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a history of the movement by labor scholar Dorothy Sue Cobble.

Waitress unions petered out in the 1970s, when some were absorbed by the national Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. But the industry shift from small independent eateries to chain restaurants that prioritized efficiency over personal service, staffed by a majority of part-time employees who earned income from tips, and a post-World War II turn against organized labor in general were the real killers.

The COVID-19 pandemic revived service sector unionism, as frontline workers found themselves jobless, or placed in harm’ s way without any protections. The 2021“ Great Resignation,” where 4.5 million workers dropped out of the labor market, created shortages that fueled a recent high of work stoppages and petitions for National Labor Relations Board recognition.

Payday Report’ s COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map tallied nearly 1,200 strikes nationwide in 2021. In 2024, the NLRB received 3,286 union election petitions, more than double 2021’ s total. Chloe Chassaing, forty-nine, a worker-owner of White Electric Coffee, says that the pandemic provided“ a seed of inspiration” for the staff.

“ A lot of workplaces were shut down, ours included. Myself and a few other co-workers were talking about issues at work that maybe we hadn’ t had the space to think about prior. With the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, there was a lot of reckoning happening and reflection of the status quo. So, we ended up writing a letter to our boss, outlining some of our grievances.”

The list included social justice demands, such as hiring more people of color, and more typical asks, such as raising wages. The majority of the staff signed on. It was an emotionally heightened time, Chassaing recalls, when a novel and deadly contagion was forcing people to isolate. But the group kept meeting outside in Dexter Park. They formed an independent union, called the Collaborative Union of Providence Service Workers, and bypassed a formal election and certification by the NLRB.

40 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I OCTOBER 2026