionization of the eating establishm…

Yet as the sit-down fever spread through Detroit, Local 705 jumped in to organize women as well as men. In the fall and winter of 1936 and 1937, after nearly five years of bitter unemployment punctuated by marches, demonstrations, and clashes with police, Detroit's workplaces blazed up under the sp…

Employers who failed to recognize the good business sense of unionization were asked to justify their refusal before the united board of culinary crafts. If this interrogation proved fruitless, the employer was reprimanded to a higher body: the executive council of the SFLC or a conference of retai…