This is the first installment of Rhode Works, an Uprise RI summer series on work, labor, and unions in Rhode Island.

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Every summer hundreds of people from across the globe come to Block Island to work as dishwashers and waitstaff, deckhands and cleaners, at businesses catering to summer tourists. While Block Island has only around 1,000 year round residents, in the summer months the population explodes to 15,000 or 20,000, as New Englanders flock to the island for vacation. According to a report from 2000, the most recent year for which revenue estimates are available, spending by tourists on Block Island equals nearly $60 million each year. Profits from these businesses flow into the hands of a select few families out on the island, who own the majority of the tourist businesses there. 

To find labor for such an operation, many businesses rely on minimum wage workers and workers from other countries on J-1 or other forms of work visas. These workers sometimes live, in the words of one worker on the island, in “deplorable” housing conditions while providing the backbone of the labor force needed to make the economic engine of the island go. Without these workers, and in particular those on work visas, there would be no Block Island tourist revenue coming in at all. 

Uprise RI has talked with a few of these workers. They celebrate the cultural milieu and novel experience of being able to work out on a beautiful island with coworkers from across the world, but they also describe an intense work environment, poor housing conditions, and conversations about unionization.

Some names and identifying information have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewee. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. Uprise RI reporter Peder S. Schaefer worked out on Block Island in the summer of 2019, and his questions and this conversation are informed by his experiences then.

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Uprise RI: How did you first get a job working on Block Island?

Scott: One of my friends found the website for the Block Island Chamber of Commerce and it showed that The Oar (one of the largest restaurants on Block Island) was hiring. I applied there. I talked to the main manager, and he said the only positions they had left were the kitchen. I was so desperate to go out to the island that I said, ‘Sure, I can do kitchen work.’ I kind of lied and said that I had experience in the kitchen when I never did. Then yeah, they gave me the job. So I moved out there on May 30, 2019, and on the 31st I started my job. I went in there and I had no idea what I was gonna do. On that day, they told me what I was gonna do. I was gonna be a fry cook in the kitchen. Yeah, I started to work. 

Kitchen work is tough work. It’s not for everyone. It’s difficult at times. It sucks. It’s really hot and sweaty. People who are your friends turn into your enemies sometimes just because the work is so difficult and excruciating. But it was a very unique and enlightening experience. I have never worked a job that I’ve hated more in my entire life, but it was something that I really needed to go through because now I feel like I can do any job, like any other job. I have a little mantra now. It’s like, nothing will be as bad as kitchen work. And so far that’s been holding up. 

Yeah, just being able to have the opportunity to work out on Block Island was something that I never thought I would do and it’s something that completely changed my life. Being out on the island, you see the same people pretty much all the time. Everything slows down. You forget about your life on the mainland. You forget about all these other things that you are worrying about. At the time I was a sophomore in college and I had all these things that I was worrying about before I went up to the island, but I completely forgot about them and melted into the island. I started to work, and I really miss just being around the island people and hanging out with all the regulars.

Uprise RI: Can you tell me more about the job itself?

Scott: It was one of the most difficult jobs I’ve had in my life. I had one day off every week, and every Tuesday I had off it rained. So that just made the job even worse. Every single fucking Tuesday it rained for no goddamn reason. I don’t fucking know why. But yeah, working in the kitchen, it was just all about pumping out orders. Like if you fuck up, just try it again. If you fuck up again, try it again. And then you can’t fuck up the third time. You just keep going. Just keep moving and moving and moving. People are shouting orders at you. When people tell you they need something, you give it to them right then and there. You need to develop tough skin. People will scream at you. People will call you all these fucking names and try to get under your skin, but they’re not trying to get under your skin. They’re trying to motivate you to try to push you. 

You know, I’d say for anyone who doesn’t have tough skin or like, you know, who has never been bullied in their life, like don’t, don’t go into kitchen work. It’s a very rough place. But it’ll make you or break you. With me personally, it definitely made me a lot stronger. It teaches you how to just flow with things and get shit done. Like there have been so many times when I was in that kitchen and I really thought I wasn’t going to be able to do it, especially on holidays and during the parade and the Fourth of July, like I really thought like I was gonna have a mental breakdown but I didn’t. And like I was saying, these people can be really good and like really close to you. I made friends with so many people out there. I still talk to a lot of them.

Uprise RI: Can you tell me a little bit more about the hours you were working out there?

Scott: I was working 40 hours every week, usually nine to three or four o’clock, Wednesdays through Monday. That was every single week and never changed. I think I took one day off from The Oar, during the entire three and a half months that I was there.

Uprise RI: Can you tell me more about the different kinds of people you met out there and their experience with the work too?

Scott: It’s a very diverse place. I worked with people from Argentina, from Jamaica, from Macedonia, from Serbia. I didn’t mainly work with people from the US. That was a very eye opening experience because I got to meet and I got to learn a lot of different things about their cultures. I got to learn different slang. I got to learn about different foods. Yeah, it was a very, very eye opening experience being able to work with all these different people from all these different cultures.

Uprise RI: Can you tell me about the living conditions while you were working out there? 

Scott: We were at the bottom pretty much. We were in this shack that was probably one of the most deplorable places I’ve ever lived in my life. It was just two beds in a room. It was just this nasty wood floor. There were bugs everywhere. One of the guys that I worked with, who actually lived upstairs from us actually, jumped through my window and broke my window. The housing conditions are some of the worst conditions I think I’ve ever lived in. I remember too in our bathroom there was that little metal opening in the floor, and if you lifted up the little cover it went straight down into the earth, so I’m pretty sure it’s how all the bugs got in. I remember that every time it would rain, the door wasn’t all the way on the frame so the rain would always seep in under the door and just completely soaked that rug that we had right outside the door. Those were some of the most deplorable conditions I’ve ever lived in my entire life. It was just absolutely disgusting and abhorrent.

Uprise RI: Did you ever bring up those living conditions to management about getting that fixed?

Scott: No. I was so worried about getting fired or replaced because I wanted to stay out on the island. I never really complained about anything. My manager even said it himself. He said that I was one of his best employees, because I never complained to him about anything, which I didn’t. The only thing that I think I ever complained to him about is when my fridge in the kitchen was electrocuting me. I had to complain because I literally could not open the fridge. Other than that, I never really complained about the housing. I never really complained to him about anything. I just kind of sucked it up and just got through it.

Uprise RI: Why did you want to stay on the island so bad?

Scott: I just didn’t want to leave. I was really enjoying myself. Two of my best friends were out there. I really didn’t want to leave the island and leave them. I didn’t want to get fired too because it was the first kind of job I had ever had. And I was like okay, I want to be able to put this on my resume. And so I kind of sucked it up and just got through it. Now looking back on it, I kind of wish I did complain and be like, hey, these living conditions are deplorable. I’m literally sleeping with earwigs and silverfish, like, this is fucking disgusting. Get me the fuck out of here.

Uprise RI: How was the relationship with management when you were working out there?

Scott: When things were going smoothly, management was really good with us. They would always be like, ‘how can we help you, what else do you need? Are you running out of anything?’ But, when things were going badly our manager would come in the kitchen and push us to be better. Like, hey, we have all these orders coming in like we need this food happening, like, what’s going on? He was the type of manager where like, he’s like, in your face. Like, he’ll come right in there and talk right to you like he’s not going to send someone in. He’s gonna come in there himself and try to figure things out. Which I mean like it was super stressful, but I also respected him for it because not many managers were like that. You know, they’ll send someone else in to do it. But this guy, he went right in and would just try to talk with everyone and figure everything out.

Uprise RI: Are there any days in particular that really stand out to you about working there?

Scott: Yeah. The Fourth of July was definitely one of them. I have never, ever ever cooked so much fried fucking chicken in my life. Oh my god. I remember there was one point where I had to make four or five baskets of chicken at once and I put as much chicken in those fry baskets as possible. I just dumped them in and I left them in there for too long and we couldn’t pull them out of the basket after. They were all stuck together. I was on the verge of having a mental breakdown because the ticket thing just kept running and running and running. But my kitchen manager came over to me and he helped me get them out of the basket. I completely restarted and made all that again. I made all the fried chicken again. Yeah, I will never forget the Fourth of July. I’ll never forget race week when all those big wig yacht people came in, and they would drink and eat themselves to death. That was an epic time. 

Uprise RI: Do you have any thoughts about the relationship between workers on the island and all the tourists? 

Scott: Unless you’ve worked out there or unless you know someone that has worked out there, the tourists and the customers don’t understand the workers and what the workers go through. The majority of the housing out there is not the best and it should be updated more. The workers themselves, they work their asses off. People think it’s just a small little island but during the summer it gets insanely packed. We worked those hours every single week. And I couldn’t work any less and I couldn’t work anymore, because if I did I would have got fired or they would have moved me somewhere else, somewhere even worse. 

The tourists and the customers, they don’t understand the housing, or how much the workers actually work and how challenging it is for a lot of people who work out there because the majority of people who work out there are from different countries and places around the world and their first language isn’t English. I remember working in the kitchen. One of the guys I worked with and I had to teach was from Macedonia and he spoke very little English, so we had to figure out a way to communicate using hand signals. No one really understands what the workers go through and how challenging it is for someone to come from literally the other side of the world to work out here. The majority of tourists out there are American, you know. They’re from Rhode Island or they’re from a bunch of other states from the Northeast. They’ve never worked on  Block Island themselves. They just visit here with their family. 

I feel like that’s like a huge like disconnect on the island, because if people did realize what these people, what a lot of the workers were going through and how life actually is for those people, then I feel like people would vouch for a lot of the restaurant workers and say that they should have better housing, they should have better wages, they should have better like living conditions in general.

Uprise RI: You were just describing some of the working conditions on the island and relationships you had with other workers there. I’m wondering if, when you were working there, if any kind of thoughts or discussions of unionizing came up? Was unionization something that was ever on the table or you ever talked about?

Scott: When I was out there it wasn’t a discussion, but now it’s a huge conversation that’s happening on the island. I went out there recently and met up with a bunch of people I worked with, and they were talking about it. A lot of the people that I worked with originally were on work visas. They were just happy to have that opportunity and like suck it up, you know? They weren’t talking about unionizing because they had to stay on their work visa.

Uprise RI: Tell me more about the threat of losing the work visa and why that made organizing difficult. 

Scott: A lot of people who worked out there and who were from different countries were on work visas. I remember sometimes they would be threatened, so they could lose their work visa. If they didn’t pick up the pace or if they didn’t work hard enough, they would just be replaced or they would lose their work visa, so they would just work their asses off and try to make management happy as much as they could, even though they could be treated better. They can be paid more, they can have a better place, they can have better things. I felt like when I was out on the island unionizing was never really a conversation that was to be had. Everyone was just really thankful to be out there and to be working.

Uprise RI: Can you tell me more about the kind of conversations that your friends out there on the island now are having about unionizing?

Scott: The people that are talking about it are the Americans. They have US citizenship. They were talking about how the housing isn’t right, and how they want to have cleaner bathrooms and running water that they can actually drink. They want to have a shower that always has hot water. They don’t want to have bugs everywhere. They don’t want to have these rugs that are stained from 10 million years ago, you know. They want to have decent living conditions and be able to make more than minimum wage. They want to feel like they can take time off and not have to worry about getting fired. They want to work like a normal regular job, and like potentially even have a 401K and just be able to save money.

Uprise RI: Do you know how far their conversations about unionizing have gotten, and are these people at The Oar or are they working all over the island?

Scott: Pretty much all over the island. I’ve talked to people who worked at Nick’s, Tigerfish, The Oar, Kittens. The majority of people who were talking about it had citizenship and they weren’t on visas. If you’re not on a work visa, you’re treated better than someone who is on a work visa. So I feel like the conversation should move. There should be people who are on work visas involved in the conversation. Those people are the most expendable people on the island, so if anything, they should be on the forefront of this conversation. They’re treated the worst.

Uprise RI: What are some changes that you would like to see for working and living conditions for workers out there.

Scott: One of the main things that I really, really want to see is better housing. I want there to be a whole revamp of every living quarter for workers on the island. The island pulls in enough revenue to where workers could have at least new paint on the walls, like new beds, a new floor, like hot running water, and just have more time off and be able to be able to take sick days and not have to worry about getting fired or like getting yelled at for taking too much time. And especially now after COVID and stuff. We just went through a global pandemic and I feel like things are different now and that there should be a whole revamp of the island. People should have better housing. They should have better food. There should just be more care for  the workers on the island, especially the ones who are on work visas because they’re the backbone of the island. Without them, Block Island wouldn’t be a thing

Uprise RI: Why do you think those changes haven’t happened yet?

Scott: I feel like it’s a lot of selfishness and greed. There are so many profits on the island and there’s a short amount of time to make money, between May and October. I feel like they’re just focused on the profits. They just want to make as much money as possible, leave the island and forget about it for like the winter and then come back the next summer to do it again. But it shouldn’t be like that. There should be better living conditions for the workers. Yeah, there shouldn’t just be like all this like added stress because it’s already stressful enough. It’s stressful trying to work at a restaurant, or like a hotel, and dealing with customers and trying to make people happy while living in these deplorable conditions.

Uprise RI: Do you feel like there are like other kinds of divides going on amongst workers on the island?

Scott: Yes, totally. At The Oar, there were the people that wore white shirts, and there were the people that wore black shirts. The people who wore black shirts, we would always have to sit outside on a bench by the back by the dumpster to eat our food. The waitstaff and all the pretty people who would be with customers and actually talk to them, they would be able to eat their food inside and not have to sit within 10 feet of a dumpster or a trash compactor to eat their food. That was a huge divide at the Oar, I remember that. And the majority of people on work visas wore black shirts. The majority of people who were, you know, wearing black shirts were working in the kitchen or they were a dishwasher. They were cleaning. They didn’t have to deal with customers. And we were definitely treated as second class compared to the people that wore the white shirts which were usually the waitstaff. I completely forgot about that. You just brought all that back. Oh my god.

Uprise RI: Is there anything else you would like to see changed?

Scott: Another thing that I would like to see changed. I mean, I know this is like a huge stretch, but lower the prices at the BIG, the Block Island Grocery store. It’s probably like $8 now for a box of cereal. When you’re making minimum wage, and like $85 would be taken out of my paycheck for my rent each week. Which I mean, my housing is deplorable, but like you’re making minimum wage and you have money being taken out every week and you have to go buy groceries, because you’ve eaten everything at your restaurant and you’re sick of it and you don’t want to eat that food anymore. It’s very difficult to feed yourself food that you actually want to eat. So I would definitely like to see that change. They need to lower the price of food, drinks, and alcohol.

Uprise RI: Any last word Scotty?

Scott: I would say go out to the island. Work out there and get a restaurant job. It will either make you or break you. And if it doesn’t break you, you will be strong. But I mean, if it does break you, then you can always find another job on the island. But I would say 100 percent, go out there for one summer and work. Just try it out. It will change your life on a lot of things.