As Saturday night gave way to Sunday morning at the Belmont Avenue nightclub Berlin, bar staff checked IDs, charged covers, stamped wrists, checked coats, poured drinks and opened tabs. Bartenders placed neon-colored straws in glasses and limes on rims.

Clubgoers clad in sequined jumpsuits and T-shirts alike roared for the Saturday Night Drag Show. In between performances, partyers danced under disco balls and multicolored lights. Around midnight, one dancer tumbled to the floor, drink in hand. A staff member swooped in to wipe the floor dry.

The bar staff at Berlin, a mainstay in the Northalsted nightlife scene for nearly 40 years, filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board last week.

About 20 bartenders, bar backs, security staff, coat check workers and stage managers are seeking union representation with Unite Here Local 1, a union that represents hospitality workers at venues such as Navy Pier, Wrigley Field, convention centers and hotels. Drag performers and DJs who work at Berlin are not included in the unit and are employed by the club on a gig basis, bar staff said.

“Ultimately,” said Berlin bartender Jolene Saint, the union drive at the nightclub arose because staff were “feeling precarious.”

Employees had been talking about ways to better their working conditions for a while, with pay being a top concern. “People eventually got to the point where they were saying, ‘Hey, we should unionize,’” said Saint, 27.

Hospitality workers in venues such as hotels, casinos, airports and convention centers are often unionized. And since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a wave of new union filings has swept the country in industries that were traditionally thought of as difficult to organize. In Chicago, baristas, museum workers, graduate students and cannabis dispensary employees have all sought union representation over the last couple of years. But union filings from staff at independent bars and clubs are rare.

Saint said she makes $9 an hour in addition to tips; that means how much money she takes home on a given night can vary widely. She doesn’t receive health care from Berlin, and might lose Medicaid coverage when federal protections put in place during the pandemic expire this year. Some of her co-workers don’t have health insurance at all and make minimum wage, she said.

Working at a nightclub can be physically exhausting, said Saint, who has performed a number of jobs at Berlin over the last six years. Bar backs lift heavy buckets of ice and boxes of alcohol. Coat check workers run up and down stairs all night. And repetitive motions such as making drinks throughout the night stress workers’ bodies, she said.

“We want to feel like we’re taken care of, and that we don’t have to essentially sacrifice ourselves to have this place exist,” Saint said.

Berlin workers told the Tribune they’re seeking higher wages, health care, paid sick time, consistency in scheduling and more of a say in how their workplace is run, echoing the concerns of other local service industry workers who have sought union elections in recent months.

In a statement, Berlin said the bar “honors its employees’ right to determine their future” and is “committed to following the law and the NLRB process.”

Workers, like those at Berlin, can file for a union election when at least 30% of employees in a workplace sign union authorization cards. If a majority of workers sign cards, an employer can choose to recognize the union voluntarily. Usually, however, the next major step in the process is an election, which requires a majority vote to certify a new union.

Berlin owners Jo Webster and Jim Schuman did not address specific concerns brought by bar staff about wages or benefits, saying they “believe that it is best to have this conversation with our employees,” whom they described as “family.” Webster and Schuman told the Tribune that Berlin is their only business.

Over the last four decades, Berlin has cemented itself as an anchor for Chicago’s alternative queer communities and earned a reputation as a place where all are welcome. “Berlin is about blurring boundaries,” Schuman told the Tribune in 2013. The Chicago Reader has, in recent years, named Berlin Chicago’s “Best Gay Bar” and its “Best Nongay Gay Bar.” In 2012, the club claimed both awards.

Security staff member Chelle Crotinger described Berlin as “a place for the alternate queers to go and hang out.”

“The emos, the Goths, the metal heads, the weird house club kids, we are the place for them to feel safe and to feel like they can talk about their politics and be the people that they are,” said Crotinger, 31. “For us to be the ones to take this step forward first, to unionize first in the scene, makes sense.”

“We love Berlin, and we want Berlin to exist for another 40 years,” Saint said. “And the way that’s gonna happen is if employees are taken care of and feel like they’re not disposable.”

Club employees said safety is top of mind, particularly at a time when anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is high.

“With all of these anti-trans and anti-drag bills happening, and especially Berlin being very well-known as a place where a lot of trans people gather on the strip, it is very scary,” said Leo Sampson, who works at Berlin in social media and as an occasional stage manager in addition to performing drag at the club. “Our clientele comes here to have fun and relax and party.”

Illinois ranked third on a list of states with the highest number of drag events targeted or threatened last year, according to a report by advocacy organization GLAAD. The report found eight anti-LGBTQ incidents targeting drag in the state last year.

In the summer, a bakery in suburban Lake of the Hills was vandalized before a family-friendly drag brunch, which led to the event’s cancellation. And in September, the Downers Grove Public Library canceled a drag-queen bingo event after the library received a threatening letter that included a bullet.

Last year, five people were killed in a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs. Forty-nine people were killed in the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting at a gay club in Orlando.

“We live in a very, very dangerous time to be queer, let alone to be celebrating queerness like Berlin does,” said Crotinger, who also performs under the drag persona Tirrany Reigns.

Crotinger said Berlin has not experienced any significant risks during their time working at the club, where they make close to the minimum wage in addition to tips that can range from about $5 to $50 or $60 on a busy night. “But the fact of the matter is, our job is to be the front line if and when that does happen,” they said. “And we deserve to be paid and treated accordingly.”

Berlin workers said they hope their union would inspire other nightlife workers in Northalsted and Chicago to organize. A representative for Unite Here Local 1 would not comment on whether the union had plans to organize other independent bars or clubs.

Union filings such as the one by Berlin workers are unusual because unions tend to target their resources toward organizing larger groups of workers, labor organizers told the Tribune. Chicago-area union filings with the NLRB that mention bar staff are most frequently associated with hotels. Staff at a queer bar in Brooklyn called Oddly Enough filed for a union election in October but withdrew that petition in January, NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado confirmed. And in Los Angeles, strippers at a bar called the Star Garden are trying to unionize with the Actors’ Equity Association, though the club is contesting their status as employees. A labor board hearing is scheduled in their case in May.

Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, a nonprofit that campaigns against the subminimum or tipped minimum wage, said union filings like Berlin’s are rare because Unite Here has traditionally focused on organizing workers at hotels and casinos for strategic reasons.

“You might fight as long on a campaign for 25 workers in a bar as you might for a campaign for 2,000 workers at a hotel or casino,” Jayaraman said.

“As a result of that, independent restaurants and bars across the country are almost entirely nonunion,” she said.

Laura Garza, worker center director at workers’ rights nonprofit Arise Chicago, said some unions are starting to rethink how they organize and use their resources. In campaigns such as those by Starbucks baristas, workers themselves are taking the driver’s seat in organizing, with their unions standing behind them to provide support.

“We’ve got to be nimble in the labor movement, and I think we’re starting to see that,” Garza said. “We’re starting to see workers organizing and picking up the phone and calling the union, where before that wasn’t really happening.”

Though it’s rare for bar staff at independent clubs such as Berlin to file for a union election with the NLRB, Jayaraman said, other types of organizing among bar and restaurant workers, such as walking off the job or collectively asking for better pay, are far more common, especially as hospitality workers have gained more leverage since the start of the pandemic.

“These individual filings — like Starbucks, Amazon, this nightclub — are literally, literally the tip of the iceberg of what is happening more broadly of workers organizing,” she said.

Over the thump of the bass Saturday night, most Berlin patrons who spoke with the Tribune said they supported workers’ unionization efforts. “The staff at Berlin do a really good job at trying to make the scene in Chicago welcoming for all queer people, and it’s only fair that they’re treated with the same respect by the company,” said a 23-year-old clubgoer from Buena Park.

Some partyers said it was surprising to see a union campaign come out of a nightclub.

One clubgoer, summing up both their opinion on the union drive and Berlin’s general ethos, said simply, “I don’t see why not.”

tasoglin@chicagotribune.com