Control, camaraderie and resistance: Precarious work and organisation in hospitality

Abstract

With industrial action recently taking place at TGI Fridays, McDonald’s and Wetherspoons, the organisation of precarious workers within the hospitality industry has received renewed attention in popular and academic circles. The subject of this article is the result of a year’s worth of work, research and activism alongside co-workers within the sector. It takes the form of an insiders’ ethnography, positioning itself as an example of workers’ inquiry into precarious workplaces and collective resistance. The research addresses the subject of affective labour in customer-facing hospitality work, with particular attention paid to the sociability of the labour process. It also addresses the issues of the composition of labour and the material conditions that act as the driving force of precarity, while assessing the contours of flexibility, control and resistance. The wider social character of the work and the workers themselves, as well as the community and camaraderie of the workplace, is also studied. Using the 2018 TGI Fridays strike as a key example, the article outlines how, in harnessing the camaraderie of such social and communal work, workers have sought to realise their autonomy and resist precarity through collective struggle.