Today, employees at Attaboy on Manhattan’s Lower East Side voted 13-8 in favor of unionizing under the moniker Attaboy Local 134, bartender Samaiyah Patrick, who is part of the workers’ corps, confirms to VinePair. The result marks the first time a major New York City cocktail bar’s staff has been successful in forming an independent workers’ organization.
“There’s a lot of work ahead, but it’s nice to have some momentum and to do something that hasn’t really been done before,” Patrick says.
Members of the National Labor Relations Board hosted and certified the vote today at the bar, which is located on Eldridge Street. The results emerged just before 4:30 p.m., and owners Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy have yet to speak to their employees about the results, Patrick says. Some employees present at the election shook hands with one of the bar’s owners and a general manager following the results. Ross and McIlroy, who opened the bar in 2012, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The hospitality industry is notoriously difficult for forming unions. As a recent example, employees at Death & Co. in the East Village, a bar of Attaboy’s ilk, couldn’t get enough votes to form a union in 2023. After Achilles Heel in Greenpoint shuttered in February, its employees claimed it was a strategic closure to prevent the formation of a union.
Workers at Attaboy — which quickly ascended to become one of NYC’s most popular, institutional cocktail bars — announced their plans to form a union in a press release and across social media in early April. The statement drummed up significant buzz in the city’s craft cocktail and political scene, with other, unassociated bartenders voicing their support and politicians, including former city comptroller and Democratic mayoral primary candidate Brad Lander, attending rallies.
“Attaboy has been a trendsetter in the bar industry far and wide,” Lander says. “Today, they are setting a new trend as they vote to become a union shop. With the election settled, I hope their owners will continue the trendsetting by bargaining in good faith.”
The next step for Attaboy Local 134 and the bar’s owners is to begin contract negotiations. The owners could possibly thwart the union’s progression by challenging today’s vote or closing the bar, but for members of the union, an agreeable future seems plausible.
“This is truly out of a place of love for the bar,” Patrick says. “You don’t put in months and months of work for a place that you want to close. We want this business to thrive, and we think that that thriving could happen if we’re included in some decision making.”
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