Utah has its first unionized bar, but it won’t be the last, experts say

The SunTrapp is widely considered Utah’s oldest and longest running gay bar, and it made history again in November, becoming the state’s first unionized bar.

It was a milestone in a state with a historic bent against organized labor — and it didn’t come without a fight.

Outside of The SunTrapp, the only other of Utah’s more than 6,000 bars and restaurants that have unionized appear to be about a half dozen local Starbucks, said Melva Sine, President of the Utah Restaurant Association.

Why? Experts gave The Salt Lake Tribune varying reasons, like Utah’s status as a “Right to Work” state (which prohibits mandatory union membership or fees) and the challenging logistics of unionizing in the high-turnover service industry, which often runs on segregated shifts that can isolate workers. Sine said perhaps unionization is so low in the field because employees feel supported by their bosses and the state’s labor commission does an adequate job resolving disagreements.

The industry isn’t an outlier. Federal data shows that Utah has far fewer unionized workers overall than the rest of the country.

Across the U.S., just under 10% of the country’s workers are unionized. In Utah, that rate falls to just 3.7% — one of the lowest in the nation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But as the state continues to grow, could more bars and restaurants follow in The SunTrapp’s path? University of Utah economics professor Eunice Han, whose research focuses on the impact of labor unions on local economies, doesn’t think it’s that far-fetched.

“You want to have workers thinking that this is a good place to be, good place to work,” she said.

If it’s up to Natalie Jankowski, lead bartender at SunTrapp and member of its organizing committee, more bar and restaurant unions will be a sure thing.

“I would love to get that jump-started,” she told The Tribune soon after The SunTrapp’s union was recognized in late November.

Challenges to unionizing

Han said the service industry has historically been hard to unionize because of how the work is structured.

Employees often work different, sometimes inconsistent shifts. A weekday employee, for instance, may never cross paths with someone who primarily works weekend nights, unlike at a factory, where “everyone is working in the same place and you see them every day,” Han said.

There’s also a lot of turnover, she said, and it can take time to get the votes to unionize.

More recently, though, organizing has gained traction on social media. Workers can communicate virtually and hold meetings online, Han said, breaking down traditional barriers.

It can also be particularly scary to try to unionize in Utah, where lawmakers last year tried to strip power from public worker unions, employment attorney Lauren Scholnick said.

“They are living in an at-will world, where they can be fired for any reason … and convincing their Utah co-workers that labor isn’t a four-letter word is really hard,” said Scholnick, who is also a professor at the U.’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.

But Sine sees it differently. The reason Utah has so few service industry unions is because, she said, workers don’t feel they need them.

“I’m not saying that we as the Utah Restaurant Association are opposed to unionization, but we do see that there hasn’t been a need, and there hasn’t been a necessity in the state of Utah.”

She said employees generally feel like they can go to their employer to ask for higher pay or a flexible schedule — and feel empowered to look for work elsewhere if their employer won’t provide that.

“We are a right-to-work state,” Sine said, “and that makes all the difference.”

Even as the state grows, many who come here, she said, are “people who are like-minded.”

Faith and unionism ‘intrinsically bound’ here

Another factor is the state’s predominant religion: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As J. Kenneth Davies wrote in the Utah History Encyclopedia, “any attempt to understand Utah unionism without understanding its relationship to Mormonism would be ineffectual.”

“They have been intrinsically bound together even though they often have been in conflict,” he wrote.

Early unions in what would become the Beehive State were made up of mostly Latter-day Saint pioneers. And the LDS Church, according to the article, wielded its influence, encouraging those workers to accept lower wages and dissuading them from striking.

Those guilds of miners and railroad workers, however, were soon “invaded by strangers” — people who “were not beholden to and often were antagonistic toward Mormondom.” That, Davies wrote, drove a wedge between unions and the faith.

The LDS Church did not immediately comment in response to The Tribune’s request.

As the 1890s shifted to the 1900s, Utah tried to fall in line with the rest of the U.S., politically and economically. “Mormon leaders, who had not been exactly comfortable with unions, became increasingly supportive of capitalists and more and more critical of unionism,” Davies said.

Businesses that only hired union members — called “closed” shops — were “[e]specially under church attack,” he added. This often meant that “devout Mormons” eschewed union membership — and lost out on work.

Later, in 1955, Utah lawmakers passed their version of the federal right-to-work law, which banned closed shops.

That came 40 years after the Salt Lake City execution of Joe Hill, the “poet laureate” of the Industrial Workers of the World who was convicted of murder. Unionists saw his death as a “political execution,” which helped solidify “Utah’s anti-union posture.”

‘Too small’ to unionize

When SunTrapp workers announced their intent to unionize, bar owner Mary Peterson immediately told The Tribune, “My business is too small.”

But no business is “too small” to unionize, both Han and Scholnick said. That includes small businesses with notoriously small profit margins, like local bars and restaurants.

Scholnick pointed to The National Labor Relations Act, which applies to all private sector employers with two or more employees.

When posed the question, Han mused a quizzical, “Hmm.”

“It could be a good excuse,” she eventually responded, but added, “big businesses also use the same logic.”

“Everybody uses similar arguments: ‘Our business is not that fruitful. This is not the time for discussing higher increases,’ you know, stuff like that — usually the same things,” she said.

No one representing The SunTrapp’s ownership or management responded to The Tribune’s request for comment.

“It is important to remember that The SunTrapp is now Utah’s first unionized bar, because [Peterson] chose to voluntarily recognize the union,” said Zachary Wiseman, an attorney representing Peterson, soon after the bar announced voluntary recognition.

Han acknowledged that workers have weaker bargaining power when it comes to asking for higher wages if their employer isn’t making money.

“But this kind of rhetoric, you actually see in every employer,” she said. “No employer’s basically saying that, ‘Oh, we have so much revenue, so much profit … so I want to give back to the workers.’”

“There’s always the employer pushback,” she continued. “So this is all expected. But I guess then the question becomes, ‘How is it possible in Las Vegas, but not Utah, right?’”

The discrepancy, she explained, is that Las Vegas’ service-industry unions got started earlier. They also have a larger pool of workers.

Could more bars and restaurants be next?

It was actually the Las Vegas service industry unions that inspired Jankowski, 27, to organize The SunTrapp.

“The service industry in Vegas is awesome,” said Jankowski, who used to work there. “They offer benefits at a lot of places. They start off at, usually, over $10, even if you’re a tipped employee. They have a lot more protections.”

When she moved to Salt Lake City, though, the same types of jobs she had in Las Vegas “were offering $2 an hour, no type of benefit at all, no guaranteed hours, no guaranteed scheduling.”

“Service workers are all alone, popping restaurant to bar, to restaurant to bar, just running their way through town if they stick up for themselves,” Jankowski said.

That’s why she said she began the process of unionizing.

Being the first do so in any industry can prompt “heavier pushback,” Han said, which the bar’s workers saw.

They announced their intent on Sept. 26, noting that workers had already signed union authorization cards. Peterson then fired those employees before quickly re-hiring them, saying in a video on social media that she had been “ignorant” to laws that protect unionized workers.

By Oct. 3, pro-union staffers went on strike, accusing Peterson of committing unfair labor practices. Strikes continued every weekend until Peterson suddenly closed the bar on Halloween. About a month later, she agreed to voluntarily recognize the union. The bar has since reopened.

SunTrapp may be Utah’s first unionized bar, but if it’s up to Jankowski, it won’t be the last.

Most of her friends here are in the service industry, she said, “and I hear horror story after horror story of them being abused and mistreated.”

On the afternoon the union was recognized, her “immediate next steps” were to share a post on social media “encouraging people to reach out to us on how to organize their small business.”

Over the next month, she said in a text message, a handful of workers from local businesses had reached out.

Han said it makes sense that more bars or restaurants might try to unionize now — and feels Utah might need it if the state wants to keep attracting workers. But those workers would need public support, she said.

“If the public understands why those workers are unionizing, why people are joining their movement and stuff like that,” Han said, “then you can [keep] the momentum going.”

Scholnick isn’t so sure. The discrepancy between employer and employee rights in Utah has existed for a “long time,” even if there seems to be more national support for labor and more organizing drives.

“I think younger workers are not going to put up with it anymore,” she said of those national trends, “and good for them.”

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