Dorothy Sue Cobble is distinguished professor emerita of history and labor studies at Rutgers University. She’s best known for her books on the history of labor movements within the hospitality industry, including Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century, and The Other Women’s Movement, the latter of which is credited with originating the term “labor feminism.”
Hospitality workers tend to be overlooked in conversations about the history of organizing. Why do you think that is?
It has changed somewhat, but there’s still this image of unions that’s associated with blue-collar men and with factory workers. It’s quite surprising how persistent that image is, given the fact that that’s a very small percentage of the labor movement today. The majority of workers are in the public sector. They are more professional, white-collar workers in the labor movement. It’s also feminized—close to a majority of union workers are female. So the image is really at odds with reality in that way.
Who were some of those first folks in hospitality that began organizing and unionizing?
The story really goes back to the late 19th century. The largest union at the time in the hospitality industry, and still into the present day, was made of hotel and restaurant employees, now called Unite Here.
The organizing started with cooks and bartenders, and it gradually spread to include food servers by the turn of the 20th century. There was substantial organizing in the...
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