Speaker 1: It could happen here. It's the show where we hate McDonald's.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, be a long professional McDonald's haater, and
Speaker 1: with me to talk about hating McDonald's is Mira, who's
Speaker 1: a freelance journalist. And you need an organizer. Miro, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so okay, So specifically, there are lots of the
Speaker 1: hating McDonald's is like an ancient anarchist tradition. I think
Speaker 1: I'm actually not sure how well it is known today,
Speaker 1: but I'm about eighty percent sure that the tradition of
Speaker 1: breaking Starbucks windows was actually originally like a it was
Speaker 1: actually originally a thing about breaking like it came from
Speaker 1: like a bunch of campaigns. I think it definitely in France.
Speaker 1: I think also in Mexico that like anytime a Starbucks, Starbucks,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, anytiving McDonald's would open up, everyone would immediately
Speaker 1: start breaking the windows.
Speaker 2: That's the only proper way to handle on McDonald's. And yeah,
Speaker 2: professional opinion.
Speaker 1: But the reason we're talking about McDonald's is that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you tried to organize a McDonald's union, which is I
Speaker 1: guess the other thing you could do with the McDonald's
Speaker 1: other than lighting it on fire, which is it you could? Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess there are those people in France
Speaker 1: who took it over and turned it into like a
Speaker 1: food co op or something.
Speaker 2: But a third thing you can do with.
Speaker 1: It, discovered a third A third thing to do with
Speaker 1: the McDonald's. Let's get the towers. Yeah, but uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about I guess what you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: I wanted to use Yeah, so you you've written a
Speaker 1: very good piece about this in strange matters, uh called
Speaker 1: my Mcunion that is really good, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about sort of the piece, the sort of nitty
Speaker 1: gritty aspect of like what it's like to organize a union,
Speaker 1: and also just about McDonald's because Jesus Christ, good Lord, no, I.
Speaker 2: Have so much to talk about, so more than happy too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I guess, okay, I think I think we
Speaker 1: should start with just the sort of McDonald's miss of
Speaker 1: it all. I wanted to start with just talking a
Speaker 1: bit about what it's actually like to work on a
Speaker 1: McDonald's because I, well, okay, a, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: not actually universal experience anymore for like people who have
Speaker 1: worked at a fast food restaurant and b I think
Speaker 1: people who it's it's a thing you blought out of
Speaker 1: your collective memory very quickly because it sucked. But yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so what is it actually like when you show up
Speaker 1: to your shift.
Speaker 2: So McDonald's was my first job, and it was a
Speaker 2: hell of an introduction. Yes, the moment you would come in,
Speaker 2: you would be most days bombarded with constant orders on
Speaker 2: the screen because they had these little screens both in
Speaker 2: the front and back drill area that like showed all
Speaker 2: the orders they had. And like a good sixty seventy
Speaker 2: percent of the time I came in, people would just
Speaker 2: be swamped with orders. They'd be running around being like, oh,
Speaker 2: thank god you hear. We need someone to get on
Speaker 2: right now. And it's like you don't even get a
Speaker 2: moment to breathe. Like, as you're standing there waiting to
Speaker 2: clock in on their punching machine, you're just like, oh,
Speaker 2: dear God, I'm gonna have a fucking terrible time. And
Speaker 2: as you're running around, you know, cooking everything after you
Speaker 2: clock in, you're getting streamed at by your bosses right
Speaker 2: by you because they're like, oh no, a customer complained
Speaker 2: because there was too many pickles on their sandwich, And
Speaker 2: then you'll hear someone yelling from the drive through window
Speaker 2: on top of that, and then you might have people
Speaker 2: at the front counter. This was before proven, so McDonald's
Speaker 2: still had front counters when people would come in. I
Speaker 2: don't know if every McDonald's does, but everyone I've been
Speaker 2: to since has just closed down internally. And I envied that.
Speaker 2: But you would have people yelling from there, and if
Speaker 2: you were one of the unfortunate souls who ended up
Speaker 2: working directly facing the customers and not just cooking, you
Speaker 2: would be the one getting screamed at by all parties involved.
Speaker 2: I later worked at a Windy's where I got a
Speaker 2: taste of that, and I walked out three days into March.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Stuff sucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that, you know, I think like
Speaker 1: one of the things I think like compounds this is,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, I will, I will, I will, I
Speaker 1: will do a theory, which is that I think people
Speaker 1: have a really weird understanding of what it means to
Speaker 1: have a job on a sort of theoretical level that
Speaker 1: dates back to a genuinely, very weird period in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century where people actually had like stable hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's just not how any of this works, right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you like, there is no actual stable
Speaker 1: amount of hours. You just get you get some number
Speaker 1: of hours like a week that you're assigned to. But
Speaker 1: then you know, but this these least to do a
Speaker 1: thing that we've out god like, like literally every single
Speaker 1: field we've talked about unidizing has this problem, which is
Speaker 1: just understaffing, because why the fuck would you have enough
Speaker 1: people to do a job? Would you could have less
Speaker 1: than enough people to do a job and pave them less.
Speaker 2: That That was my experience on McDonald and fast food
Speaker 2: in general. You would get such inconsistent numbers of hours
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't know how much money you'd be making
Speaker 2: in the month, because, for all you know, this month,
Speaker 2: you could be working you know, every regular day, every
Speaker 2: business day of the week. You could be working only weekends,
Speaker 2: or you could be like I was after the union
Speaker 2: got busted spoiler alert, uh, working three hours on Sundays
Speaker 2: in the mornings. And that's it if they really wanted to.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing that outside of a union you can
Speaker 2: do to prevent them from and outside of you know
Speaker 2: niche legal areas where you can maybe push back, you
Speaker 2: can't really do much if they decide just not to
Speaker 2: staff you. And there is people working there who they
Speaker 2: had like full blown kids, families relying on them in
Speaker 2: that job. They weren't making much Pennsylvania, butimum wage was
Speaker 2: seven twenty five and you know they were paying us that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so from what little they could get, they would
Speaker 2: maybe get like at best a one hundred bucks a
Speaker 2: week with their hours, unless they were able to get
Speaker 2: into like a managerial position where it's the only one
Speaker 2: where you'd be kind of guaranteed ours in the sense
Speaker 2: that they desperately need you so they'll throw you on whatever.
Speaker 2: Beyond that, it's you also don't know the days you're
Speaker 2: going to work too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, This thing I was gonna ask is like, what,
Speaker 1: like how how much time do you have between finding
Speaker 1: out you're going to be on a shift and then
Speaker 1: like being on the shift.
Speaker 2: You can have anywhere from several days notice to under
Speaker 2: twelve hours notice, And there is no way to predict
Speaker 2: what's going to happen the next week. Is it all
Speaker 2: depends on when you're going to get staffed. There were
Speaker 2: points I found out day out when I was going
Speaker 2: to be working.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Yeah yeah, and like this, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the thing that like is becoming. This is the
Speaker 1: way that labor used to work in like the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it was just sort of like
Speaker 1: phased out because it turns out this is actually a
Speaker 1: stunningly inefficient way to actually like like run a business.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've reached the thing that happened at
Speaker 1: the end of history. Is it's not the history ended,
Speaker 1: it's that like capital needing to be efficient end and
Speaker 1: now they just like do this shit and it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter if this is like a terribly
Speaker 1: an efficient way to run things. It's you just like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's a mechanism designed to just like
Speaker 1: absolutely destroyed like the sort of psyches and lives of
Speaker 1: the people who are doing the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is completely accurate. They do not give a
Speaker 2: rat's ass about anyone working there. For a second. Everyone
Speaker 2: working there is completely expendable, even if they're a manager.
Speaker 2: There's been points people have worked there for like three
Speaker 2: four months and got promoted to a manager. There's everyone
Speaker 2: is expendable, and they they make sure you know that too,
Speaker 2: and how they treat you, You're not treated with any dignity,
Speaker 2: with any respect. You're just completely thrown around at their
Speaker 2: whims and the whims of upper management, you know, the
Speaker 2: the regional managers and the like. And it's it's awful
Speaker 2: because how they get away with that model is they
Speaker 2: know there's always going to be some people who are
Speaker 2: desperate to work at McDonald's, either because they're young and
Speaker 2: need to get a first job, or they're down on
Speaker 2: their luck and need to get something to pay the bills.
Speaker 2: I've even hitting hard times trying to reapply at McDonald's
Speaker 2: since working there because I needed to pay the bill.
Speaker 2: I was in that exact position again and fairly recently,
Speaker 2: and so it's it's not a fun place to be,
Speaker 2: to put it mildly, Yeah, of course they didn't let
Speaker 2: me work there again because I believe I'm banned from
Speaker 2: ever working at a McDonald's again.
Speaker 1: That's a That's another thing that I think is not
Speaker 1: that well understood, like loss of companies just have basically
Speaker 1: not even like there are there are people that I
Speaker 1: know who are blacklisted, like from shit they did dream
Speaker 1: occupy like people like, yeah, like like that they're these
Speaker 1: these things, these things suck and if you like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is I guess one of the sort of issues
Speaker 1: of doing any kind of organizing is that like if
Speaker 1: you lose, like stuff can go like very badly for you,
Speaker 1: which sucks. But also simultaneously, if you don't organize things
Speaker 1: we go very badly for you. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: so it's a double or yeah, yeah, I guess just
Speaker 1: one everything I wanted to ask, which I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you know do you do you know if you're
Speaker 1: if you're uh, if your McDonald's was a franchise, if
Speaker 1: it was like actually owned by the company.
Speaker 2: So yes, it was a franchise. It wasn't don by
Speaker 2: like the official company in any major sense. I actually
Speaker 2: met the franchise owner during the course of the union,
Speaker 2: which was a fun time when we were in the
Speaker 2: process of getting busted. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So do you want to explain what a franchise is?
Speaker 1: And I guess, like how that sort of model works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So most McDonald's out there are franchises, which basically
Speaker 2: means McDonald's will kind of let independent people buy out
Speaker 2: their stores and own and manage them in a certain region.
Speaker 2: For a portion of the profits in the Scranton area,
Speaker 2: which was where I did the union, they were all
Speaker 2: owned by one single family who was ultra rich, in
Speaker 2: part because of the McDonald's and in part because of
Speaker 2: family inheritances, and these folks they would be the kind
Speaker 2: of be treated as like the head Honchow's, the same
Speaker 2: way that CEOs get talked about at most companies. They
Speaker 2: weren't the CEOs, of course, but like as far as
Speaker 2: in terms of managing greets, rant and area McDonald's went,
Speaker 2: they were the main ones in charge. Of course McDonald's
Speaker 2: corporate always have the final say over everything, but they
Speaker 2: manage tens of thousands of restaurants across the world, so
Speaker 2: they don't really get involved in any of the nitty gritty,
Speaker 2: which is why they kind of let people own these franchises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I think is really interesting. It's like they've
Speaker 1: managed to somehow combine it like the worst aspects of
Speaker 1: working for a major corporation with the worst aspects of
Speaker 1: working for like a small business tyrant. Which it's interesting
Speaker 1: too because it's like, I don't know, this is like
Speaker 1: one of the weird things about McDonald because like McDonald's,
Speaker 1: McDonald's Corporate doesn't make money from hamburgers. They're basically a
Speaker 1: real estate company that like sells franchises to people, but simultaneous.
Speaker 1: But that means that like they can do things, like
Speaker 1: they can force their franchises to do things that are
Speaker 1: like unprofitable because it doesn't matter to them, Like there's
Speaker 1: they're still getting paid, Like they're still getting paid there
Speaker 1: like licensing, like franchising fees or whatever, like no matter
Speaker 1: what sort of like shit is happening there. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's I don't know, it's it strikes me. It's like
Speaker 1: a really interesting It strikes me as like the exact
Speaker 1: arrangement that's like the most likely to create a fascist,
Speaker 1: just like because like you know, you have a group
Speaker 1: of people like and I think I think it's a
Speaker 1: good agm with this. This is what like quote unquote
Speaker 1: economic anxiety is. Is you have like a you have
Speaker 1: like you have a sort of middle level of like this,
Speaker 1: you know, the middle level of person who is a
Speaker 1: capitalist but is also getting squeezed from the top down
Speaker 1: like by a by larger corporations and then also is
Speaker 1: facing bought about pressure from workers, and so their solution
Speaker 1: to this is just like ruthlessly, like you know, just
Speaker 1: just like ruthlessly do a fascism against like everyone who's
Speaker 1: working for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, scratch a liberal and the fascist reads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a more.
Speaker 2: True than McDonald's and fast food really than anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the mcfascists reign supreme. Ah.
Speaker 1: So speaking of mcfascists, Uh, the products and services these
Speaker 1: are too. These are two distinct sentences. They are not related.
Speaker 1: Uh FCC please, actually, no, fuck you. The SCC doesn't
Speaker 1: well no, no, the SCC. The SCC does not regulate us.
Speaker 1: I think we're actually regulated by the FTC. So fuck
Speaker 1: the SEC. That's why I could swear on this podcast
Speaker 1: because they don't recomplain us. And we're back. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: having having returned to more mcfascism, Yeah, okay, so I
Speaker 1: guess we should start talking about how the union organizing
Speaker 1: started and how I guess the sort of immediate mistake
Speaker 1: that y'all made attempting to get this, to get this
Speaker 1: off the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it started with me. I was the first
Speaker 2: one there to bring up the concept of reunion because
Speaker 2: then I was like only seventeen, I was new to
Speaker 2: anarchism still, and so I was young, green, and eager
Speaker 2: to get shit done. I still am all the above, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I had a few contacts to local IWW people
Speaker 2: through just the very very faint activist networks that were
Speaker 2: up there, and by faint, I mean a total of
Speaker 2: like five people. So I got in contact with the
Speaker 2: IWW guy I believe. I used the name Mark. Yes,
Speaker 2: I used the name Mark in the article to protect
Speaker 2: his anonymity, so I'll just keep consistency. And Mark was
Speaker 2: the one who convinced me to take more major steps.
Speaker 2: He was the one who I talked to and got
Speaker 2: consultation about it, and he was the one who gave
Speaker 2: all that initial guidance. And there was a few friends
Speaker 2: of mine I had there there also, not really anarchists.
Speaker 2: Most of them were just like your soci dems, but
Speaker 2: they were They were eager to get something done and
Speaker 2: help out, so you know, can't complain there. And it
Speaker 2: was like a small core group of us who all
Speaker 2: wanted to get involved and get this out and done.
Speaker 2: And we had never done anything like this before. Northeast
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania does have a strong history of unions there, but
Speaker 2: we were not part of that history initially, and so
Speaker 2: it ended up going south unfortunately. Pretty it went well
Speaker 2: at first, but I think some of the main issues
Speaker 2: we had in hindsight doing things, especially now having more
Speaker 2: experience in organizing under my belt, in hindsight, we rushed
Speaker 2: things way too much. We were trying to get everyone
Speaker 2: on board. We didn't do sufficient one on one conversations
Speaker 2: with people, We didn't do sufficient intel gathering, and we
Speaker 2: didn't we relied too much on our technical tools and
Speaker 2: left too much incriminating evidence that we trusted too many
Speaker 2: people with. We didn't really have a strong way of
Speaker 2: going about it that would have been better for what
Speaker 2: we were doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess this comes to one and I
Speaker 1: think of the main things that you're talking about here,
Speaker 1: and I think is one of the main things about
Speaker 1: you know, union organizing that like, like pretty much no
Speaker 1: matter who you talk to wright politically, the the things
Speaker 1: that are important to get a union to work are
Speaker 1: kind of similar, which is that, Yeah, Like it's usually
Speaker 1: a very slow process. It's a process of building relationships,
Speaker 1: and it's a process of figuring out who in your work, well,
Speaker 1: who in your workplays people sort of trust and respect
Speaker 1: and like make friends with and figuring out how to
Speaker 1: sort of how to get them involved in how to
Speaker 1: get I don't know how how unions are not just
Speaker 1: sort of like abstract things like they're they're they're they're
Speaker 1: built of actuals, like social relationships that you have with
Speaker 1: another person and another and other gifts and in the
Speaker 1: relationships that they have with other people, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask about how, how okay, when when
Speaker 1: when you were sort of starting to do this right,
Speaker 1: how how were you sort of identifying the people you
Speaker 1: needed to talk to and what kinds of things were
Speaker 1: you doing to try to get them involved and try
Speaker 1: to like map out how the workplace functioned.
Speaker 2: So the first people identify for people that I thought
Speaker 2: I could trust, and the core group of people I
Speaker 2: had were folk that in regards to the union, I
Speaker 2: in hindsight was able to trust. We all agreed on
Speaker 2: the same issues, and we all had the kind of
Speaker 2: a similar more gung ho attitude. I think me definitely
Speaker 2: the most out of everyone. We fell into a pitfall
Speaker 2: where I was kind of pushing the union by myself
Speaker 2: for a bit, which is definitely easy to fall into. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but we in terms of identifying the workplace leaders, the
Speaker 2: natural leaders found there, we mostly relied on conversations with
Speaker 2: Mark to do that. We talked with him about who
Speaker 2: worked there. We gave a brief list of everyone who
Speaker 2: worked there, and we kind of just pinpointed them the
Speaker 2: specific people we saw as leaders and left spent that
Speaker 2: And I mean, as far as basic charting goes, it
Speaker 2: wasn't terrible, but there is definitely a lot to be
Speaker 2: desired and it could have been far more fleshed out.
Speaker 1: What do you think that would have looked like? Or
Speaker 1: you know, what does it look like in sort of
Speaker 1: like other campaigns that you've run that were like the
Speaker 1: first one you ever tried to do at seventeen.
Speaker 2: So charting as I would do it now, it should
Speaker 2: be done from the start before even approaching the first
Speaker 2: person unless you extremely trust the person, like you are
Speaker 2: just bonded for life. You know, you can't go without
Speaker 2: them unless you have like really deep trust with the person. Initially,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't approach anyone but you going into it. You
Speaker 2: should start off with if you can reaching out to
Speaker 2: an IWW rep. But if you can't make a detailed
Speaker 2: chart of who's in your workplace, what positions they're at,
Speaker 2: what team they're on, Like in terms of if they're
Speaker 2: on one person's managed area or another person's managed area,
Speaker 2: you should should figure out who they're close to, who
Speaker 2: they listen to, live in demographic information because you want
Speaker 2: your unions to be intersextional, and you want to be
Speaker 2: able to figure out above all else, whether or not
Speaker 2: you've had away from work one on one with them,
Speaker 2: and whether or not you've had any talks with them
Speaker 2: prior about unions and where they might stand on unions.
Speaker 2: You want to document all that and it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be the most detail. You can just do a
Speaker 2: spreadsheet with it, but it can definitely be a lot
Speaker 2: to document. And it's it's no joke. It's not something
Speaker 2: that should be rushed. It's not fun. I you know,
Speaker 2: there's there's nothing really that's a blast about trying to
Speaker 2: sit there and be like, ah, yes, let me fill
Speaker 2: out paperwork about my workplace employees. But it will come
Speaker 2: back and save you so many times and give help
Speaker 2: you formulate strategies for going word and we we rush
Speaker 2: things and talk did things like talking to people on
Speaker 2: the workplace floor and just said, hey, do you want
Speaker 2: to do a union yeah, and call that a day
Speaker 2: and said that was one on one and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, should we explain what one on one like is
Speaker 1: supposed to be?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one on one is. It doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 2: to be on one on one, but it should be
Speaker 2: between at least a union organizer and another person. It
Speaker 2: could potentially be another more seasoned organizer helping be a
Speaker 2: more noviced one along with during the one on one.
Speaker 2: That could be a thing, but ideally they are just
Speaker 2: one or two organizers talking to one workplace employee about
Speaker 2: initially anyway noncommittal discussion on where what their issues are
Speaker 2: in the workplace, what griefances they might have, and what
Speaker 2: their current stances on workplace organizing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. Another thing I wanted to sort of get
Speaker 1: into is the role of like having having a way
Speaker 1: to talk to people outside of work and having just
Speaker 1: sort of a collaborative space where people talk about and
Speaker 1: I think this is something that like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think this is you know, this is one of
Speaker 1: the big things. I think that that this is one
Speaker 1: of the big things that's changed in the past, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe like decade and a half or so is that
Speaker 1: how like the the the actual space in which people
Speaker 1: talk about a union like tends on to be a
Speaker 1: physical space anymore. It tends to be sort of either
Speaker 1: like a signal chat or like a Facebook chat, like
Speaker 1: a I guess what'sapp technically is owned by Facebook. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I want to talk a bit about that,
Speaker 1: and also I guess get into the sort of security
Speaker 1: problems that you can have with this, because yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: That's what we did. We had a group chat on
Speaker 2: Facebook Messenger to talk to everyone about the union and
Speaker 2: everything like that. And there's a lot of pros to
Speaker 2: having a centralized group chat, don't get me grown. It
Speaker 2: makes an easy way to communicate when you're trying to
Speaker 2: take actions to other people. It can be helpful to
Speaker 2: do any last minute coordination needed. It can be useful
Speaker 2: to make sure everyone's on the same page. But there's
Speaker 2: also major drawbacks to it. One. As you mentioned, there's
Speaker 2: big privacy concerns, and we ran into that during the campaign.
Speaker 2: If with anything organizing, you're only as secure as your
Speaker 2: weakest link, and if you have people you do not
Speaker 2: completely one hundred percent trust in your group chat, someone
Speaker 2: could meek everything either wittingly or unwittingly. In our case
Speaker 2: it was wittingly, but you very well could have someone
Speaker 2: who isn't being careful and might show the group chat
Speaker 2: to someone else who they shouldn't on accident. And unless
Speaker 2: everyone's on the same page about best security practices, you're
Speaker 2: not going to get very far with having that. And
Speaker 2: for another, doing any form of organizing over texts and
Speaker 2: a major capacity is really hard. Yeah, there's so many
Speaker 2: issues with like making sure people are understanding their tone
Speaker 2: and undercommunicating properly and just meeting each other on the
Speaker 2: same level that you really can't do over text like
Speaker 2: you can do in person. If a text medium should
Speaker 2: in my view, only be there to facilitate interactions that
Speaker 2: are later done at best in person, but if not,
Speaker 2: they can be done through like video calls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like, as much as zoom can be really annoying,
Speaker 1: like it is way more productive than trying to do
Speaker 1: things too text Like Yeah, just like having just like
Speaker 1: just like having a weekly zoom meeting. You know, like
Speaker 1: like there there's there's a lot of like cases where
Speaker 1: you like, you know, you literally physically can't be in
Speaker 1: the same place and you know, and if that's that's
Speaker 1: the thing you're dealing with. Like, yeah, doing video calls
Speaker 1: and stuff like that makes it way way easier, for sure.
Speaker 2: It It is a way better medium to do anything
Speaker 2: union related with. And it's also much easier to bond
Speaker 2: with people over video chat too, And that's a huge
Speaker 2: part of the union is connecting with your other film
Speaker 2: workers and meeting each other on that same level and
Speaker 2: bonded over your shared interests, over your share what you
Speaker 2: desire from union, what you desire from your workplace. You
Speaker 2: can't really do that easily anyway over text. I'm sure
Speaker 2: someone somewhere has done it, but it's not recommended for
Speaker 2: me anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, Unfortunately, we need to do another thing that's not text,
Speaker 1: which is ads. You can tell do great on the
Speaker 1: ad pivots here, it's fine. I was I was watching
Speaker 1: what's his name, the guy the right Way, ship head
Speaker 1: guy who like had a thing with Samantha Bee for
Speaker 1: a little bit. Glenn Beck, That's the one I was watching,
Speaker 1: Glenn Beck, and I was like, oh no, this guy,
Speaker 1: this guy's this guy's ad pivot was just racism. So
Speaker 1: you know, we could do it could happen. Here are
Speaker 1: our second slogan better ad pivots than Glenn back, and
Speaker 1: we are back, hopefully.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll get extremely unlucky and everything will be broken
Speaker 1: and this will immediately cut to a third AD. But
Speaker 1: assuming that it doesn't, I wanted to talk a bit
Speaker 1: also about sort of the kinds of things that are
Speaker 1: necessary to get people to believe that a union can work,
Speaker 1: because that's you know, like or organization isn't just sort
Speaker 1: of a purely like it isn't just sort of a
Speaker 1: purely mechanical thing. It's also about morale, you know, like
Speaker 1: as much as it's about social Relationshi's about sort of morale,
Speaker 1: about people believing in the thing. So I wanted to ask, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess talk a little bit about what that process
Speaker 1: is sort of like and what can happen to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's something an issue we ran into and
Speaker 2: make a union fairly early on was keeping people motivated
Speaker 2: for the union and getting people wanting to be involved,
Speaker 2: because one of the most common things you'll hear when
Speaker 2: trying to organize the union is people like, oh, I
Speaker 2: can't afford to lose this job. I have a family
Speaker 2: to feed, I have bills to pay. You'll see people
Speaker 2: saying they don't want to risk their careers. If you're
Speaker 2: in a more professional environment, you'll see people just not
Speaker 2: wanting to take the risks that could jeopardize them. And
Speaker 2: it's important when you're kind of trying to address those
Speaker 2: concerns to meet them where they're at. You're not gonna
Speaker 2: you can't make those concerns go away, because they're real.
Speaker 2: When you're organizing a union, there is a risk you
Speaker 2: could get fired and get punished for it. It happened
Speaker 2: to me. It comes with the territory. But if you
Speaker 2: do things safely and you do things right, it's a
Speaker 2: much safer option than not doing any And that's the
Speaker 2: main thing you kind of want to talk to people about,
Speaker 2: is detailing their grievances and talking about how nothing's going
Speaker 2: to change without you. And you can't butter up to
Speaker 2: your bosses and expect them to suddenly turn around on you.
Speaker 2: The most they'll do is play pretend for a little
Speaker 2: bit until things go right back to normal. And you
Speaker 2: kind of want to talk to people about also why
Speaker 2: it's more beneficial to them to just stick with the
Speaker 2: union because their strength is in numbers, and that's something
Speaker 2: that a lot of regular folk can kind of lose
Speaker 2: is that they're not going to be an envelope. When
Speaker 2: someone's viewing getting involved, a lot of the time they're thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: if I get involved, I'm going to get fired. They're
Speaker 2: not thinking about the strength envemnors. Sure you just you
Speaker 2: yourself as the only one pushing for change in a workplace, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a decent chance you'll get fired. But if you
Speaker 2: have a whole crew of ten people, all who are
Speaker 2: essential running the operations, pushing for change, suddenly you're going
Speaker 2: to see things shifting a much different way. And so
Speaker 2: building that solidarity among people is important, and I think
Speaker 2: is the I don't want to say the absolute best way,
Speaker 2: because there isn't an absolute best way to handle those concerns,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely a way that can be effective if
Speaker 2: done right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess, okay, I guess I guess we
Speaker 1: should go into how it sort of came apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because unfortunately, you know, and this I think is the
Speaker 1: thing that is depressing but true, which is that a
Speaker 1: lot of union like statistic well, actually I don't have
Speaker 1: the numbers. I'm not going to I'm not going to
Speaker 1: actually say that, but a lot of union campaigns don't work,
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes it's because like something bad happens,
Speaker 1: sometimes because it's just you know, stuff happens out of
Speaker 1: your control. Sometimes it's I don't know, like a pandemic starts.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I was talked about what happened here and
Speaker 1: how to sort of avoid that because it sucks.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of things that can be a
Speaker 2: downfall in the union. In the case of McDonald's, our
Speaker 2: main downfall. There was a lot of you know, little
Speaker 2: things we did wrong that didn't help at all that
Speaker 2: definitely just made matters worse in the end. But the
Speaker 2: straw that broke the camel's back was not being careful
Speaker 2: with who we trusted. And Dan, as I referred to
Speaker 2: in the article, he was the one that caused the
Speaker 2: penultimate destructure of it. The COVID contributed heavily, but I
Speaker 2: feel like if it weren't for Dan, the union could
Speaker 2: have had still a fighting chance in spite of COVID. Now,
Speaker 2: if it weren't for COVID, I think the union also
Speaker 2: could have stuck around. But the mixture of external factors
Speaker 2: and internal did the downfall. But in terms of things
Speaker 2: we could have actively prevented. Dan was the main thing
Speaker 2: that we could have done approached way differently. We could
Speaker 2: have approached handling new people in a much better light.
Speaker 2: We should have had a centralized group being the ones
Speaker 2: with all the communications everything, and let people prove their
Speaker 2: trust to the union over time, doing taxes for it
Speaker 2: and just by building relationships with people and fostering stuff
Speaker 2: that's already there. Because Dan was two faced, we all
Speaker 2: thought he was our friend, which is why we thought
Speaker 2: we could trust him. But he was in it just
Speaker 2: to try and get some benefits for him, which is
Speaker 2: why he snitched. He thought maybe he would get, you know,
Speaker 2: some type of promotion or something he didn't which side note,
Speaker 2: it doesn't help you to snitch on your union. If
Speaker 2: anyone out there is thinking of doing it, you're just
Speaker 2: going to screw yourself and everyone else over and nobody
Speaker 2: likes to snitch. Yeah, but we should have been a
Speaker 2: lot more cautious with how we approached people and shouldn't
Speaker 2: have just been doing things for the sake of doing them,
Speaker 2: Like we shouldn't have been approaching people inside the workplace.
Speaker 2: We shouldn't have been inviting and the one and everyone
Speaker 2: to all our confidential group chats. We should have been
Speaker 2: cautious of who we were around and what we were
Speaker 2: saying around people and how we were going about it.
Speaker 2: That's the core of it. I mean, yeah, it's recklessness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean I think, like, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: it is not good if the exist, like if the
Speaker 1: existence of your union and a bunch of your stuff
Speaker 1: gets leaked like this is not necessarily fatal, Like I've
Speaker 1: been involved in campaigns where like that's happened and we
Speaker 1: want anyways, but it could definitely be like you know,
Speaker 1: especially like especially early on in the process and especially
Speaker 1: like the more precarious stuff is uh, yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 1: I get yeah, pretty bad pretty quickly, you know. I
Speaker 1: guess the thing that I wanted to sort of ask
Speaker 1: about was like, Okay, so historically up until the last
Speaker 1: I mean I think was was was Burgerville the first
Speaker 1: like modern fast food union. I think it might have been.
Speaker 2: It was either Burgerville or Jimmy John.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was one of the two. Up up until
Speaker 1: like really the last like like I think, like post
Speaker 1: like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, fast food has been really
Speaker 1: really difficult to organize and a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of unions either just didn't try or did these kind
Speaker 1: of like weird PR stunt campaigns that were you know,
Speaker 1: like Fight fifteen attached things where it's like, well, we're
Speaker 1: not actually really trying to get a union, we're trying
Speaker 1: to like get PR stuff for Fight fifteen. But this
Speaker 1: is I don't know, this is the thing I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting about the idea, about about the idea. This
Speaker 1: is the thing that's interesting about the industrial workers of
Speaker 1: the world specifically, is that they've actually like gone in
Speaker 1: and seriously attempted to do it, and they sort of
Speaker 1: finally broke through it a couple of places, and you
Speaker 1: know this this McDonald's campaign didn't work. But what was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to me about it is like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like how kind of I don't know if
Speaker 1: normal is the right word of a campaign it was,
Speaker 1: but it's it looks a lot like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it looked like it looks a lot like campaigns that
Speaker 1: I've been involved in that were like not in the
Speaker 1: fast food industry. And now I guess I was wondering
Speaker 1: a bit about like to what extent were the sort
Speaker 1: of tactics shaped by like the very specific weird conditions
Speaker 1: of fast food, and to what extent it was just
Speaker 1: sort of like the stuff you'd use in any workplace.
Speaker 2: So a lot of our base model was just stuff
Speaker 2: you'd use in any workplace. Because at the time we're
Speaker 2: doing this, I think the only fast food unions that
Speaker 2: were around were like Jimmy John's and Burbertville. I think
Speaker 2: those are the only two that had any publicity. This
Speaker 2: was before all the major Starbucks campaigns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all pretty recent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we didn't have much of a playbook
Speaker 2: for how to approach things in a fast food environment. Specifically,
Speaker 2: a lot of what we're actually emulated the model on
Speaker 2: was factory environments and things like that, because there is
Speaker 2: somewhat of a similarity of having worked in both between
Speaker 2: fast food and factories. With factories and both fast food,
Speaker 2: you have a kind of assembly line model, you know,
Speaker 2: crank out or crank out work. Crank out work, get
Speaker 2: things out at a rapid pace, and stick to your job.
Speaker 2: Maybe do it a little bit of clean up now
Speaker 2: and then, but you stick to what you're doing, and
Speaker 2: you're kind of isolated from other stations a bit. You
Speaker 2: have some overlap, but only in so far as your
Speaker 2: job will allow, but you might be able to talk
Speaker 2: to each other and you shared break areas. That kind
Speaker 2: of structure informed how we approached it. By us, what
Speaker 2: we tried to do was talk to people we didn't
Speaker 2: have external contacts with in areas that were away from cameras,
Speaker 2: in areas that were away from other people who might
Speaker 2: be able to hear. But there is better ways of
Speaker 2: doing it, and I think other campaigns benefited out there,
Speaker 2: likely benefited from having more seasoned organizers at the core
Speaker 2: of it, because that's also, at least for me and
Speaker 2: my experience with it. Something that didn't help us was
Speaker 2: having someone who with no real experience doing something at
Speaker 2: the forefront of that. I'm not to say that someone
Speaker 2: of no experience can't do amazing things. Countless examples of
Speaker 2: unions that were ran by people with no experience at
Speaker 2: all who's just jumped right into it and did amazing jobs.
Speaker 2: But it's important to get a diversity of people with
Speaker 2: different walks of life at the core of it, people
Speaker 2: with different perspectives. Just so many different people involved at
Speaker 2: the core as a kind of central organizing committee can
Speaker 2: do you wonders with a union because We had just
Speaker 2: a few young left leaning people, a few young left
Speaker 2: leaning white people, most of which were male presenting. I
Speaker 2: wasn't out as trans there, so I was presenting as masculine.
Speaker 2: The other people I was with, they were all CIS men,
Speaker 2: with one exception, two exceptions. Sorry, my memory is a
Speaker 2: little on the fritz. But we needed more people with
Speaker 2: different perspectives in there. We needed more, and there was
Speaker 2: plenty to be found in the workplace, but we just
Speaker 2: we neglected to include them in the core organizing the committee.
Speaker 2: And I think that's something that could really benefit unions
Speaker 2: and probably is a major strength of a lot of
Speaker 2: the successful ones is having a diverse, main primary group
Speaker 2: of central organizers. I don't want to say central organizers,
Speaker 2: more like core organizers, because the solidarity union model isn't
Speaker 2: like hierarchical, but this is a central group of people
Speaker 2: involved that seek to do the main light work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I mean this has been I
Speaker 1: think like one of the things that made the like
Speaker 1: the Starbucks campaign's work was like they well with was
Speaker 1: STARBARCKSNA specifically, it was a lot of like find the
Speaker 1: queerest person in the world place to start talking to them,
Speaker 1: but having the core group of people working on things.
Speaker 1: Being as diverse as possible is good both in like
Speaker 1: an immediate practical sense and it is sort of like
Speaker 1: long term to chief sense, and the faster that happens
Speaker 1: the better. Yeah, okay, do you have anything else that
Speaker 1: you from this that you think people should know about?
Speaker 2: I would say, if you can get external help from
Speaker 2: a union if you've never done it before, and even
Speaker 2: if you have, having someone to balance ideas off of
Speaker 2: can wonders. There's a lot of fun with the IWW
Speaker 2: that are more than willing to offer helping hand to
Speaker 2: people trying to get started on a union campaign. All
Speaker 2: you got to do is reach out and ask, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure there will be someone in your local who's
Speaker 2: willing to help. But even if there's not, you can
Speaker 2: probably get someone to help you more remotely too, And
Speaker 2: even just a little bit of guidance can go a
Speaker 2: long way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, union, good McDonald's bad eye. Be careful while you're organizing,
Speaker 1: and yeah, be strategic inspired about it. Well, okay, do
Speaker 1: you want people to find you first? And if so where?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I can be found over unfortunately for now on
Speaker 2: Twitter at my regazine. Also on Mastdon much more preferably,
Speaker 2: And those are the main places I'm at. If you
Speaker 2: want to reach me to, my email is found on
Speaker 2: my Twitter and masked it on my relating at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com. It's the best way to get hold of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll put a link to the strange meta article
Speaker 1: in the in the description so you can read that
Speaker 1: to you because it's great. Yeah, Mirat, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining But I was gonna say us, but
Speaker 1: I guess, thank you so much for joining me. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was great talking to you is fuck
Speaker 1: McDonald's play sucks ass.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having Yeah, it was really
Speaker 2: been a huge fan of this podcast for a while,
Speaker 2: so I was like, when I first heard about potentially
Speaker 2: being on here, I was stoked. And also, yeah, fuck McDonald's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, yeah, this has been the podcast that
Speaker 1: you're listening to. You can find us that Happened here
Speaker 1: pod on Twitter and Instagram. You can find us the
Speaker 1: rest of the stuff that people do at cools on media.
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess.
Speaker 1: I actually I have not plugged the do show that's
Speaker 1: been happening. There'll be a couple of episodes out by
Speaker 1: the time we do this. But cools On has done
Speaker 1: a show with Jake Canahan called Sad Oligarchs. That's about
Speaker 1: the Russian oligarchs who've been mysteriously dying over the past,
Speaker 1: like as the start of the Ukraine. Yeah, probably only
Speaker 1: getting more relevant as whatever fucking bullshit is happening there
Speaker 1: right now plays out. I don't know, but by the
Speaker 1: time this goes up, you'll probably have a better idea
Speaker 1: of what happened or didn't happen. But yeah, go listen
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, and go start a union in your
Speaker 1: workplace or alternately, light light light something on fire legally
Speaker 1: not the place something campfires explorers, if we can make those,
Speaker 1: we have the technology.
Speaker 2: Union sores.
Speaker 1: Best kind.
Speaker 3: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 3: You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
Speaker 3: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.