Hello!

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hospitality and Retail industries are experiencing drastic changes. These sectors rely on young, temporary labour to maintain high employee turnover and low wages. Now there is a labour shortage, and Hospitality and Retail workers hold significant power over our employers.

The lucky ones of us were furloughed, the rest of us got the sack and endured months of job-applications and rejections. However now they can't get enough of us. Look around city centre – every cafe, pub, and restaurant is looking for staff urgently. We are in huge demand yet our wages are rarely above minimum wage.

We don't get our breaks, we don't get our holidays, we don't even get proper contracts - yet all the while the price of everything keeps going up! So who's getting that money? Because it certainly isn't us.

This short survey has been put together by Hospitality and Retail workers who are members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Belfast, to highlight the issues we face in our sectors. If you can, please fill it out so that we can collectively understand the workplaces we spend eight, ten, twelve hours a day in.

Do chomrádaithe. In solidarity,

IWW Belfast.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Wales, Ireland, Scotland & England Regional Administration (WISE-RA), PO Box 111, Minehead, TA24 9DH, United Kingdom.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the IWW Belfast Branch via email (click here).


SURVEY QUESTIONS

All responses are optional. Any response field can be left blank if you wish.


3. What expectations do you have of your employer/workplace? Tick as many options as apply:

A union is a partnership, an agreement between workers, to stick together, to protect each other and to win change.

It’s easy to think that employers are all powerful, especially the big multinational companies and billionaires that many of us work for today. But ultimately they all still rely on our work to make their money. Sure, they can ignore us, or even threaten us, when we speak out alone. But when we all speak out, back each other up, and take action together, we’re stronger than they’d ever admit.

A union provides us with a vehicle, an organisation, to stand up together and fight for change. A union means we have legal protection for our campaigns, but more importantly we have strength in numbers. A union means we don’t have to take big risks and reinvent the wheel, because we can pass on the collective experience of past struggles and victories through our training and organisers.

Boss makes a dollar, we make a dime, that's why we fill out surveys on company time.