It is important that we understand what is at stake with hospitality worker organising. Hospitality covers a range of different labour processes. At the core, hospitality work is not that different to the industrial work that it is increasingly displacing. Taking the beans out of the can is not so different to putting them in. Indeed, serving up commodities after they have been produced and distributed involves many additional demands.

Rarely do we just want drink or food slopped out into any old container. Instead, workers do not just serve drinks, but they produce an environment in which consumers are willing to pay more. This kind of work, broadly categorised as hospitality, has grown alongside the wider trends of deindustrialisation in Britain. Much of the workforce is younger, often finding this work alongside studying or training for other kinds of work. There is a risk of understanding hospitality as something that people only do for a while, and therefore negative conditions as some sort of “rite of passage.” Even if workers do not identify strongly with the work, many are spending longer periods of time in hospitality, particularly following the 2008 financial crisis.

People come to hospitality work from a range of social origins and vastly different levels of opportunity, and this often shapes the trajectories taken by hospitality workers. While this can fragment class unity in economic terms, it can also produce novel political alliances cutting across many other social issues, which feeds back into the economic struggle. It is clear, therefore, that the stakes of organising in this sector are extremely high, not just for the industry itself, but for the broader workers’ movement. As many contributions in this issue conclude, an organised hospitality sector could play a crucial role in rebuilding a culture of workplace militancy. When we enter a workplace for the first time, we encounter an existing set of informal and formal norms. These are the historic outcomes of managerial directives, social and professional hierarchies, interpersonal relations and worker resistance. The self-organisation of a workforce around a fundamental antagonism between workers and bosses can radically transform this structure of norms. The initial phase of this struggle may be embittered as opposing interests, typically manifesting in more subtle forms, are brought to the fore and sharpened. However, this open conflict can ultimately recast workplace divisions in the long term, setting a new standard for incoming workers as they acclimate to the professional environment. This is the challenge currently facing hospitality workers. Winning over this sector to organised militancy could lead to dramatic and far-reaching changes, particularly given the demographic features of this workforce.

The story of Starbucks in the US is an important reference point for understanding organising in hospitality. The current wave of unionisation began in 2021 with the unionisation of a store in Buffalo, New York with Starbucks Workers United. At the start of 2024, Starbucks agreed to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. This was a long fight that involved workers collectively organising with petitions, marches on the boss, walkouts, strikes, and plenty of press coverage. Workers have struck across 200 stores and won union elections at over 400 stores. Starbucks Workers United, which is part of SEIU, now represents 10,000 workers out of a workforce of approximately 250,000. As one of the workers involved in the campaign, Sarah Pappin, argued: “We want to not just open the door for the rest of the food service industry, we want to kick it down. Eventually you get tired of jumping to the next job and praying it’s gonna be better. You realize you should just take a stand where you have some good ground.”

While hospitality retailing is significantly affected by both the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis, it is important to maintain sight of the fact that an enormous amount of profit is being made in this industry. Young workers have become the central target of the hospitality industry, and deindustrialisation means there are very few options beyond it. Workers can win. It will not be easy, but with so little fought for in the industry, the low-hanging fruit is there for the picking. If we are to re-draw our class maps for our current moment, to understand how the working class might wield political power now, organising and winning with these young workers is an important investment in the future of the labour movement.