A barista serves a customer at 1369 Coffeehouse on Friday in Central Square. (Photo: Nicholas Miller)
A wave of labor organization among Cambridge and Somerville cafés could expand this month as employees of 1369 Coffeehouse in Central and Inman squares decide in a National Labor Relations Board election whether to unionize.
The vote, which began June 1, comes exactly a year after employees of Pavement Coffeehouse, a café with eight shops across the Boston area, including one in Harvard Square, sent a letter to owner Larry Margulies declaring their intention to become the first unionized coffee shop in Massachusetts.
Since then, workers at two other local cafés, Darwin’s Ltd. with four Cambridge locations, and the Somerville sister shops of Diesel Café, Bloc Café and Forge Baking Co. and Ice Cream Bar, organized.
All four unionization efforts have been organized by the New England Joint Board of Unite Here.
The spike in coffee shop organization follows a period in the pandemic that employees say illuminated the importance of their labor, leaving them seeking greater power and stability at their cafés.
Food service workers “are constantly being shown by the industry and [the public] that [they] are disposable, that anyone can do [their] job,” said Emma Delaney, an organizer for NEJB and a former Pavement employee. But their work providing services at the height of the pandemic showed that they are “100 percent essential workers,” she said.