Speaker 1: Welcome Today, could happen here a podcast about fighting your bosses? Uh?
Speaker 1: This is this is your host Christopher Wong and with
Speaker 1: me today to talk about fighting bosses and bosses doing
Speaker 1: incredibly illegal stuff, bosses doing incredibly shady stuff, and why
Speaker 1: you should fight them more is Tori Tampolini, who was
Speaker 1: a partner organizer from Pittsburgh Starbucks Workers United and was
Speaker 1: fired from Starbucks like very illegally, under very sketchy circumstances. Tory,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks so much. I'm excited to
Speaker 1: be here. Yeah, I'm really really happy to have you here. Um, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I guess I guess we should start with the
Speaker 1: whole you were denied you were you were, you were
Speaker 1: denied your legal rights and then fired presumably for union
Speaker 1: organizing thing. Yes, absolutely, so starting from the beginning. And
Speaker 1: there was like I was so a month ago my
Speaker 1: store manager set me down and I like, he asked
Speaker 1: me to come downstairs for a conversation. So I brought
Speaker 1: a witness with me and we went downstairs, and I
Speaker 1: found out that I was being investigated because there was
Speaker 1: one day that I had written down my weekday start
Speaker 1: time instead of my weekend to start time. They just
Speaker 1: recently changed things at my store so that we opened
Speaker 1: at we start opening shifts at five thirty on the
Speaker 1: weekends and five on the weekdays. And this is a
Speaker 1: recent change up. I had been there for three years,
Speaker 1: so I out of habit. One day I had written
Speaker 1: five in the book instead of five thirty. Um. A
Speaker 1: couple of months later, it seems like everything has blown over.
Speaker 1: They accepted the fact that it was just an innocent mistake.
Speaker 1: I really wasn't trying to steal thirty minutes of time,
Speaker 1: which comes out to like what six dollars after Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was really desperate for that six dollars. So I
Speaker 1: figured they just they knew it was an innocent mistake
Speaker 1: and it wasn't going to be a further issue until
Speaker 1: I saw two managers in my store. One of them
Speaker 1: was my store manager, the other one was Her name
Speaker 1: is Brittany. And what Starbucks has done recently is that
Speaker 1: they've created this new position in the company. From my understanding,
Speaker 1: it's called support manager, and they're basically like an assistant
Speaker 1: district manager, and they go around two stores where there's
Speaker 1: any sort of union activity, and they try to talk
Speaker 1: about strategies to squash it. So it's like, basically the
Speaker 1: store manager that did the most harsh union busting if
Speaker 1: their own store gets promoted to this position. So in
Speaker 1: my district, the person's name is Brittany, and I saw
Speaker 1: her in my store, which is always a bad sign.
Speaker 1: And um, at one point they asked me to have
Speaker 1: a seat for a conversation. So I sit down, and uh, well,
Speaker 1: before I sit down, I say, is this a disciplinary conversation?
Speaker 1: And the manager said the one manager said to me, yes,
Speaker 1: this is solely a disciplinary conversation. And I said, I
Speaker 1: would like to invoke my wine button rights. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go out to the floor and bring somebody back
Speaker 1: as a witness. And they said, you can't do that today.
Speaker 1: And basically what they did is they like held up
Speaker 1: a piece of paper like with a wall of text
Speaker 1: on it like this are from my face, and they're
Speaker 1: like it says right here that we can't. We don't
Speaker 1: have to do that for you. And I was like
Speaker 1: that's really illegal and I'm not comfortable having this conversation
Speaker 1: right now at all. And they said, well, we're going
Speaker 1: to hand this to you anyway, and handed me a
Speaker 1: notice of termination. Um. Yeah, so I walked out and
Speaker 1: walk back to the front of house, and I said
Speaker 1: a little bit loudly, definitely not like shouting, but kind
Speaker 1: of loudly. I said, I just got fired, and is
Speaker 1: it okay if I swear to quote my friend? Okay? Cool.
Speaker 1: So my best friend Kim was working at the time,
Speaker 1: and she loudly said, right in front of our new
Speaker 1: store manager, what the fuck? And I just kept walking
Speaker 1: because I was so upset and I didn't want the
Speaker 1: managers to see me cry. So I walked to the
Speaker 1: front of house, or walk outside, and Kim follows me,
Speaker 1: and she was like, we're gonna fix this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ask Pulieve Early and I'll drive you home and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this. Kim goes back inside, looks at
Speaker 1: my assistant manager and says, I'm a question mission to
Speaker 1: be leieve Early. And the assistant manager literally couldn't even
Speaker 1: look her in the eye and told her Kim go
Speaker 1: have a seat in the back, and they fired Kim
Speaker 1: as well. Jesus, yeah, yeah. And I think when everything
Speaker 1: about the story that I think is worth talking about
Speaker 1: is that like when when it comes to union busting,
Speaker 1: it literally does not matter how good of an employee,
Speaker 1: you are unblessed, like you not being there will literally
Speaker 1: cause everything to collapse. But yeah, I don't talk about
Speaker 1: like you were really good at this, and they were
Speaker 1: still just like no, fuck you. Yeah. So I was
Speaker 1: voted by everybody at my store. I was voted Partner
Speaker 1: of the Quarter in spring of I was also promoted
Speaker 1: a shift supervisor within that same week. And later that year,
Speaker 1: I participated in a Barista competition for my store and
Speaker 1: I won Barista Champion for my store level, and I
Speaker 1: also tied at the district level for Barisa Champion for
Speaker 1: the district. So um. And then in addition to that,
Speaker 1: I had dealt with a situation where somebody like leaning
Speaker 1: against the front of my store had overdosed on heroin
Speaker 1: and I gave him an arcan and basically saved the
Speaker 1: guy's life. And then like a month or two later
Speaker 1: they fired me. So yeah, which I like, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of if like any other way you can
Speaker 1: possibly go like above and beyond what anyone could reasonably
Speaker 1: require you, that is more than I saved a dude's life.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, like you're welcome, guys, someone would have
Speaker 1: died inside your store if I wasn't there, but um, okay,
Speaker 1: by I guess yeah, And I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about about that, specifically, in about sort of
Speaker 1: the conditions at the store, because one of the things
Speaker 1: that seems really clear from from listening to you talk
Speaker 1: about it and from reading stuff about it is that
Speaker 1: it's not just I mean, even if you were just
Speaker 1: like you know, doing kind of regular issue like service
Speaker 1: workers stuff, this would be unccessible. But it's also like
Speaker 1: there's there's this way in which you and your co
Speaker 1: workers have sort of been turned into social workers and
Speaker 1: are being sort of are being forced to like deal
Speaker 1: with just all of the people who sort of capitalism
Speaker 1: to say, I just like spat out absolutely yeah, and
Speaker 1: sort of like fill in the gaps of just the
Speaker 1: collapse of American social services. And yeah, I wanted, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wondered if you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the stuff that you've been having to do and what
Speaker 1: that's like. Yeah. Absolutely, So. Something I've noticed in Market
Speaker 1: Square is that it feels like there were some sort
Speaker 1: of resources for the unhoused community that existed before the
Speaker 1: pandemic that's straight up just don't exist anymore. So A
Speaker 1: lot of that that work to be done, like falls
Speaker 1: on the Starbucks employees. Most of us are completely unqualified
Speaker 1: for that, Like I have a degree in psychology, but
Speaker 1: sometimes that's just not really enough. Most of us are
Speaker 1: film students at Point Park, so none of us are
Speaker 1: at all equipped to deal with any situations where somebody
Speaker 1: is under the influence of something and maybe becoming aggressive,
Speaker 1: or somebody is having a mental health crisis, or there
Speaker 1: are people that are sleeping in the cafe and we're
Speaker 1: asked to pick them out if they're sleeping, but that
Speaker 1: feels really really bad because there's not a ton of
Speaker 1: other resources, especially during the day, I know, the shelters closed,
Speaker 1: so when it's like winter or it's like ninety degrees
Speaker 1: outside and someone is just trying to get like a
Speaker 1: tiny little bit of sleep, it feels really bad to
Speaker 1: kick them out. Um, So we dealt with a lot
Speaker 1: of situations that we are just completely on equipped to handle.
Speaker 1: And Starbucks would send us de escalation training, but most
Speaker 1: of the de escalation training revolved around if a customer
Speaker 1: isn't happy with their drink and they're shouting at you,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't even begin to cover like any of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we deal with that Market Square we
Speaker 1: had like we've we've seen a lot of customers having
Speaker 1: mental health crises in the cafe, Like what do you do?
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to call the police. That's definitely
Speaker 1: not going to help. UM. In the situation where I
Speaker 1: had to narcan somebody the we had called for an
Speaker 1: ambulance and twenty minutes later, the ambulance still wasn't there,
Speaker 1: And there were even managers at the surrounding businesses calling
Speaker 1: and calling and calling trying to get an ambulance to
Speaker 1: Market Square and it ended up like being me that
Speaker 1: had to give them a narcan. UM overall, like something
Speaker 1: that we were pushing for with Union. The main thing
Speaker 1: that we were pushing for was better training, Like we
Speaker 1: want Narcan to keep in the stores and we want
Speaker 1: all the ships to be trained on how to use that.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't have to be through Starbucks. There are
Speaker 1: I know of a lot of organizations throughout Picksburg that
Speaker 1: would be happy to train our staff on that. UM
Speaker 1: we need like better resources. I know at one point
Speaker 1: we were falsely promised a social worker that would sit
Speaker 1: in our cafe for at least one day every two weeks.
Speaker 1: UM never got that, And yeah, I feel like my
Speaker 1: staff just deserves better, the community deserves better, and it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be Starbucks's job. But until we have something better,
Speaker 1: I think that we should be a little bit more
Speaker 1: equipped to handle situation that, frankly, we do have to
Speaker 1: deal with at some point, just by the nature of
Speaker 1: our work and our location. I also think something really
Speaker 1: funny to mention here is that we got a new
Speaker 1: store manager at the UM. I want to say, at
Speaker 1: the beginning, or like mid June, we got this new
Speaker 1: store manager. Her name was Sarah, and she has already
Speaker 1: transferred to a different store because she felt so unsafe
Speaker 1: working up Market Square. She got her first Market Square
Speaker 1: a death threat and was like, I'm out. So even
Speaker 1: the store manager can't deny that our working positions are bad.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they're still fighting against the union
Speaker 1: even though management is well aware of how terrible our
Speaker 1: conditions are. Just like baffles. Yeah, okay, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to take a second and go back to
Speaker 1: something that you said, which is your first Market Square
Speaker 1: death threat? How common is this? UM? I think I
Speaker 1: received a total of four to five and UM, then
Speaker 1: I received my very last one. The day that my
Speaker 1: store went on strike and I was standing at the
Speaker 1: picket line and I was like, wow, it's just like
Speaker 1: the good old days before. But yeah, market squares a
Speaker 1: lotless land. Yeah, And I like, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: I feel like this is like every time I do
Speaker 1: this is like a recurring thing. Every time I do
Speaker 1: a labor story, it's like, oh, this is a labor storce,
Speaker 1: Like no, but it's also the story of a bunch
Speaker 1: of like a bunch of people whose job this like
Speaker 1: isn't who just wind up having to deal with all
Speaker 1: of the ship that the state doesn't want to do,
Speaker 1: that corporations don't want to do. And it's like the
Speaker 1: the fact that Starbucks employees have to be the like
Speaker 1: the Starbucks union has to be the group in like
Speaker 1: in this place that is trying to get people to
Speaker 1: get in dark hand training is nuts. Like just just
Speaker 1: like just any like sort of just Macro taking a
Speaker 1: step back level, like what on earth is going on
Speaker 1: in the society. CAN have been thinking a lot about lately,
Speaker 1: Like I think a lot of journalists and reporters have
Speaker 1: asked me, like, why do you think that the younger
Speaker 1: generation is the one like leading this like why are
Speaker 1: unions making it back now? And why is his younger
Speaker 1: generations like so ready to lead this? And I think
Speaker 1: it's because we've spent our entire lives watching politicians on
Speaker 1: TV make all these promises and continuing to do absolutely nothing,
Speaker 1: and we're all sick and tired of it. We are
Speaker 1: all ready to take it into our own hands and
Speaker 1: fix it in any way that we see that we had. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. I mean, like I
Speaker 1: my you know, my my first ball Okay, so my
Speaker 1: first political member was the Rock War, but like I
Speaker 1: was like a little baby child, but like like you know,
Speaker 1: like I remember, like the thing I grew up on
Speaker 1: was like yeah it was Obama, it was it was Hope.
Speaker 1: It was changed, and then it was like you look
Speaker 1: at the world now and it's like it's like, oh
Speaker 1: it's it's even bleaker than it was in two tho eight,
Speaker 1: which is like, yeah, absolutely crazy. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. And I think also just
Speaker 1: like the last two years have been so prudal. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I was wondering, Yeah, I wonder thing did you
Speaker 1: can talk about like what affects the um, what effect
Speaker 1: the pandemic had on Yellows workers and what effect that
Speaker 1: had on union organizing. Yeah, absolutely so. Um, I think
Speaker 1: that it really pulled the mask off the company, which ironically,
Speaker 1: well everyone was putting the mask on. The mask off
Speaker 1: was coming on for Starbucks because they always really pretended
Speaker 1: to be this really awesome progressive company, and it really
Speaker 1: revealed how performative the company is because they gave us
Speaker 1: all these COVID benefits for like two three months and
Speaker 1: then took them right away from us like before. Obviously
Speaker 1: the pandemic isn't even over now, it definitely wasn't over
Speaker 1: back and I think it was October they took away
Speaker 1: like our chees spikes too, exactly. And right around that time,
Speaker 1: we were also watching our CEO are now former CEO
Speaker 1: Kevin Johnson, get like a forty million dollar raised, while
Speaker 1: they had just taken away our hazard pay and there
Speaker 1: are free food benefits even though we were all still struggling.
Speaker 1: So then I think that us seeing those benefits being
Speaker 1: taken away and realizing that the company doesn't care about
Speaker 1: us in that sense made us start looking harder at everything,
Speaker 1: Like the company doesn't want to increase our pay, they
Speaker 1: don't want to give us credit card tipping, they don't
Speaker 1: want to make our stores safer, um, and every other
Speaker 1: reason that any store could see to unionize. Like it
Speaker 1: really highlighted all of those reasons and all the ways
Speaker 1: the company doesn't care about us as much as they should,
Speaker 1: and how they really do just see us as a number.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what really really pushed us all
Speaker 1: towards unionizing. It's like, if the company doesn't care about
Speaker 1: us and the people in our stores, then we're going
Speaker 1: to rely on each other to care about us, and
Speaker 1: UM push for reunions so that we can take matters
Speaker 1: into our own hands. And yeah, and I think there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of the stuff that you've been talking
Speaker 1: about that highlights how important that is, which is that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you have this combination of management either like
Speaker 1: do the management immediately above you understanding what's happening and
Speaker 1: being like we'll just throw you guys at it, will
Speaker 1: just literally bail and run away from how bad it is.
Speaker 1: And then you have them the layer management like above you,
Speaker 1: which is it's a bunch of bureaucrats who like couldn't
Speaker 1: find their ask if you drew the map and you know,
Speaker 1: or like oh, hey, here, here's your d escalation training.
Speaker 1: It's about person mad about drink and it's like I
Speaker 1: am getting multiple death threats. It's like it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: We literally had a like someone from I think you're
Speaker 1: either regional management or maybe a level higher than that,
Speaker 1: like area management hume into our store the other day,
Speaker 1: like as a customer and there was something going on.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was like somebody shouting in
Speaker 1: the cafe or like two customers were fighting, but this
Speaker 1: like upper level manager who should know about our store
Speaker 1: said one of my briefs, does um, so is this
Speaker 1: like a high incident store? And we were like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, isn't it your job? Like really like wow, yikes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something that like, you know, it's not like I learned,
Speaker 1: Like it's something like you learned intellectually, and then you
Speaker 1: just see like and then yeah, so it's not you
Speaker 1: learn intellectually, and then you just sort of viscerally begin
Speaker 1: to understand when you know you're doing work and you're
Speaker 1: watching what your managers do, it is it's that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the people who actually knows how the production process
Speaker 1: works and how the stuff actually goes and what's happening
Speaker 1: on the shop floor, Like are the people? Are the
Speaker 1: workers there? And it's like every one above them is
Speaker 1: just doing some other ship to just making everyone's lives
Speaker 1: worse and it's just literally curating. It starts that nobody
Speaker 1: the reason we need a union. And I tell people
Speaker 1: this all the time whenever I'm going into new stores.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows your store better than you. Nobody knows like
Speaker 1: the inner workings of it, how busy you are with
Speaker 1: the needs of the store, are better than the people
Speaker 1: that are there forty hours a week. And another thing
Speaker 1: we talked about a lot in like our our citywide meetings,
Speaker 1: is like what do the managers even do on it?
Speaker 1: Like what is their job? What are they working on?
Speaker 1: Like what your manager do all day and her bushy
Speaker 1: little corporate up. But I guess you just union busting now,
Speaker 1: even that they're delicated to another manager below them, So yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently yeah. Did you ever see the fake tweets the
Speaker 1: fake Workers United tweets that Starbucks published? Emil you a
Speaker 1: copy of them, but they literally made this hand out
Speaker 1: with a list of fake tweets from Workers United, and
Speaker 1: like the company's responses, to them. But if you look
Speaker 1: up the company's Twitter account, um, it just doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: And the tweets from Workers United that they printed out
Speaker 1: on these hand outs also don't exist. And I think
Speaker 1: maybe three copies of that got handed out to my
Speaker 1: store where we all made so much fun of my
Speaker 1: boss that keep so, um, I guess that's my boss's job.
Speaker 1: I will I can show these to you and keep
Speaker 1: them on hand. This is this is like it's the
Speaker 1: biggest energy of Like, oh, I thought of the perfect
Speaker 1: argument seven hours later but didn't even the argument is
Speaker 1: not even real, like they're they're just making up a
Speaker 1: guy to argue with. Yeah, and he didn't even try
Speaker 1: that hard because these were handed to me back in April.
Speaker 1: It says that these all of these tweets were posted
Speaker 1: on June one, so the data they claimed that this
Speaker 1: was tweeted hadn't even happen. Whenever I received the end out,
Speaker 1: I mean, hey, if you if you'll have access to
Speaker 1: a time machine, I I have some work I need
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah. Yeah. They say things like, in collective bargaining,
Speaker 1: you start with everything you have and negotiate for more
Speaker 1: from there. From Starbucks Workers United right there and then
Speaker 1: the company's responses literally um and then though we are
Speaker 1: one Starbucks account said in collective bargaining, everything is up
Speaker 1: for negotiations if you have more, the same or less,
Speaker 1: and once you negotiate a contract, you locked in, which
Speaker 1: which is also funny because it's like like, Okay, you
Speaker 1: are looking at that like you think that that is
Speaker 1: actually like a thing that makes you look good and
Speaker 1: not like a super villain. It's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: if you try to negotiate with us, we will make
Speaker 1: everything worse for you. It's like, really, it looks good.
Speaker 1: You know. They try so hard union busts and they
Speaker 1: just kind of stuck at it. Yeah, it's been it's
Speaker 1: been comical to watch. It's very funny, which is really
Speaker 1: funny because like I remember, like I didn't know it's
Speaker 1: super boll but like I remember, I knew some people
Speaker 1: who were doing Starbic union organizing like way about like
Speaker 1: like two thousand, like six or something, and they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was like they were kind of
Speaker 1: better at it, like they were willing to just like
Speaker 1: throw resources at it in a way that like they
Speaker 1: don't seem to be able to know. I think maybe
Speaker 1: just because like the there's so many organizations, so many
Speaker 1: organizing efforts happen happening at once, that it's harder to
Speaker 1: sort of just like throw all of their stuff at
Speaker 1: one store. But yeah, it's just it's like incredibly funny
Speaker 1: watching them just sort of like flail and like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, I guess like like all all
Speaker 1: corporations that you need bust eventually resort to break the
Speaker 1: law because you know the law. And yeah, had my
Speaker 1: my district manager um came into my store screwdriver in
Speaker 1: hand to personally make repairs at my store, it would
Speaker 1: the funniest thing I have ever seen. It's probably my
Speaker 1: favorite union busting story. But she was like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: here to cover up the electrical outlets in your bathroom.
Speaker 1: And we were like cool, why and she was like,
Speaker 1: so that the homeless people can't like plug in their
Speaker 1: electric shavers and shaven there. We were like, wow, we've
Speaker 1: seen we've seen people do a lot of weird things
Speaker 1: in the bathroom, and that's like not even one of them.
Speaker 1: You are so out of touch. Oh my gosh, it's
Speaker 1: been hilarious to watch, Like, wow, that was really some effort,
Speaker 1: but really, you know, absolutely not immediately now, there's nothing
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about that Starbucks is you talked
Speaker 1: a bit about earlier about Starbucks sort of like having
Speaker 1: this image as like like progressive organization and okay, like
Speaker 1: one of the things they've been big on sort of
Speaker 1: recently is like portraying themselves as this like pro l
Speaker 1: G B t q I A plus like thing. And
Speaker 1: I think, like, okay, so there's something that like traditional
Speaker 1: media has finally discovered because they haven't covered labor organizing
Speaker 1: in forty years and they suddenly started doing it again,
Speaker 1: and they were like, oh my god, all of the
Speaker 1: union organizers are queer. And it was like anyone who's
Speaker 1: ever organized a union or anyone who knows anyone who's
Speaker 1: ever been in the union could have told you this
Speaker 1: like thirty years incredible stuff. Is like wow, congratulations, you've
Speaker 1: discovered this. But yeah, I wanted to ask about sort
Speaker 1: of I don't know that this kind of bind that
Speaker 1: like I feel like we're people doing organizing are in
Speaker 1: right now, which is that Like Okay, So on the
Speaker 1: one hand, you have like in you know, the last
Speaker 1: sort of year or so, this like incredible increase in
Speaker 1: rampant homophobia but then simultaneously, like so you know, you
Speaker 1: have to fight that fight. And then simultaneously you have
Speaker 1: these corporations who are trying to you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like nominally on our side, and that they're not well,
Speaker 1: I mean they are, they are, they are funding the
Speaker 1: rampant homophobus, but like publicly they don't you know, publicly
Speaker 1: their supportive, but also you know that like their supporter
Speaker 1: because they're trying to sell our identity as a brand.
Speaker 1: And then you know when queer people are like, hey,
Speaker 1: can we like have stuff that lets us live there?
Speaker 1: Like no, And I was wondering how you've been sort
Speaker 1: of navigating that. Yeah, so that's been really tough because, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of our queer partners in Pittsburgh get get
Speaker 1: their health insurance through Starbucks. You get gender care through Starbucks.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest union busting tactics is our cuts.
Speaker 1: And if you cut someone's hours, then they're not eligible
Speaker 1: for healthcare. So they're really just like dangling the carrot
Speaker 1: on the stick in front of our faces like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you unionize, then we're going to cut your hours
Speaker 1: and then you can't get your gender affirming health care.
Speaker 1: So that's like, that's really really sucked. UM. In addition
Speaker 1: to that, UM, there have been now four people about
Speaker 1: to be five. Um, we think one of one person
Speaker 1: is going to be fired one of these back from vacations.
Speaker 1: But out of all of us that are fired or
Speaker 1: about to be fired, we are all queer people. So UM,
Speaker 1: I think that really shows how much store books peer partners.
Speaker 1: And since I've started organizing, in addition to like homophobia
Speaker 1: and like discrimination against the rare community, I've also heard
Speaker 1: just rampant stories about microaggressions and racism. UM. I've actually
Speaker 1: met a UM a partner that was fired from a
Speaker 1: store in Virginia. I want to say she was I
Speaker 1: believe for my understanding, she was the only black woman
Speaker 1: that worked at her store, and she was fired for
Speaker 1: aggressive behavior. And when I heard that, I was like
Speaker 1: bidding me so just like and also that support manager
Speaker 1: that I was talking about, I've heard rumors that like
Speaker 1: she was transferred from one store to another because she
Speaker 1: was like caught being racist at the first store. Instead
Speaker 1: of being fired, she was transferred and now she got
Speaker 1: she was promoted to store manager and then she fired
Speaker 1: a trans partner at her store, and now she's our
Speaker 1: support manager and fired me. So like it's it's the homophobia. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's the Catholic Church for racist homophobes.
Speaker 1: Well okay, the Catholic Church for racist homophobes, but corporate
Speaker 1: and well okay, I I I am not going to
Speaker 1: make a claim on the air that they're not also
Speaker 1: doing this with sexual assault, because I they had like
Speaker 1: there's no way that they're not. But yeah, that is Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that's incredibly bleak. And I would go back
Speaker 1: a second to sort of the gender affirm and care
Speaker 1: stuff because like, yeah, that stuff, it's like like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the thing that they are doing is just like we
Speaker 1: we are holding the genocide button over you. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you if you don't comply with us and
Speaker 1: you don't like accept the like absolute ship and scraps
Speaker 1: that we give you, we are going to try to
Speaker 1: kill you. And that is just indescribably horrific. Absolutely. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I know it's something that partners up. There's at least
Speaker 1: one partner at my store that's dealing with that right now.
Speaker 1: She's twenty five about and she is trans, and I
Speaker 1: know that, Um, she's on her parents insurance at the moment,
Speaker 1: but in less than a year she'll have the fun
Speaker 1: insurance elsewhere, most likely through Starbucks. And it's something that
Speaker 1: really got her into organizing. I know that for sure.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, it's it's been a really scary moment for her.
Speaker 1: Definitely something she's worried about. Yeah. Yeah, just the risk
Speaker 1: of being fired, the risk of having your hours cut
Speaker 1: and stop being eligible for benefits. It's awful, and like
Speaker 1: she doesn't feel like she can get a job like
Speaker 1: anywhere else just because Starbucks is one of the like
Speaker 1: Starbucks offers like decent health insurance, so it's like I'm
Speaker 1: kind of trapped here until I can get out, until
Speaker 1: I can get another job with insurance benefits. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, that's incredibly it's incredibly hard, especially right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's i mean, it's
Speaker 1: not really surprising that they're doing this, but it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really depressing and it sucks. And the fact
Speaker 1: that they're you know, like sending sending racist to do
Speaker 1: homophobias like h it's yeah, it's like dystopian like this
Speaker 1: happened and been like is this real life? Like this
Speaker 1: is crazy and um, they just fired another black Clear
Speaker 1: organizer and fits were just yesterday and they're trying to
Speaker 1: make it look like he resigned, um, but really they
Speaker 1: gave him like a couple like options like you need
Speaker 1: to have at least one weekend day available, or you
Speaker 1: need to demote yourself, or you need to transfer to
Speaker 1: a different store. And they were like, I can't really
Speaker 1: do any of those options, like none of those work
Speaker 1: for me. And then the company said like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jimmy resigned, like we totally didn't fire them, but they
Speaker 1: just resigned and sorry, you get to peel it because
Speaker 1: you resigned by yeah, it's a real we didn't fire you.
Speaker 1: We simply forced you out by making utterly impossible demands. Yep.
Speaker 1: It's like it really reminds me of like it's the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff a country does when they want to
Speaker 1: go to war, where it's like, yeah, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna give you a bunch of demands that it is
Speaker 1: literally physically impossible for you to comply with, and that
Speaker 1: because you don't comply with him, we're getting invade. M hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, Like oh, um, although I did just find
Speaker 1: out some good news today. So there's this one bar
Speaker 1: where most of the union organizers hang out all the time,
Speaker 1: and they message us on Twitter today and they want
Speaker 1: to throw a queer dance party fundraiser for like our
Speaker 1: solid and strike fund. It was like literally the most
Speaker 1: us thing I can mostly think of, like a queer
Speaker 1: dance party fundraiser at our favorite bar. Like the bathroom
Speaker 1: attendant from the bar like showed up to our strike
Speaker 1: at my store and friends of the bartender there. It
Speaker 1: was like the best Twitter DM ever. I was like,
Speaker 1: that's so funny. I'm literally going there with the other
Speaker 1: person that got fired from my store like tonight. So
Speaker 1: we're very excited for that. Yeah, and I guess that
Speaker 1: means that something else I wanted to talk about, which is, um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk a little bit about like
Speaker 1: what happened after you got fired and the support you've
Speaker 1: been getting in the like the backing from other unions
Speaker 1: that you've been getting. Totally. Yeah. So my store is
Speaker 1: actually just like a block away from the United steel
Speaker 1: Workers headquarters, which is incredible because anytime we have any
Speaker 1: sort of direct action, we get like forty steel Workers' star. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The day after I was fired, I I have this
Speaker 1: very funny picture that's on my Twitter UM of me
Speaker 1: just standing like with like forty steal workers sitting behind me.
Speaker 1: They found like the two biggest foods sting on each
Speaker 1: side of me where I started up stay and in
Speaker 1: the protest. This is my new favorite picture of myself.
Speaker 1: So that was day one. We had a rally. We
Speaker 1: had really good turn out with all the steel workers
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other community allies are Symphony UM.
Speaker 1: Symphony musicians have a have a labor union to the
Speaker 1: library workers. UM. They all came out for the first
Speaker 1: day of the rally at Market Square and my citywide
Speaker 1: organizing committee was actually able to pull together a total
Speaker 1: of four strikes. What happened within the course of two days.
Speaker 1: The planning happened in like basically under twenty four hours. Insane.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I got fired. Wednesday, Thursday was the rally
Speaker 1: at my store with all the steal workers. Friday, the
Speaker 1: East Carson Store in the South Side of Pittsburgh went
Speaker 1: on strike. The East Side store in the Bloomfield store
Speaker 1: all went on strike for the full day UM. The
Speaker 1: south Side store continued the strike into Saturday and then
Speaker 1: UM Sunday, my store went on strike finally, so, um,
Speaker 1: it was incredible. We had we have a labor choir
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh, which is in It's just like a dude
Speaker 1: with a guitar. He's my favorite person ever. Um. So
Speaker 1: we had the labor choir out at all of our events.
Speaker 1: And um we had, like I said, the library workers,
Speaker 1: the steel workers, the Symphony Union. Um, we have UE.
Speaker 1: We have d s A, which is Democratic Socialists of America.
Speaker 1: We have the Party for Socialism and Liberation or really
Speaker 1: strong allies to us. And we had like a lot
Speaker 1: of the regular my my favorite customers showed up at
Speaker 1: my store of course, which made cry. One of my customers,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite customers who comes in multiple times
Speaker 1: a day, said you shouldn't be standing out here on
Speaker 1: the on the sidewalk, you should be back there behind
Speaker 1: the counter making coffee. And I was like, I know,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um. We had a couple of our regulars
Speaker 1: change their mobile order name to Tori and Kim, so
Speaker 1: that every time he orders a drink to my store,
Speaker 1: they have to call out the name Tory and Kim.
Speaker 1: That's great. And we set up a go fund me
Speaker 1: and we received way more donations than we thought that
Speaker 1: we would get so um for all the workers at
Speaker 1: my store that went on strike. In addition to the
Speaker 1: seventy pay that we received from the union for the day, UM,
Speaker 1: we were able to pledge twenty dollars to each of
Speaker 1: them to try to make their paychecks pole and cover
Speaker 1: some of their last tips. That was incredible and really
Speaker 1: just a demonstration of how much support we have in
Speaker 1: our area. You know, they say Pittsburgh as a union town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really is? It turns out, yeah, And it's really cool
Speaker 1: to see. I don't know, I there like one of
Speaker 1: one of the things that I keep seeing is this
Speaker 1: sort of like like one of one of the sort
Speaker 1: of right wing tactics that have been like just inundated
Speaker 1: within the last like a couple of years, has been
Speaker 1: like trying to separate out like oh, here are these
Speaker 1: people who are workers, but like, oh, they're not workers
Speaker 1: because they're like oh, they're like doing cultural stuff for
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, they just like serve drinks and like,
Speaker 1: you know, you look at actual labor. It's like that's no,
Speaker 1: like none of this, none of this, none of these
Speaker 1: division things are real like people showing from each other.
Speaker 1: It's always get worried that people will be like judgmental
Speaker 1: about that. Like I'm always kind of like surprised when
Speaker 1: the steel workers show up. I'm like, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: not a steel worker. I don't make steel, I don't
Speaker 1: work in a factory or anything. Just make coffee. But um,
Speaker 1: everyone is so supportive and they are always so willing
Speaker 1: to stand in solidarity, which is really cool. But it's
Speaker 1: something I'm always like worried about, Like I know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like I'm a real worker, but like union,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in a podcast union, so like talking
Speaker 1: about yeah, I have I have like arguably like if
Speaker 1: if if if if you're going to use the really
Speaker 1: silly like like I don't know, sort of like cultural
Speaker 1: analysis of what a worker is. Like a podcast union
Speaker 1: is like the silliest union every and it's great, no
Speaker 1: it rules. It turns out where workers we go fight
Speaker 1: for other people to other people fight for like the
Speaker 1: the when when when we when we were trying to
Speaker 1: get union recognition, like the NFL Players Association was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys need to recognize this, and we were like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just um, We've been going to a lot of rallies
Speaker 1: for the Planned Parenthood Union and yeah, which I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't actually know that they existed. That yeah, I actually,
Speaker 1: well it wasn't Pittsburgh, but I was just talking. Actually
Speaker 1: probably I don't know what these are gonna err in,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, that I just talked to people from
Speaker 1: the union. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they were cool. To
Speaker 1: the labor choir there again, I would tell you solidarity
Speaker 1: all around. I love to see it. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's really cool. Mm hmm. Yeah, lots of unions in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: A good time. I met a lot of really cool people.
Speaker 1: I feel like all the people I've met since I've
Speaker 1: been involved with union stuff, I have been like really cool.
Speaker 1: The first time I talked anywhere, it was at the
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania a f l C i OH convention and um whatever.
Speaker 1: I was told that when of our I talk, my
Speaker 1: speech was supposed to end with brothers and sisters, can
Speaker 1: I count on your support? Because they were passing a
Speaker 1: resolution for us. But one of my brieftas told me
Speaker 1: it would be funnier if I said, can I get
Speaker 1: a hell? Yeah? So I said some very serious words
Speaker 1: to this room full of serious look at people, and
Speaker 1: then I said on behalf of all of our partners
Speaker 1: at the market Square Starbucks. Can I get a hell yeah?
Speaker 1: And they all so happy and I was like, cool,
Speaker 1: I found my people. That was like the first time
Speaker 1: I talked anywhere. That was funny. That's awesome. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is and and and another reason to unionize. You get
Speaker 1: to beat a bunch of really cool people and then
Speaker 1: they show up for you and it's just incredible experience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On my last kid vassing trip, we went out in
Speaker 1: Games of two when when we reconvened at the end
Speaker 1: of the night for dinner, and we were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we should stop at our one store that we visited again,
Speaker 1: like all four of us, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should like go in and be like, look, guys,
Speaker 1: I joined the union and I made three whole friends. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also just talking at the UM, I was on a
Speaker 1: panel at Women's Labor School, which was really awesome. It
Speaker 1: was at Penn State University and that was a really
Speaker 1: really cool experience. I met all the all the female
Speaker 1: union leaders. It's a really great event overall. It's really
Speaker 1: cool people involvedaltore. Hell yeah, I love unions. Good stuff. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I got a cool pin that says labor women get
Speaker 1: in good trouble and I was like, yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm doing absolutely hell yeah. Yeah. So these days I'm
Speaker 1: just working with UM some other stores in the Greater
Speaker 1: Fitburg area helping get them filed. I won't be too
Speaker 1: specific about this, but we are going to see some
Speaker 1: stores picking up in DC, which is really really exciting.
Speaker 1: We've been doing some canvassing trips out there. Well. At
Speaker 1: Starbucks Workers United, we call it a clean play because
Speaker 1: in Starbucks what a clean play is is that one
Speaker 1: day a week, UM, all the closing crew is scheduled
Speaker 1: for an extra two hours at the end of their
Speaker 1: shift deep clean the store, and they call that a
Speaker 1: clean play. So we like to take Starbucks plan language.
Speaker 1: So we feel like our little canvassing blitzes clean plays.
Speaker 1: So for the DC clean play, we've been I've been
Speaker 1: out there twice. UM. We have visited a ton of stores,
Speaker 1: definitely some interests there. Seems like the union busting has
Speaker 1: been really tough, but we have we have one store
Speaker 1: that's guys and you'll see it in the news soon.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, I'm very proud. It was like one of
Speaker 1: that was one of my DC leads. UM they've reached
Speaker 1: out to us on our website for an organizing request,
Speaker 1: and um, they've just been like super strong leaders and
Speaker 1: they've been incredible and union investing really hasn't faced them
Speaker 1: at all, and they're going to be stress very proud
Speaker 1: of them, a little bit proud of myself, but they
Speaker 1: they can have all the credit for that. They they
Speaker 1: really like stay strong throughout the union busting, do good stuff.
Speaker 1: It's scary to be the first store in your area too,
Speaker 1: to actually make moves. Like my friend Jake Welsh, he
Speaker 1: was the first store in Pittsburgh. His store was the
Speaker 1: first in Pittsburgh. And I know that's like really scary,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that it's happening because it feels like
Speaker 1: once the one store goes, then the dominoes starting to fall.
Speaker 1: So once we see that one store in DC file
Speaker 1: for the union election, we're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: more go down there. Um, are you able to talk
Speaker 1: at all about what the search of organizing process has
Speaker 1: been like? And you know, if you can't talk about
Speaker 1: like what has been like as an organizer, just like
Speaker 1: what it was like at your store and what it's
Speaker 1: been like going to other stores totally. So at my
Speaker 1: store we started. We had heard a little bit about
Speaker 1: what Buffalo was doing, and we started very casually talking
Speaker 1: about it at my store, like, yeah, if any store
Speaker 1: needs a union, it is the store. Like we are
Speaker 1: an absolute shit show here, so we could definitely usnized
Speaker 1: that would be awesome. Um really had no idea how
Speaker 1: to get started though, until a couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: I get a panicked phone call from one of my
Speaker 1: baristas and she was like, Tori, this weird guy came
Speaker 1: into the store when I was on a register today
Speaker 1: and he started asking me questions about unions, and I
Speaker 1: know he wasn't a barista, and I think he was
Speaker 1: a corporate spy. And we were like, oh okay, So
Speaker 1: we googled a guy started to like like get some information.
Speaker 1: We found like his LinkedIn or his coworkers LinkedIn account,
Speaker 1: and we were like, okay, they seemed trustworthy, We're still
Speaker 1: in not sure, So we emailed the guy from a
Speaker 1: burner email account. The fake name. I think the fake
Speaker 1: name was like Darren or something, even though like our
Speaker 1: names are like Tor and Kelly and Kayla. So we
Speaker 1: emailed them from a fake name and a Burner account
Speaker 1: and eventually got in contact with Daisy Pickens, who is
Speaker 1: now our national campaign director, but at the time she
Speaker 1: was working mainly in Pittsburgh and from there she she
Speaker 1: taught us everything we know about organizing. We built an
Speaker 1: organizing committee consisting of me, Kelly, and Kayla because like
Speaker 1: the three of us were pretty good friends. And we
Speaker 1: got cards signed. We were able to get on people
Speaker 1: want my store to sign a card, and we filed unanimously.
Speaker 1: Yeah so um. Something that stores do right before they
Speaker 1: file is they write a Dear Howard letter. And you
Speaker 1: might have seen these on Twitter. If you haven't, you
Speaker 1: didn't find them on the Starbucks Workers United like national
Speaker 1: official Twitter, they always post those there. So we wrote
Speaker 1: our Dear Howard. We turned in our cards to the
Speaker 1: n l RP office, and right after I finished turning
Speaker 1: in the cards to then l RB, I walked right
Speaker 1: back to my store and I had printed out a
Speaker 1: physical copy of our Dear Howard, and I handed it
Speaker 1: to my store manager, Joe. I wanted you to hear
Speaker 1: it from me, and he was like, okay. UM. From there,
Speaker 1: the union busting started. We had captive audience meetings, which
Speaker 1: I believe to my understanding the company has stopped doing
Speaker 1: because they were kind of declared illegal, or maybe it
Speaker 1: was just that the information they were sharing was so
Speaker 1: misleading that it was declared illegal. But they handed us
Speaker 1: like a bunch of really really misleading handouts saying things
Speaker 1: like withdrawn petitions. If Workers United thinks that you're going
Speaker 1: to lose lose your union election, they will withdraw your
Speaker 1: petition and abandon you, which is crazy. Another thing was
Speaker 1: that like, if if the union thinks that you're going
Speaker 1: to vote no, they're going to try to talk you
Speaker 1: out of voting. But Starbucks is the one that really
Speaker 1: cares about your voice, and we wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: everyone has a voice. We're like, literally, you can look
Speaker 1: objectively at this. You can see what Starbucks has done
Speaker 1: to try to prevent you from voting, Like they were
Speaker 1: pushing for in person stores or in person elections in
Speaker 1: stores where most of the partners don't have cars, are um,
Speaker 1: busy with other things, have second jobs, and just couldn't
Speaker 1: feasibly vote in person. Um. They challenge ballots left and right,
Speaker 1: they think. I think they challenged a total of nine
Speaker 1: ballots at my store, including Kelly's ballot, even though Kelly
Speaker 1: was literally like working at the time of our ballot count.
Speaker 1: She was literally behind the counter and like you can
Speaker 1: see her like in the zoom call like people as
Speaker 1: she came out to watch the ballot counts on her break,
Speaker 1: they tried to challenge her ballot claiming that she didn't
Speaker 1: work there. So there's just like hard evidence that the
Speaker 1: company is the one that doesn't want people to vote.
Speaker 1: So we got through the union busting. It was it
Speaker 1: was tough, it was an uphill battle, and eventually we
Speaker 1: won our election eight to one on May six. So
Speaker 1: after that, I became an intern with Workers United UM
Speaker 1: for the Summer Solidarity Internship program, and that's when I
Speaker 1: started really getting into helping other stores file. So there
Speaker 1: was one out in out in the Pittsburgh suburbs like
Speaker 1: Greater Pittsburgh area. Peters Township was the first store, like
Speaker 1: my first really solid lead that I ever took on UM.
Speaker 1: They filed. I helped them write their Dear Howard letter.
Speaker 1: We were interviewed by the Washington Post. Super cool. So
Speaker 1: they have their ballot count on August eighteen. Very excited
Speaker 1: for them. I have my stores in DC that I'm
Speaker 1: working with and a lot of other stores throughout Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: and um going on a lot of Queen play trips,
Speaker 1: whether it's a big one to Washington, d C. Or
Speaker 1: smaller local one. But we'll go out in teams of two,
Speaker 1: visit as many stores as we can possibly get to
Speaker 1: in one day, and we wear our Star Wars Workers
Speaker 1: United shirts, so immediately people know why we're there. Basically,
Speaker 1: just go up as if we're going to order a
Speaker 1: drink and be like, hey, so, like we heard about
Speaker 1: what we're doing in downtown Pittsburgh were like the stores
Speaker 1: in Buffalo that unionized. You have to feel like, what
Speaker 1: do you guys think of that? And typically our approach
Speaker 1: is to find the gayest looking person. Yeah, we gotta
Speaker 1: trying to find like the young, like maybe like twentysomething
Speaker 1: person with like dyet hair and a septom piercing. It's
Speaker 1: always the sceptom piercings. Let me tell you, they're always
Speaker 1: the leader, the ring leaders at their store. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but it's been funny. So yeah, I try
Speaker 1: to find the gayest person and be like, hey, so
Speaker 1: what do you think about unions? And that's how we
Speaker 1: brought a new store. Yeah, yeah, and we've been pretty
Speaker 1: successful with it. A lot of people either don't know
Speaker 1: what a union is or they really like their boss,
Speaker 1: and that seems to be the company's best union tactic
Speaker 1: union busting tactic because by having good bosses, because we
Speaker 1: always say that sometimes the best organizer is the boss.
Speaker 1: So sometimes the stores where they're like, we love our boss,
Speaker 1: our boss takes such a good care of us, I'm like,
Speaker 1: darn it, um, Like, good for you guys, but you
Speaker 1: should unionize anyway. Yeah, I would also like, like I
Speaker 1: would say, it's like I really like my boss, and
Speaker 1: I am also still because yeah, totally trying to explain
Speaker 1: to them too. Sometimes those stores where they say that
Speaker 1: they're hard to talk into it, but I always tell
Speaker 1: them what happened at my store and what happens that
Speaker 1: we had the same store manager for I believe like
Speaker 1: five years. He was great. We loved him, he was cool,
Speaker 1: and when we unionized, it wasn't about him. It was
Speaker 1: about the working conditions at our store and that upper
Speaker 1: management had been giving us false promises and the things
Speaker 1: that needed to be changed at our store were kind
Speaker 1: of out of my store manager's hands, like that was
Speaker 1: like above his vay grade, so he couldn't do much
Speaker 1: about it. And we made it clear, like Joe, it's
Speaker 1: not about you. You're great, we love you. UM gotta
Speaker 1: do it, do you though, Sorry, buddy. UM. Then we
Speaker 1: got even though we loved Joe, we got a new
Speaker 1: store manager in mid June, and she was a little
Speaker 1: bit less awesome. And you know, you never know when
Speaker 1: things that your store can change. And even if you
Speaker 1: love the store manager you have now, they could they
Speaker 1: could leave tomorrow. So you gotta like, the only thing
Speaker 1: that guaranteed your store manager isn't guaranteed to be at
Speaker 1: your store forever. What is guaranteed is a contract, and
Speaker 1: that's something that's really important. Sometimes it's hard to get
Speaker 1: people to see the long term of it, though. UM.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we're normally pretty successful. UM. We uh typically try
Speaker 1: to get phone numbers at every store, reach out to
Speaker 1: them within the next two days, and then we'll hold
Speaker 1: like an intake meeting. So whenever we have an intake meeting,
Speaker 1: we tell them make a spreadsheet of every partner at
Speaker 1: your store, what shift they work, what their job is
Speaker 1: like if they are strip supervisor or barista, and assign
Speaker 1: one person on your organizing committee to talk to that person.
Speaker 1: So every person at your store should have an organizing
Speaker 1: committee member assigned to them. From there, once they have
Speaker 1: a plan for who's going to talk to who, we
Speaker 1: get cards to them and they can be either physical
Speaker 1: cards like my store did, or digital cards, and then
Speaker 1: they start getting signatures, having little conversations like hey, here's
Speaker 1: what do you mean is here's why we're doing this.
Speaker 1: If you agree, sign this card. Once they have sevent
Speaker 1: cent of cards signed, then we take it to the
Speaker 1: on l r V and say hello, we would like
Speaker 1: to do a union please, and then hopefully they get
Speaker 1: a valid count date. And the company always pushes for
Speaker 1: in personal elections, we always push back. We pretty much
Speaker 1: always win, and um we always want mail in ballots
Speaker 1: because we do, like, really genuinely want everybody to be
Speaker 1: able to vote. Whenever I was organizing at my store,
Speaker 1: I told everyone my best possible outcome, best case scenario
Speaker 1: is that every single person here votes and votes. Yes.
Speaker 1: My second best possible outcome is that everyone here votes
Speaker 1: and some of you vote. Now, like I I want
Speaker 1: everyone to vote. I want every single person here to vote.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be like there is one store
Speaker 1: in my district that did end up winning their union election,
Speaker 1: but out of there I think fifty to sixty partners,
Speaker 1: only twelve people voted, and although they won, like, that
Speaker 1: is not the way we wanted to get you want
Speaker 1: everyone to have a day, yeah, which I think is
Speaker 1: interesting on sort of two levels. One, it's like you
Speaker 1: can see the exact moment at which corporations start carrying
Speaker 1: about Prince are pretending to care about democracy, which is like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, hold on, our workers are doing stuff. Oh no,
Speaker 1: we have to care about Yeah. Suddenly we're like this
Speaker 1: incredible pro democratic force we want everyone to have to say.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, it's funny. They actually just came out
Speaker 1: with this happened after I got fired. That happened in
Speaker 1: the past two weeks. But they came out with I
Speaker 1: believe It's an app where partners can share their feedback
Speaker 1: and share their experiences. Um. So they are trying to
Speaker 1: be so democratic, Like, look at them just really listening
Speaker 1: to us. Um. Yeah. They also did this really fun
Speaker 1: thing where even though hours are being cut across the company,
Speaker 1: people are having their hours drastically cut because this poor
Speaker 1: little billion dollar corporation can't afford to schedule us any
Speaker 1: more hours or properly staff their stores. We were all
Speaker 1: scheduled an extra hour for one of our ships during
Speaker 1: the week so that we could sit down and watch
Speaker 1: an hour long speech by Howard Shoulder do a survey
Speaker 1: about how much we like our job, which was funny.
Speaker 1: That Wow, that was like a kind of a new
Speaker 1: load for Starbucks. Like wow, there's two people working on
Speaker 1: the floor right now, one person like making drinks and
Speaker 1: one person on register and they're getting slammed out there.
Speaker 1: It's so glad you guys had the had the labor
Speaker 1: hours to be able to schedule me to sit here
Speaker 1: and watch this Howard speech. Great. Thanks, Like I think,
Speaker 1: like just the scheduling stuff like that, everyone being consistently understaffed.
Speaker 1: It's like this is something I was talking to the
Speaker 1: plant parenthood people about two, which is like like there too.
Speaker 1: It's like you get you get these managers who are like, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do cost cutting. We're doing and you know
Speaker 1: the price of cost cutting is we're gonna just make
Speaker 1: all of our people work can possibly hard because we
Speaker 1: refused to put enough people in the store. And then
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're we're we're not going to let
Speaker 1: you work long enough, like we're not gonna let you
Speaker 1: work long enough to actually get benefits. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the worst combination. Yeah, but but it's like
Speaker 1: you know, okay, you know, like like they have the buddy,
Speaker 1: they can't schedule you. It's like, yeah, what I mean,
Speaker 1: like like you know, I think like it ideally, in
Speaker 1: a society that wasn't just like like not even not
Speaker 1: even like a perfect sidey, in a society that was
Speaker 1: not like entirely based on cruelty and violence, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: even be able to do this at all. Everyone would
Speaker 1: just have a fixed schedule. Yeah, just like exactly, because
Speaker 1: it's so it sucks so much because it's like I
Speaker 1: barely get to go to work even though I asked
Speaker 1: for a full time I'm scheduled seventeen hours a week,
Speaker 1: but I am there. I'm like so freaking stressed because
Speaker 1: there's just not enough people to make the number of
Speaker 1: drinks that need made, and all the customers are super
Speaker 1: piste off because they've been waiting ten minutes for their drink,
Speaker 1: and like corporate is just watching this happen. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that they have to be getting bad reviews, Like there's
Speaker 1: no way people aren't calling corporate to complain about the
Speaker 1: weight times because there's only two of us working on
Speaker 1: a Sunday morning, and like they're really just shooting themselves
Speaker 1: in the foot, just all around, all around, shooting themselves
Speaker 1: on the foot. Yeah. But I think also like there's
Speaker 1: a part of this which is just like they are
Speaker 1: insulated from this, like you know, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: like the managers don't have to deal with this ship
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, they're gonna they're just gonna throw
Speaker 1: all of the angry customers, Like people who are angry
Speaker 1: because of decisions of management do they throwat you? And
Speaker 1: it's like this is this is fucking bullshit, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like here's a cupe on for a free drink,
Speaker 1: Go bully the brist does again. Yeah. Yeah, it's like Michelle,
Speaker 1: my district manager, doesn't have to come in and deal
Speaker 1: with like forty angry customers staring at her while she
Speaker 1: tries to frantically make drinks. Like yeah, it's like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like there is definitely a part of me
Speaker 1: that is like I mean, okay, like I know, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, this isn't true because there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of terrible corporate people. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of like I don't know, like terrible world leaders who
Speaker 1: actually had to work real jobs. But like, okay, like
Speaker 1: like some part of my soul still holds onto the
Speaker 1: belief that if like these people actually had to work
Speaker 1: in these conditions like consistently, that it wouldn't be like
Speaker 1: this because they wouldn't be completely insulated from just the
Speaker 1: absolute horror they're inflicting an iPhone. And it's, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see whenever my store manager is scheduled to be
Speaker 1: on the floor, like scheduled for a coverage shift, which
Speaker 1: means that they're required to be out on the floor
Speaker 1: making drinks and doing register, they were always very fully staffed.
Speaker 1: Whenever whenever the man is scheduled for coverage, there's always
Speaker 1: at least five other people on the floor. But whenever
Speaker 1: it's like me on a Sunday morning opening the store
Speaker 1: and there's like a Steelers game and a convention in
Speaker 1: town and everyone, like the city is packed, and all
Speaker 1: the hotels around around my store are packed. Everyone's gonna
Speaker 1: want coffee. There's like three of us, which is just
Speaker 1: like it's really frustrating to sort of like on a
Speaker 1: political level, it's like every job that I've ever worked,
Speaker 1: it's like if it was literally just us running this
Speaker 1: and there was no management, everything would work a hunter
Speaker 1: times better. Yeah, and it's like yeah, that's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like okay, Like at a certain point you have to
Speaker 1: just be like get rid of these people, like what
Speaker 1: why why why are we doing this our new new
Speaker 1: store manager since our recent new one quit because working
Speaker 1: visions are so bad. Our new new one is an
Speaker 1: outside hire who doesn't know how to ring in drinks,
Speaker 1: you know, how to make drinks, doesn't know anything, and
Speaker 1: they just put him in my store as a store manager.
Speaker 1: And my roommate is also a barista, and she's been
Speaker 1: like having to coach him every day, which is a
Speaker 1: really awkward situation because she's not even a supervisor. She's
Speaker 1: like a a barista and she has to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a difference between nitro coold Brew and regular coold Brew,
Speaker 1: like keep putting the wrong button. Very frustrating when they
Speaker 1: sent this guy into run my store. Meanwhile, like he
Speaker 1: probably knows less than everybody else that works there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely knows you do, like, yeah, definitely knows less than me.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. Since I've been fired, I still like
Speaker 1: every time there's an emergency at my store, my barristas
Speaker 1: called me. It's wild. Like I got a call at
Speaker 1: five in the morning the other day from one of
Speaker 1: my favorite barristas and he was like, hey, Tori, I
Speaker 1: know you don't work here anymore, but sal was supposed
Speaker 1: to open and he's not here yet and I'm locked
Speaker 1: out of the store. What do I do? Or Like
Speaker 1: another barrista called me when I was in d C.
Speaker 1: And he was like, Tori, I just shrote up for
Speaker 1: work and the store is closed. What do I do?
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't know that I can
Speaker 1: do my best to help you, but I there's not
Speaker 1: much I can physically do. I don't have keys anymore. Sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's really like, you know, one of one
Speaker 1: of the things that I mean, I guess you get
Speaker 1: this in both sort of like like when I want
Speaker 1: to like so I went to the rist of Chicago,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like, okay, so these are the
Speaker 1: people who infamously produced all of the terrible economics to
Speaker 1: make the world suck, right and it's like, okay, well
Speaker 1: you take econ classes there, and it's like everything is
Speaker 1: about sort of like I like, you're doing all of
Speaker 1: this because I like, okay, so like the you're doing
Speaker 1: all of this under the assumption that if you let
Speaker 1: corporations run into free market, they will do everything optimally
Speaker 1: and they will produce the lowest prices and they will
Speaker 1: produce everything as efficiently as possible. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: like you see this in Marxist theory too. And then
Speaker 1: it's like you look at like any store place and
Speaker 1: it's like no, no, no, they're firing their most competent
Speaker 1: workers and hiring people who are incompetent because like because
Speaker 1: the thing that they actually like care them most about,
Speaker 1: even more than efficiency, even more than like making more money,
Speaker 1: is maintaining their power. And it's like it's something that
Speaker 1: like is really obvious when you're working, but somehow, like
Speaker 1: the people who write about this stuff has like deluded
Speaker 1: themselves into not being able to understand Yeah, that's no idea.
Speaker 1: It's like it feels like they almost don't want the
Speaker 1: experienced workers to say I've seen like so part of
Speaker 1: my internship project is keeping a database of the fired
Speaker 1: partners in the anti union firings, which is kind of
Speaker 1: ironic because I was like, well, got to add myself
Speaker 1: to this, but she now, But I've seen I see
Speaker 1: people must French treat who worked the company for five years.
Speaker 1: There's one person on there who worked for the company
Speaker 1: for seventeen years. But we don't get raises or anything
Speaker 1: for seniority or anything like that. There's actually a cap
Speaker 1: on how much you can make in each state from
Speaker 1: Starbucks because they don't they don't want you to work
Speaker 1: there forever because then the frustrations start to come through,
Speaker 1: and then new the new unionized, and it feels like
Speaker 1: they the high turnover feels really intentional. Sometimes I think
Speaker 1: it is, like I think that that's that's like a
Speaker 1: pretty common like Amazon Justice too, where it's like like
Speaker 1: their whole their their whole business strategies is intentionally on
Speaker 1: working every one so hard if they quit so I
Speaker 1: can get a new group of people, and so people
Speaker 1: don't organize and it's yeah, yeah, it's really brutal and
Speaker 1: horrific and I hate these people. Yeah, same, It's like
Speaker 1: if I see this person here for ten years and
Speaker 1: make this look like it's a sustainable career. Then then
Speaker 1: we have to make it a sustainable career, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. So it works people out
Speaker 1: after like two or three, so very frustrating, which I
Speaker 1: think I guess also helps them with the sort of
Speaker 1: like like the way that people look at like I
Speaker 1: mean minium wage workers and also just service workers in general,
Speaker 1: where they're like, oh, well, yeah, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: need to raise minium wages a bunch of teenagers, Like
Speaker 1: these people don't need like good wages because this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not actually supposed to be doing this,
Speaker 1: this is like a transition thing. It's like that's not
Speaker 1: how any of this works, Like it's just not that's
Speaker 1: just you're you're you're making excuses for corporations doing exploitation. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it also seems like another thing they're doing is
Speaker 1: that we've seen a lot of really high manager turnover too,
Speaker 1: and I think that also is really intentional because they
Speaker 1: had to even though the store manager that ultimately fired
Speaker 1: me was new, like she couldn't she didn't even have
Speaker 1: the heart to do that. She had to bring in
Speaker 1: They had to bring in a support manager to like
Speaker 1: actually say the words like you're fired. Here's your termination notice.
Speaker 1: And it feels like the reason they're making the managers
Speaker 1: anniverse so high is so that the managers don't like
Speaker 1: form those relationships with staff of the store because it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel as bad to fire them. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think this ever would have happened to me if my
Speaker 1: original store manager, who had been there for five years
Speaker 1: and like knew me personally, was still at my store,
Speaker 1: I don't think this would have happened. And I think
Speaker 1: that's why they're doing this big manager shuffle right now
Speaker 1: at least. I mean, I'm sure it's happening in other places.
Speaker 1: It's definitely happening a lot in Pittsburgh. I think there
Speaker 1: are very few stores in my district that had the
Speaker 1: same manager that they had three months ago. It feels
Speaker 1: like they're intentionally shuffling them around so they don't form
Speaker 1: like personal relationships or any sort of emotional tie to
Speaker 1: the partners at their store, and they don't feel guilty
Speaker 1: firing them. Yeah, it's like it's community is really dangerous
Speaker 1: to them. M absolutely, Like I think I talked about
Speaker 1: this like some number of episodes ago, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is this is the thing that's really common
Speaker 1: with like IM but I'm just I'm just gonna straight
Speaker 1: up called Starbucks dicatorial organization because it is, like it
Speaker 1: is just a dictatorship. It's like the tatorships do this
Speaker 1: a lot where like, yeah, like communities are really dangerous
Speaker 1: to them. Communities with any kind of strong bonds with
Speaker 1: each other really dangerous because people will fight for each other,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can't for example, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's really really hard to support someone who has
Speaker 1: a strong community around them that will fight back. But
Speaker 1: if you can isolate those people, if you can like
Speaker 1: like physically isolate them, if you can like socially isolate them,
Speaker 1: if you can make sure that they don't have the
Speaker 1: support networks, then you can then you can you know,
Speaker 1: do whatever you want to them. And that seems Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's it's a very deliberate like and everything.
Speaker 1: It's like you know this also like this just makes
Speaker 1: everyone's life worse, right, Like did you see what happened
Speaker 1: in Seattle with the new Starbucks Heritage District. I think
Speaker 1: I've vaguely heard about it, but yeah, so in Seattle,
Speaker 1: the three like original I believe it's the three original
Speaker 1: Starbucks stores, like first ever Starbucks stores to open the
Speaker 1: free in Seattle. Um, they've made it so that you
Speaker 1: don't the partners there don't have a specific store that
Speaker 1: they're assigned to. They're assigned to the district and can
Speaker 1: be scheduled at any store at any time, So you're
Speaker 1: not working with the same people all the time and
Speaker 1: you're not forming those relationships. And if you were to
Speaker 1: somehow forming a relationships to start organizing, UM, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to vote as a store. You have to
Speaker 1: vote as a district, which is just a lot more
Speaker 1: logistically difficult. And there was a lot of pushback that happened,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately those stores hadn't filed for an election yet
Speaker 1: and UM weren't really able to do much about it.
Speaker 1: But we're definitely scared of that happening, like in Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: and like at other Starbuck stores around the country, that
Speaker 1: they're going to make it so that you work for
Speaker 1: the district the specific store, and that's kind of terrifying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, and I think that that's not
Speaker 1: everything where it's like okay that they have to have
Speaker 1: to weigh efficiency versus like their own power and they're
Speaker 1: going to choose their own power every time, and as
Speaker 1: like there's just like an aspect of that too where
Speaker 1: it's like they're just incredible dehumanization of it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just totally it's like really careless, like you don't know
Speaker 1: what someone's transportation situation looks like. Um, you don't know,
Speaker 1: like if they feel comfortable working with like different groups
Speaker 1: of people, Like I don't know, I know that like
Speaker 1: a lot of people at UM. So this is just
Speaker 1: reminding me of something that happened at the store in
Speaker 1: my area. So at Penn Center East, the Penn Center
Speaker 1: East Starbucks, they are union store. They decided they were
Speaker 1: closing Penn Center East for like a for an entire
Speaker 1: week and gave them the option to work at three
Speaker 1: stores that were like an hour away from them. And
Speaker 1: of course, like they were only given the option to
Speaker 1: work at other stores that were unionized, they weren't going
Speaker 1: to send the union people into the non unionized store
Speaker 1: potentially influenced them. So one of the partners, the one
Speaker 1: that was actually fired yesterday, it was like, I do
Speaker 1: not feel comfortable working at this store because I worked
Speaker 1: at the store at one time. And I they still
Speaker 1: a lot of discrimination from the from the manager there,
Speaker 1: from the partners there, and I don't want to be
Speaker 1: put in that situation again. There's like a customer at
Speaker 1: this other store that said that called me a racial slur,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be in this area. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to go out to these stores.
Speaker 1: And it just like exposes partners to like a lot
Speaker 1: more like situations that they're potentially not comfortable with there,
Speaker 1: with new managers that they don't have like a good
Speaker 1: rapport with yet, And it makes everything just a lot
Speaker 1: more difficult. Like just let everyone work at their own store,
Speaker 1: Like we all have friends. All the partners that, like
Speaker 1: my store at least were very very close. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of the stores are the same way. It
Speaker 1: just makes work worse to not be working with your friends.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone would work in Market Square if
Speaker 1: we weren't all really close with each other. Um, overall,
Speaker 1: just work situation. Yeah, And I don't know, hope, hope,
Speaker 1: hopefully they're not able to do that on a large scale,
Speaker 1: because yeah, yeah, that would be it just feels like
Speaker 1: a disaster, especially since I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 1: Starbucks stores like concentrated in cities, but I know, like
Speaker 1: the Penn's Center East Starbucks was kind of out there
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. And another big issue that they faced
Speaker 1: was that like, we don't have some of us don't
Speaker 1: have cars, and we just can't get to like the
Speaker 1: city Starbucks stores because our parents drive us to work
Speaker 1: to our parents drive us to work every day because
Speaker 1: we're in high school, and we just don't have like
Speaker 1: a means of transportation. There's nowhere to park there and
Speaker 1: just puts them. It just makes them face a lot
Speaker 1: of issues that they weren't really planned on dealing with,
Speaker 1: planning on dealing with, and aren't really prepared to. And
Speaker 1: they probably chose the store that they currently work at
Speaker 1: because like they didn't just pick it at random. They
Speaker 1: picked because it was convenient to get to, They like
Speaker 1: vibes there and it was like a good fit for them.
Speaker 1: And forcing them to work at other other stores where
Speaker 1: there are a lot less comfortable not a good decision.
Speaker 1: Just feels shady, very humanizing for sure. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I guess I do. I do have phone messing to ask,
Speaker 1: which is if people want to support you and people
Speaker 1: want to find you in places where can they do that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So my Twitter is Tory Underscore TIMBERLINI and
Speaker 1: that's my personal Twitter. We also have a Pittsburgh Starbucks
Speaker 1: Workers United Twitter account. Um, if you want to support
Speaker 1: me and Kim specifically, there is a link to our
Speaker 1: go fund me there. There's a link in my bio
Speaker 1: and somewhere in the Pittsburgh account as well. We also
Speaker 1: just released a national solidarity fund um through Coworker, but
Speaker 1: I'm actually not quite clear on how people can donate
Speaker 1: to that yet. I can, it's very new, so I
Speaker 1: can send you an email with a link to that. Yeah. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll put all the links in the show notes. Awesome,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Is Yeah, it was really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for sharing my story. I I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a lot of fired partners, fired partners
Speaker 1: across the country, and like we all kind of need
Speaker 1: to stand together. And I like people to hear my
Speaker 1: story and hear about how the union has supported us,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of community support. And you know,
Speaker 1: as soon as I was fired, I was immediately hired
Speaker 1: by work with United. You know, they're really willing to
Speaker 1: take care of us. And if I had like anything
Speaker 1: to kind of like like any advice to give the
Speaker 1: partners who are trying to organize, Like, the union has
Speaker 1: your back, don't worry too much about losing your job.
Speaker 1: Probably won't happen. If it does, the union has your back,
Speaker 1: and all the other fire protters have your back as well. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah yeah. And on that note, yeah, fight your
Speaker 1: bosses together. You can beat them. Uh yeah. Go out
Speaker 1: into the world and make havoc for people who do
Speaker 1: bad stuff, cause problems on purpose. It could Happen Here
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
Speaker 1: dot com or check us out on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for it could Happen here. Update
Speaker 1: in my at cool zone media dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.