Downtown Coffee Shop Employees Organizing Union
Five-year-old cafe latest business to organize with MASH.
Fairgrounds Coffee. Photo taken Dec. 6 by Graham Kilmer.
Employees at Fairgrounds Coffee, a cafe on the edge of Downtown, are organizing a union.
They recently demanded recognition from their employer, Fairgrounds 7 LLC. The workers are organizing with the help of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization (MASH).
Fairgrounds Coffee is owned by Infuse Hospitality, a Chicago-based corporate food and hospitality management company. The company responded to the demand for recognition by retaining labor attorneys and filing for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election.
Neither Fairgrounds or Infuse Hospitality responded to requests for comment.
As a single cafe attempting unionization, the proposed bargaining unit is only seven employees, said Peter Rickman, MASH president. When workers demanded recognition they represented “more than your typical super majority recognition demand,” he said.
Under a new legal framework established by an NLRB decision in 2023, when a majority of workers demand recognition, employers have 14 days to recognize the union or petition for an NLRB election. Under this framework, petitioning for an election is viewed as refusing to recognize a union voluntarily.
“Workers across the hospitality industry recognize that the only way to ensure a meaningful voice and a seat at the table on the decisions that matter to them is with a union and a contract,” Rickman said.
The Fairgrounds Cafe workers join a growing number of service and hospitality workers who are organizing unions across the country. In Milwaukee, coffee shops and cafes owned and operated by Starbucks and Colectivo employees have been unionized. Colectivo hired high-priced “union avoidance consultants” to push back against the unionization campaign in 2020, as Urban Milwaukee reported.
The president of Fairgrounds Coffee, Tom McLaughlin, served in executive roles at Colectivo, including chief operating office, from 2021 to 2024.
The union has not heard from Fairgrounds since demanding recognition said Rickman. The company filed for an election on Dec. 3. The election extends the timeline for a unionization process, which is typically not to the advantage of the workers attempting to organize.
“Bosses fight unions, and it’s an unfair fight,” Rickman said.
The cafe opened in 2019 in the first floor of the Vantage on the Park apartment building, a redeveloped hotel.
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Perhaps Mr. McLaughlin needs a refresher on the meaning of “FAIR”. All these coffee companies must accept that “fair trade coffee” means fair treatment of their employees, including unionization if they choose. Until they honor the needs of the workers, they are selling “scab coffee”.