Elect­ed mem­bers of the U.S. Sen­ate don’t have to look very far to see fresh signs of the nation­al Fight For $15 move­ment: It’s made its way from the McDonald’s ham­burg­er joints back home to their own cozy Capi­tol Hill din­ing room.

The cooks and wait­ers work­ing for a cater­ing com­pa­ny that oper­ates the Sen­ate restau­rant are speak­ing up for bet­ter wages and the right to union­ize, even as they serve up lux­u­ri­ous meals to well-paid politi­cians and their well-heeled guests, say labor activists in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Their efforts have per­suad­ed some 34 mem­bers of the Sen­ate to sup­port the cam­paign, and are once again high­light­ing the need for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to clean its own house and raise labor stan­dards for its own con­tract employees.

“We’re look­ing for a min­i­mum wage of $15 and a union,” says John Hol­brook, one of about 90 food ser­vice work­ers employed at Sen­ate office build­ings by Restau­rant Asso­ciates, a cater­ing com­pa­ny based in New York. They also want to be rep­re­sent­ed by Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU) 32BJ, a large local that is best known for rep­re­sent­ing build­ing ser­vices work­ers in cities on the East Coast.

Restau­rant Asso­ciates has been resist­ing these demands, accord­ing to Paco Fabi­an, a spokesman for the union advo­ca­cy group Good Jobs Nation, even though the com­pa­ny is already par­tial­ly union­ized. Food ser­vice work­ers on the oth­er side of Capi­tol Hill in the din­ing rooms of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, for exam­ple, have long been orga­nized as mem­bers of UNITE HERE Local 23. Oth­er Restau­rant Asso­ciates cater­ing con­tracts employ UNITE HERE mem­bers, and the company’s par­ent cor­po­ra­tion, U.K.-based multi­na­tion­al Com­pass Group is part­ly union­ized in the U.S., Cana­da and elsewhere.

The com­pa­ny reject­ed the crit­i­cism in a Novem­ber 16 let­ter from Restau­rant Asso­ciates Pres­i­dent Dick Cat­tani to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vermont), who has cham­pi­oned the cause of the work­ers. Cat­tani wrote:

The work­ers of the Sen­ate Din­ing Room have every right to orga­nize if they so choose. An orga­niz­ing effort by the SEIU three years ago was reject­ed by 68 per­cent of those voting. If the SEIU believes it has the nec­es­sary sup­port to orga­nize in the Sen­ate Din­ing Room, we believe the best course would be to fol­low the usu­al pro­ce­dure of ask­ing the [Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board] to hold an election.

Fabi­an didn’t dis­pute any­thing in Cattani’s let­ter but stressed that the pre­vi­ous elec­tion was three years ago, and that the new orga­niz­ing dri­ve has recruit­ed a major­i­ty of the cur­rent employ­ees. The work­ers want vol­un­tary recog­ni­tion of the union, he says, and 34 Sen­a­tors (all Democ­rats) have signed a let­ter ask­ing Restau­rant Asso­ciate to extend recog­ni­tion with­out requir­ing a NLRB-super­vised vote. Such votes are wide­ly thought to ben­e­fit employ­ers rather than work­ers, giv­ing the for­mer ample oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­vince work­ers not to join the union.

A key demand will be a min­i­mum wage of $15 an hour, Hol­brook says. Wash­ing­ton is an increas­ing­ly expen­sive place to live, he explains, and the Sen­ate sched­ule of fre­quent vaca­tions and days off means that many Sen­ate din­ing room work­ers strug­gle to get enough hours to earn a liv­ing wage.

Union sup­port­er James Pow­ell, a chef, wrote a plea to the sen­a­tors who con­trol the Restau­rants Asso­ciate contract:

Most of the sen­a­tors don’t even real­ize that the peo­ple prepar­ing their meals can’t afford to make ends meet. Many sen­a­tors are mul­ti-mil­lion­aires who not only enjoy fan­cy meals but also get chauf­feured around in black SUVs sur­round­ed by aides who are ready to meet their every need. … I’ve worked as a Sen­ate chef for 5 years, but I only make $13 an hour. I’m a sin­gle father and it’s hard to sup­port my son on a pover­ty wage. The cost of liv­ing in Wash­ing­ton is so expen­sive that I recent­ly end­ed up home­less. I lived in an aban­doned house for near­ly two months. That’s how long it took me to save up enough mon­ey to rent a bed­room in an apart­ment. I often had to skip meals to save money. Per­haps the lav­ish lifestyle of our politi­cians makes it hard for them to under­stand the chal­lenges of the work­ing poor. The sen­a­tors I cook for select their dish­es and wine pair­ings from a black leather bound menu, with the seal of the Sen­ate embossed in gold on the cov­er. Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio is a fan of the ​“Poached Salmon Nicoise Sal­ad” with hari­cot verts, capers, egg, toma­to, pota­to, and thyme vinai­grette ($19).

Good Job Nation’s Fabi­an tells In These Times that work­ers from the Sen­ate din­ing room first came to the orga­ni­za­tion for help ear­ly this year because of the high-pro­file cam­paigns it has run to boost the wages and work­ing con­di­tion for fed­er­al con­tract work­ers in the Wash­ing­ton area.

One of the most suc­cess­ful was to get union recog­ni­tion for food ser­vice work­ers at the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion, anoth­er fed­er­al gov­ern­ment instal­la­tion that has con­tract­ed with Restau­rant Asso­ciates. Good Jobs Nation also agi­tat­ed effec­tive­ly to con­vince Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma to sign an exec­u­tive order estab­lish­ing $10.10 an hour as a min­i­mum wage for fed­er­al con­tract workers.

“There real­ly isn’t any dif­fer­ence between what we have been try­ing to do at the Smith­son­ian or the Sen­ate Din­ing Room or with the high­er min­i­mum wage for all con­tract work­ers. It’s all one cam­paign,” con­cludes Fabian.