“Bosses Can’t Be Anti-Racist, Their Job Is to Exploit People”
When workers at Minneapolis’s Tattersall Distilling tried to secure safe working conditions during the pandemic, their bosses blew them off. So now they’re fighting to unionize. We spoke with a Tattersall worker about the organizing drive — and why racial justice has been central to their unionization push.
Tattersall Distilling in Minnesota.
Periods of high unemployment can be a difficult time to unionize. With fewer job options, workers can feel less willing to rock the boat. But the COVID-19 pandemic has also shown just how much workers need unions if they want safe working conditions and a voice on the job.
Restaurant workers, who have been hit especially hard by the pandemic, are finding creative ways to organize. Bartenders, servers, and hosts have staged mass protests for federal relief. The Democratic Socialists of America’s Restaurant Organizing Project is working with chapters to organize laid-off restaurant workers.
And in Minneapolis, workers at Tattersall Distilling, a popular distillery and cocktail room, took up a fight for safety at work earlier this summer that has since morphed into a full-fledged union campaign. “The effort,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported last month, “has sent shock waves through the region’s craft beverage industry.” If successful, their union will be the first of its kind in the area.
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