Tag: Hospitality

Workplace Organiser Training on 26th of July

In coordination with the Solidarity Federation Hospitality Workers Union we will be running a workplace organiser training on Sunday the 26th of July. The training will run from 11am to 6pm, and will be at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 1ES.

The training will include case studies of past workplace organisation and actions, how to map out your own workplace, role playing through a first meeting with your co-workers, and general tactics and techniques for organising and resisting.

Please pass on the above flyer to anyone who might be interested. The training is free, but if you have spare cash please bring a donation for LARC, which is run entirely on donations from its users.

Hospitality, For Who?

You’ve just made your 300th flat white of the day, you’ve been on your feet for the best part of 9 hours, you’re fucking knackered and a customer has just come back and wants their almond milk ice latte remade. You are a hospitality worker in London.

Hospitality work is often badly paid and tears at your soul having to smile and say thank you to someone who likely makes 5x your wages and doesn’t leave a tip.

With growing inequality it feels especially brutal as with the gentrification of London you often have to serve the very people who are also pushing you out of your neighbourhood and bars, cafes and restaurants are part of their playground as you just try to cover your rent.

Often it feels like working in hospitality means being “invisible” with customers and managers alike not treating you with dignity or respect. It’s a shitshow and needs to change. There are around 400,000 hospitality workers in London on the books and many more off the books.

It’s a famously hard industry to organise trade unions in due to the fact that most workers only stay in jobs for short periods of time and bosses see workers as unskilled and easily replaceable.

I once was told during an organising campaign by a fellow worker that we shouldn’t aim for London Living Wage because “we don’t deserve Living Wage, it’s not like we’re nurses”. Constant belittling means confidence among workers is low and strikes and extremely rare.

Modern examples are mainly in hotels and also in an especially militant workers movement in Glasgow which has been inspirational, represented by Unite Hospitality, strikes have happened at cinemas, bars and cafes with strikes leading to pay rises in a Govan hotel and strikes ongoing in Vue Glasgow Central.

This is a good start, but we want to get things going in London!

When workers are organised and are willing to stop or walkout from work (or take more creative action) we can force bosses to hand over better wages and better conditions for all of us.

If we stay disorganised, it means staying disrespected and forever complaining to each other in kitchens, backrooms, store cupboards and walking home after your 3rd close in a week.

Beyond just improvements or concessions from bosses, we want the whole industry taken out of the hand of the rich and the owners and into our hands as workers, a world where what we make isn’t for profit and where instead of disrespect and stress, dignity and joy in the focus.

This was written by someone involved is SolFed’s hospitality organising campaign in London for a new zine, Anarchy. As part of that campaign we will be holding a workplace organiser training of the 26th of July. Find out more here.

You can find out more about the SolFed Hospitality Workers Union here.

You can find out more about Anarchy here.

Workplace Organiser Training in July

In coordination with the Solidarity Federation Hospitality Workers Union we will be running a workplace organiser training on Sunday the 26th of July. The training will run from 11am to 6pm, and will be at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 1ES.

The training will include case studies of past workplace organisation and actions, how to map out your own workplace, role playing through a first meeting with your co-workers, and general tactics and techniques for organising and resisting.

Please pass on the above flyer to anyone who might be interested. The training is free, but if you have spare cash please bring a donation for LARC, which is run entirely on donations from its users.

Hospitality Organising Meeting

We will be holding an open meeting on the 29th of March for hospitality workers who want to organise a union in their workplace. We will talk about ways people can organise at work that can actually get results, whether the problem is dodgy contracts, missed breaks, pay, or a wanker boss.

We believe that organised workers taking action into their own hands is what’s needed, not just having to leave your job, having to take it, or going through a big bureaucratic union or HR department. Come along to talk to organisers from SolFed and connect with local workers to discuss issues that face us at work and in the community and what we can do about it.

Although the meeting will be in Camden, London and that is the area we will be flyering in, if you work in a bar, cafe, restaurant, hotel or other hospitality venue and want to organise in your workplace, please get in contact with us wherever you are. We will also need people to help us flyer and otherwise spread the word, so please also get in contact if you want to help.

The meeting will be at 6pm, 29th of March, in the Castle Room at the Castlehaven Community Hub, 21 Castlehaven Road, London, NW1 8RU.

SolFed Hospitality Workers Union


The Hospitality Worker’s Union is a democratic trade union that seeks to organise all people working in the hospitality industry. Our aim is to fight for better pay and working conditions for all hospitality workers. Our long term aim is to create a better world in which the economy is democratically controlled, environmentally sustainable, and run for the benefit of society as a whole rather than the rich and powerful. The Hospitality Workers’ Union is part of the Solidarity Federation which seeks to organise workers across the whole of the economy. We have listed below the answer to frequently asked question about the Solidarity Federation Hospitality Workers Union (SFHWU). If you require further information please get in touch and we will be glad to answer any queries you may have.

Find out more HERE!