By Eisa Cohen
I’m a college student, and like many other students, have to work part time to help my family with expenses as well as funding my education (I actually have to work three part time jobs in total).
At one of my jobs, as a server at a restaurant, my employer wanted to introduce a new policy that no staff should be able to dye their hair to remain “presentable and appropriate for the job”. I’m a very expressive person, and part of that is through my appearance — including my hair colour.
Unfortunately, my workplace is not unionised, so I couldn’t immediately turn towards a union myself. Instead, I had to turn to my co-workers and discuss the policy, building opposition against it. Many of my colleagues are young workers like myself, and also want to be able to express themselves, including through their hair colour. I managed to build a core of workers who were against this policy, and we all coordinated a plan to dye our hair as a form of protest against the policy and to make it unworkable for the employer.
While my employer was initially upset at this move, they realised that they could not take any form of action against us as the policy had not been implemented, but we were confident in our position that we would not allow the policy to be enforced. By building support and solidarity among my colleagues, we were showing who had the real strength — could the employer risk taking action against many of its employees in the face of what was seemingly a pointless policy that would just anger the largely young workforce they had?
We were able to get the employers to back down on this proposed policy, and we are able to express ourselves through our hair colour. This has helped build confidence across the workforce — including those who initially didn’t want to make a stand, who have seen the collective action workers can take against an employer — and win.
While this didn’t gain us a big pay rise, it was still a show of collective action, organically by workers, that has pushed the employer back and given the workforce agency. When workers fight back, we can win.
