Workers at Colectivo Coffee recently voted in favor of forming a union. This would make Colectivo the largest unionized café in the United States and provide a model for other restaurant-industry employees hoping to organize after a long year-and-a-half of precarious and sometimes dangerous working conditions under COVID.

To discuss this win and what comes next, Monday host Patty Peltekos spends the hour with Jason Flynn from The Dish, Naomi Waxman from Eater Chicago, and labor economist Laura Dresser from COWS.

Jason Flynn is a co-founding editor of The Dish: A Worker’s Rag, the online newsletter for the Restaurant Organizing Project from the Democratic Socialists of America.

Naomi Waxman is a reporter for Eater Chicago. Previously, she worked for the Wisconsin Policy Forum and the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

Laura Dresser is associate director of the Center On Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) and assistant clinical professor in the School Of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is co-editor of The Gloves-Off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market (Cornell University Press, 2008) and co-author of the annual State of Working Wisconsin report from COWS.

Cover photo by Chris Lynch on Unsplash / cropped, filter added