Speaker 1: Al Zone Media. It's it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: where I didn't come up with an intro, So you're
Speaker 1: getting this one. I'm your host, Bia Wong. This is
Speaker 1: this is the podcast where actually this is the part
Speaker 1: of the podcast where after things have fallen apart, you
Speaker 1: put them back together again. And yeah, the thing that's
Speaker 1: being put back together here. You know, I really I
Speaker 1: really should have planned this intro more, but this is
Speaker 1: this is what happened. This is what happens when we
Speaker 1: get in night recordings. But yeah, the thing, the thing
Speaker 1: we're putting together today is a union at a really
Speaker 1: interesting kind of very very interesting kind of coffee shop.
Speaker 1: So with with me to talk about this is Alex
Speaker 1: Rocky and Madeline from Blue Bottle Independent Union. And yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you all for joining me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you all. And so
Speaker 1: I guess the first thing that I want to start
Speaker 1: with is can you talk a bit about what Blue
Speaker 1: Bottle is, because this is a really weird story that
Speaker 1: I think kind of reveals a lot about the way
Speaker 1: I don't know, the it is sort of lofty terms,
Speaker 1: is like the direction that capital has been moving in
Speaker 1: the past like ten years. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Blue Bottle is a specialty coffee chain founded by
Speaker 4: James Freeman in Oakland, California, like two thousand and two.
Speaker 4: Like most specialty shops, starts off as like this small
Speaker 4: little cart where you know, one guy is doing all
Speaker 4: the parts of production, roasting, serving the coffee and all that.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 4: Throughout you know, the early aughts twenty tens, they do
Speaker 4: lots of rounds of venture capital financing with like Fidelity
Speaker 4: and other firms until twenty seventeen, when Nesley purchased a
Speaker 4: sixty eight percent majority ownership in Blue Bottle at I
Speaker 4: think a seven hundred million dollar evaluation. And since then, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: the it was a seven hundred million dollar evaluation. They
Speaker 4: paid four hundred million dollars too. Yeah, isn't this great?
Speaker 4: And since then they've expanded from you know, the tiny
Speaker 4: little location in California to seventy stores in the US
Speaker 4: and then over one hundred globally, including in China, Japan,
Speaker 4: Hong Kong, South Korea, and am I forgetting anywhere else.
Speaker 2: I think that's I think that's it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a fun time to be a
Speaker 4: coffee worker.
Speaker 1: I guess, Yeah, it's interesting to me the extent to
Speaker 1: which this it has. I mean, okay, so like a
Speaker 1: hundred shops is like a lot of shops, but it's
Speaker 1: not seven hundred million dollars of shops. Like it really
Speaker 1: seems like this company has like it really has like
Speaker 1: tech valuation, which is alarming.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean it's not uncommon for specialty right now,
Speaker 4: which is also concerning. Like, as far as I understand,
Speaker 4: Intelligentsia and La Cologne are also owned in part by
Speaker 4: venture capital firms, and this is really confusing, especially because
Speaker 4: for anybody that knows anything about like the economics of
Speaker 4: coffee shops, the margins are terrible. Yeah, and really, as
Speaker 4: far as I can tell, the only value that Blue
Speaker 4: Bottle offers to Nesley is brand and like the ability
Speaker 4: to eventually grow to the point where at some point
Speaker 4: in the future they'll be able to make a little
Speaker 4: bit of money.
Speaker 1: Off of it all, which is a deeply weird business strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I guess I wanted to start here because
Speaker 1: it feels like a very different organizing terrain than a
Speaker 1: lot of like, you know that a lot of the
Speaker 1: shops that we've been that we talked to on this show,
Speaker 1: because it's like the value this company is only kind
Speaker 1: of tangentially, you know, all like honest, a macro level,
Speaker 1: the value of the company is like kind of tenuously
Speaker 1: connected to your labor. But on the other hand, like
Speaker 1: at the individual shop level, you're still dealing with all
Speaker 1: of the same sort of like you know, like hyper
Speaker 1: exploitation and trying to like ring every cent out of stuff.
Speaker 1: So so I guess I wanted to start by kind
Speaker 1: of asking, like how how did that the weirdness of
Speaker 1: what of what Blue Bottle is influenced? Like how this
Speaker 1: campaign started to.
Speaker 2: Be pretty frank about our campaign, Like there was a
Speaker 2: crop of organizers before Gonzo myself, who I would say
Speaker 2: at this point are kind of the longest running organizers
Speaker 2: on this campaign. Look, there was a crop before us,
Speaker 2: so we joined. We did not start the campaign here
Speaker 2: at Blue Bottle, but I think, I mean it was
Speaker 2: difficult in the very beginning, Like you know, blue bottle
Speaker 2: it pays now, like I think starting wage for bristas
Speaker 2: like eighteen an hour. You know, we just got to
Speaker 2: pave up in April. So it's like I, you know,
Speaker 2: I do make more than minimum wage. It's it can
Speaker 2: be a tough sell for people to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: but you know it's like marginally better, Like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: working at this like fancy coffee shop, don't they treat
Speaker 2: us a little better? Like? But when you look at
Speaker 2: like also, the coffee industry has a whole on like
Speaker 2: on a global scale, incredibly exploitative industry that like we
Speaker 2: are both we play into as people like in the
Speaker 2: US who make incredibly expensive specialty coffee, but also like
Speaker 2: as workers who are exploited ourselves. Like, this is something
Speaker 2: that I think we have to think about often as
Speaker 2: like how I don't know, how can our union affect
Speaker 2: this industry as a whole, How can we affect you know,
Speaker 2: Nestle as this conglomerate as a whole, But also how
Speaker 2: can I afford my rent next month?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And so you know, having those kinds of discussions with workers,
Speaker 2: like putting our day to day labor into this kind
Speaker 2: of larger context both of the company and of the industry.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this campaign, you know, we didn't
Speaker 2: we didn't start it out independent. We had a little
Speaker 2: bit of shopping around almost of different unions. I think
Speaker 2: we were also largely spouted here in Boston specifically, like
Speaker 2: it is kind of a hotbed for coffee organizing. A
Speaker 2: lot of shops around here organized. There've been some incredibly
Speaker 2: like militant shops out here, Like I think Gonda and
Speaker 2: I first got introduced to the Bluebell campaign from the
Speaker 2: Starbucks eight seven four picket line and they were out
Speaker 2: there for like two months, and I think that that,
Speaker 2: you know, those kinds of things have really influenced campaign
Speaker 2: and really influenced our organizing as we go into this
Speaker 2: like really kind of corporate bougee coffee shops that is
Speaker 2: hard to hard to reconcile with, like, hey, I am
Speaker 2: also an exploited laborer. I you know, I am forced
Speaker 2: to make coffee all day for customers who are frankly
Speaker 2: quite rude, and having to have those conversations with your
Speaker 2: coworkers of like, hey, we deserve better. It might be
Speaker 2: marginally better than some other place, we still deserve better
Speaker 2: and we can fight for so much more. So I
Speaker 2: feel like I went on for a little bit there,
Speaker 2: but I hope that is.
Speaker 4: One thing to kind of add on to that is
Speaker 4: when organizing in the stores, part of the fact that
Speaker 4: we're owned by NESTLEI makes it actually much easier because
Speaker 4: people aren't like easily fooled. We understand that Neslie is
Speaker 4: putting a lot of money into this company with the
Speaker 4: hope of future returns you know, in the shortter, medium term.
Speaker 4: And also people implicitly understand that the current model that
Speaker 4: the cafes operate on is kind of reckless, Like because
Speaker 4: we're owned basically as a venture capital scheme, this means that,
Speaker 4: you know, we're constantly trying to cut costs that shouldn't
Speaker 4: be cut. Like even today, Madeline and I ran out
Speaker 4: of decaf.
Speaker 1: Coffy beans because they.
Speaker 4: Hadn't placed in order for them, Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And you know, we've run out of you know, milks
Speaker 4: fairly frequently. We've run out of things like cups and
Speaker 4: lids and very basic things that you need to run
Speaker 4: a coffee shop as far as I can tell, only
Speaker 4: because they need to keep operating costs comically low so
Speaker 4: that way they can appease their nesty overlords.
Speaker 1: Which is pretty funny because the math doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense on that right, because it's like, okay, you need
Speaker 1: to find a way to make like four hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: Your solution to this is We're going to delay ordering
Speaker 1: more coffee beads? Like, is there anyone who like, No,
Speaker 1: you don't like. This isn't even an accountant situation. This
Speaker 1: is a like, is there anyone here who understands what
Speaker 1: an order of magnitude is? What are we doing here?
Speaker 4: Wait till you hear about the saffron latte.
Speaker 3: Oh god, what a disaster.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so they don't have enough money to pay
Speaker 4: us a living wage. But from January until April of
Speaker 4: this year, we were serving a saffron alatte with and
Speaker 4: I kid you, not real saffron, both in a syrup
Speaker 4: and also and a powdered Yeah, no, no kidding. It
Speaker 4: tasted like Plato. I kind of like that, but not
Speaker 4: everybody does.
Speaker 1: Apparently, you know the first time, This is the first
Speaker 1: time I've ever said this in my entire life. But
Speaker 1: I sincerely hope that they were buying the fucking cheap
Speaker 1: fake stuff they were real saffron. Oh god, Well, to
Speaker 1: be fair, to be fair, a lot of something people
Speaker 1: think is real saffron probably is fake. So maybe maybe
Speaker 1: the scammers were getting something out of this. But dear God,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make them look good.
Speaker 4: But yeah, no, real, somebody who's good with the economy
Speaker 4: helped me out here. You know, three thousand dollars a
Speaker 4: week for Saffron and eighteen dollars an hour for Bereiza's.
Speaker 1: God, that's gonna like haunt me in my dreams. So
Speaker 1: what order are gonna add? How much should that lost?
Speaker 1: Eight Jesus Christ yep, oh no, but not enough money
Speaker 1: to pay us a living wage. No, that's I don't
Speaker 1: know that is that is that is jeny wily disgusting.
Speaker 3: Like how you know, when you think about it, we
Speaker 3: can like buy a little over two of them every
Speaker 3: hour we work, so like that's all we need.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's also got to be like a kind
Speaker 1: of radicalizing moment of oh my god, yeah, and our
Speaker 1: time is worth so little to these people.
Speaker 2: This is actually one of the biggest conversations I would
Speaker 2: have with my cochers that I had to stop having
Speaker 2: so it'd make them incredibly upset. Was I would break
Speaker 2: down the mouth of them. I'd be like, you can
Speaker 2: make a latte in about a minute, two minutes, Like,
Speaker 2: and those lattes are seven dollars you make seventeen an
Speaker 2: hour make three lattes and that's more than your hourly wage,
Speaker 2: and you're making what one hundred of those an hour
Speaker 2: in a rush. Like people would get really upset when
Speaker 2: you're confronted with like the oh wow, the money coming
Speaker 2: in and then the money that I'm receiving. It'll drive
Speaker 2: you crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think, I don't know. That's one of
Speaker 1: these things where I think in a lot of industries
Speaker 1: it's kind of that kind of value thing is abstracted
Speaker 1: because like I don't know, like you're like I just
Speaker 1: talked about it like an accountant earlier, right, Like you're
Speaker 1: an accountant. You have no idea how much of well,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe an accountant would know exactly about a value, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You work in like you work in
Speaker 1: a factory that produces an auto part, right, like one
Speaker 1: thing that goes into an assembly of an auto parts,
Speaker 1: Like you have no like there's no good way for
Speaker 1: you to like actually understand the sort of value things.
Speaker 1: You can get kind of close, but I think it's
Speaker 1: less visceral than just yeah, this is an item of
Speaker 1: food that I'm watching all of these people like consume
Speaker 1: that I'm making, and it's like, yeah, sure, obviously there's
Speaker 1: like you know, like back down the value chained is
Speaker 1: also probably like Nessley doing like slave labor, like child
Speaker 1: slave labor to get chocolate or something. Right, But I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's this there's something really kind of just
Speaker 1: viscerally horrifying about like I've produced eight hundred dollars of
Speaker 1: coffee and they're paying me eighteen dollars. Yeah, so speaking
Speaker 1: of eight hundred dollars of coffee this show. Actually, I
Speaker 1: don't think we've ever gotten the coffee ad, which is
Speaker 1: sort of remarkable. You'd think at some point.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't dream really funny, you know,
Speaker 4: if if on the ad that we're about to go
Speaker 4: to it's you know, like the Black Rifle Coffee Company
Speaker 4: or some shit.
Speaker 1: Oh god, wait no, I think I think one of
Speaker 1: the I think one of the insane. It might have
Speaker 1: been the other one. So there's like Black Rifle Coffee,
Speaker 1: which is the right wing coffee thing. But then they
Speaker 1: they condemned Kyle Rittenhouse murdering all those people, and so
Speaker 1: then there became a second, even more anti wokee coffee
Speaker 1: shop that was even shittier. I think those people might
Speaker 1: legitimately have tried to sell it add to our show.
Speaker 1: At one point we were like, no, what the fuck's
Speaker 1: there's We had so many insane ads we had the
Speaker 1: famously the Washington Highway Patrol put one on here. So
Speaker 1: all right, let's let's hope you have a reasonable ad
Speaker 1: instead of that, and we are back. Luckily this is
Speaker 1: podcasting are not regulated like radio, so I could just
Speaker 1: fucking say, shit, it's great. We love we love, we
Speaker 1: love to be we love to be in podcasting. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this this brings us in no particular bye by by
Speaker 1: no particularly rhymer reason. This brings us to a neoxt
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to sort of talk about, which is
Speaker 1: about the decision to go independent and about independent unions
Speaker 1: versus sort of the traditional business unions that have been
Speaker 1: trying to run a lot of these campaigns. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess wherever you want to start in that whole
Speaker 1: sort of thickets of issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the decision to go independent was maybe eight months
Speaker 2: into our campaign. We did pivot to go independent. We were,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of we had not affiliated with anyone.
Speaker 2: We some weird stuff it had happened with some previous
Speaker 2: business unions and so we were kind of a nice
Speaker 2: shopping around phase, and I like good friend of the
Speaker 2: union and someone who has helped us incredibly throughout the campaign,
Speaker 2: said hey, can I pitch you guys on going independent?
Speaker 2: Like and at that time, I mean I can't speak
Speaker 2: for the other folks, Like I did not know anything
Speaker 2: about independent unions. This campaign has also been an incredible
Speaker 2: like learning process for me. And so you know, we
Speaker 2: talked about a little bit of like, hey, unions, everything
Speaker 2: that a union does, workers can do and really like
Speaker 2: trying to like instill this like we can do it ourselves.
Speaker 2: I think that like for me, like the dream of
Speaker 2: independent unionism is like the having autonomy and control of
Speaker 2: our lives both in the workplace and in our unions
Speaker 2: at like ads workers and so you know this idea
Speaker 2: of like oh yeah, this the union just takes care
Speaker 2: of it. Oh, you pay dues and this stafford does
Speaker 2: all these things for you. But when you know, when
Speaker 2: we filed our petition, you know I filled that out,
Speaker 2: it's not that hard.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There are so many things where it's like oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: the union will take care of it, or oh this
Speaker 2: is what dues pay for, Like oh, we can have
Speaker 2: a lawyer look at it. At no part of this
Speaker 2: process was there really anything that workers could not have done.
Speaker 2: Did we seek legal advice? Absolutely? Did we have people
Speaker 2: help us out who maybe knew more than I did. Yes,
Speaker 2: But that isn't to say that we were not learning
Speaker 2: the entire time. So to me, that's like the big
Speaker 2: ethos of independent unionism of like learning it, doing it,
Speaker 2: teaching others. I think it has been an incredible opportunity.
Speaker 2: I think also like we really are committed to like
Speaker 2: rank and file democracy and so having workers have they
Speaker 2: say in all major decisions, especially like now that we
Speaker 2: have had our election, we're moving into bargaining hopefully soon,
Speaker 2: like being able to have workers submit proposals, have workers
Speaker 2: look and do open bargaining, have them look at every
Speaker 2: at the contract at every step of the way, and
Speaker 2: things like this, having people participate in their unions. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that we are in a time of like
Speaker 2: the revitalization of the labor movement, and I don't want
Speaker 2: workers to get left behind in that. Like I think
Speaker 2: that we, you know, like we are the labor and
Speaker 2: so being able to control our unions and lead them
Speaker 2: in the ways that we want to as democratically as
Speaker 2: we can. To me, it's been what it's all about.
Speaker 2: Did that mean that it was an easy campaign. No,
Speaker 2: it was a lot of work. It was a lot
Speaker 2: of work that maybe a paid staff or would have done,
Speaker 2: but we did it ourselves and it took longer, and
Speaker 2: it took a lot of education as well of explaining
Speaker 2: to my coworkers of like, hey, we want to form
Speaker 2: a union and it's not just this thing that kind
Speaker 2: of happens to you, Like, actually, you have to make
Speaker 2: it happen now if you want to do it. So
Speaker 2: I think that for us the choice to go independent
Speaker 2: independent has like only reaped benefits so far, it's been
Speaker 2: this wonderful thing. I think that we are all much
Speaker 2: better for it and much closer like as co workers.
Speaker 2: I think that people are more excited about their union.
Speaker 2: But it certainly, you know, it took a lot of work,
Speaker 2: It took a lot of time, It took a lot
Speaker 2: of trust from our coworkers as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean one of the most formative experiences that
Speaker 4: has stuck with me, and I think I might have
Speaker 4: mentioned this in the interview before the interview was when
Speaker 4: we were shopping around with business unions Rocky and I
Speaker 4: had sat down with somebody from a fairly large one,
Speaker 4: and we're trying to ask all of these questions about,
Speaker 4: you know, would we be able to have rank and
Speaker 4: file control of our own campaign, would we be able
Speaker 4: to you know, legitimately examine unconventional tactics for launching or
Speaker 4: sustain our campaign, you know, what is the actual process
Speaker 4: for requesting finances from the larger affiliate if we needed it,
Speaker 4: And more or less, what we were told by the
Speaker 4: staffer was that none of this would be in the
Speaker 4: hands of rank and file, and it would either be
Speaker 4: determined by what this particular staffer thought was best or
Speaker 4: you know, they would have to get approval from you know,
Speaker 4: whoever was above them, which, despite the fact that this
Speaker 4: person was within the reform caucus of their union, did
Speaker 4: not strike them as being anti democratic at all.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And at that point, I mean, you know, we'd
Speaker 4: been talking to our co workers for months at that point,
Speaker 4: you know, hanging out with them, becoming building community, and
Speaker 4: it didn't seem like there was really anything that you know,
Speaker 4: a larger business union would have had to offer to
Speaker 4: begin with. In fact, in my own experience, the idea
Speaker 4: of affiliation has more or less come across as an
Speaker 4: implicit threat of how else you're going to take on
Speaker 4: Nesley without all of the money and resources that we
Speaker 4: have but won't let you use anyways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is like not a thing. I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you've gotten to the point where your union is
Speaker 1: threatening you, and this is something that like happens more
Speaker 1: than you'd think, Like, you know, but listeners of this
Speaker 1: show may or may not have listened to some previous
Speaker 1: episodes talking to some of the reformed nurses slates that
Speaker 1: we've had on the show where that's happened. But if
Speaker 1: your union is threatening to you, something has gone very
Speaker 1: badly wrong, and you're probably you're in a position where
Speaker 1: you're probably going to be having to fight yourself out
Speaker 1: of a deep hole. And one way you can avoid
Speaker 1: getting in there in the first place is by not
Speaker 1: digging the hole and building something yourself. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: And I mean, you know, one of the things that
Speaker 4: we heard a lot about at Labor Notes two weeks
Speaker 4: ago at this point was people within larger unions talking
Speaker 4: about how to fight off staffers or bureaucrats. And I'm
Speaker 4: personally very glad that we are not in that fight
Speaker 4: ourselves because we have Nestlie to take care of.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the the sort of two way fight between you
Speaker 1: your boss and then also your union staffers is not
Speaker 1: a thing that usually goes well for you. It's a
Speaker 1: bad situation to be it. I would recommend of waiting it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I guess the next thing that I'm sort
Speaker 1: of interested in is, you know, so you talked a
Speaker 1: bit about how sort of being an independent union like
Speaker 1: made the union closer. How else did that influence how
Speaker 1: the campaign went? And how is like how how has
Speaker 1: it been going in the past, Like, I know, I
Speaker 1: know you won your election remembering there, right, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was an election with Sorry it has been. This has
Speaker 1: been the most chaotic two weeks I've had in several years.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, it's just like Lennin said, there are
Speaker 4: years where you fuck around and weeks where you find out.
Speaker 4: All Right, I'm gonna get so much shit for that
Speaker 4: comment now. Anyways, cool Zobia is not endorsed. Letting yes,
Speaker 4: two good lines.
Speaker 1: I promise I only said it for the joke. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Our campaign started April third. There are six stores in
Speaker 4: the Greater Boston area with roughly sixty seven sixty five
Speaker 4: workers across all of them. On April third, fifty workers
Speaker 4: from five of those stores handed cards like union authorization
Speaker 4: cards to management, announcing our campaign, our union, and asking
Speaker 4: for voluntary recognition by noon on April eighth. Management accepted
Speaker 4: the cards, but then did not recognize the union voluntarily
Speaker 4: by newon April eight, and instead they put up a
Speaker 4: flyer in the back of the house of all the
Speaker 4: cafes saying that they would respect the outcome of an election,
Speaker 4: at which point, no, yeah, they didn't even publicly acknowledge us.
Speaker 4: So at that point, across five of the six stores,
Speaker 4: we had to walk out on the eighth, and then
Speaker 4: that same day went downtown to file for an election
Speaker 4: with the NLRB, which despite the fact that we called
Speaker 4: them a week in advance to be like, is it
Speaker 4: okay if a lot of people show up kind of
Speaker 4: spontaneously to file for an election, and despite the fact
Speaker 4: that the person in the office said, yeah, it's fine,
Speaker 4: so long as like less than one hundred and you
Speaker 4: don't have like a sound stage or anything you got
Speaker 4: to set up and if you do get a permit.
Speaker 4: Once we walked up to the office at least four
Speaker 4: DHS cop cars like s in front of us, and
Speaker 4: they would only let Rocky go into the office to
Speaker 4: file for our election while being escorted by a DFS
Speaker 4: agent the entire time.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you get just these This is something
Speaker 1: that's been happening, so like, I have no idea when
Speaker 1: this episode is going to go. This is being recorded
Speaker 1: the middle of the protest. Like literally today, seventy year
Speaker 1: old professors are getting dragged out of like protests by cops,
Speaker 1: And like, this is one of these moments where when
Speaker 1: when when things actually happen, these really visceral demonstrations of
Speaker 1: like what the society you actually live in is. And
Speaker 1: I don't think there's like a more perfect demonstration of
Speaker 1: the National Labor Relations Board sometimes will help you, but
Speaker 1: also also is very clearly a bureaucratic mechanism of a
Speaker 1: police state. Then the cops show up and only one
Speaker 1: of you could go talk to the NLRP person escorted
Speaker 1: by police. That is wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was also the same day as the solar eclipse.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it was a very magic day. Yeah,
Speaker 4: nothing was more enchanting than the fact that we got
Speaker 4: to watch the eclipse. When we otherwise would have had
Speaker 4: to have been at work that rules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get I guess. I guess that's another
Speaker 1: way to get to get turned out for a walkout.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, look we're gonna go a walk and
Speaker 1: also you could go see the eclipse instead of serving
Speaker 1: rich people coffee.
Speaker 4: And it worked.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But all that is to say is I think
Speaker 2: being independent, let's us do fun and creative things.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you for remembering what the actual question was.
Speaker 2: Like, I think we're allowed to be a little silly
Speaker 2: with it, and we're allowed to have fun, and we're
Speaker 2: allowed to come up with ideas that maybe other like
Speaker 2: haters would shoot down. But when me and my coch
Speaker 2: are saying, yeah, that would be cool and fun, we
Speaker 2: just get to do it and there's like joy and
Speaker 2: creativity and all of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I guess you know, do you have anything
Speaker 1: else that you want to make sure we get you
Speaker 1: before we sort of wrap things up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 4: I mean, as much as we've talked about a lot
Speaker 4: of the benefits of independent unionism, one of the downsides
Speaker 4: is that we have no money, and if people would
Speaker 4: be so gracious as to give us some of their money.
Speaker 4: You can go to link t r dot ee slash
Speaker 4: Blue Bottle Union, so link Tree slash Blue Bottle Union,
Speaker 4: where there'll be a link to our GoFundMe. I'll also
Speaker 4: say that since we don't have staffers, our overhead is
Speaker 4: incredibly low and this will once again allows us to
Speaker 4: you know, actually do cool and fun things like we
Speaker 4: were able to pay everybody that did the walkout because
Speaker 4: we were able to raise enough money in the in
Speaker 4: between from April third to eighth, which was incredible.
Speaker 3: I have like some personal stuff when it comes to
Speaker 3: like filing independent and talking with a lot of people
Speaker 3: that I know, I feel like it actually helped the
Speaker 3: fact that we were independent because you know, there was
Speaker 3: none of that background oh unions. You know that there's
Speaker 3: a big influence when it comes to like unions and
Speaker 3: like big scary unions taking all your money through union
Speaker 3: dues and YadA YadA. But you know, with filing independent,
Speaker 3: you know we can just be like, actually we don't
Speaker 3: have to worry about anything like that. We set union
Speaker 3: dues democratically and like, and so it's just been like
Speaker 3: really helpful for when we were getting organized and everything.
Speaker 3: Just relaying that idea to coworkers to family, friends and
Speaker 3: everyone just kind of like helps them be like, oh
Speaker 3: that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean the old like you know, anti union talking
Speaker 4: point of like you know, there being an outside organization, Yeah,
Speaker 4: really falls flat with an independent union because it literally
Speaker 4: is just you and all of your friends. And then
Speaker 4: on top of that, it also means that management hasn't
Speaker 4: known how to respond to us, because in the week
Speaker 4: leading up to our election, which we won thirty eight
Speaker 4: to four this past Friday, May third, Yeah, they put
Speaker 4: out like three or four different flyers, one talking about
Speaker 4: business unions that have signed management's rights clauses in the
Speaker 4: most fucking like I'm not owned, I'm not owned. I'm
Speaker 4: still going to get my mensments rights claus.
Speaker 1: Like ever.
Speaker 4: And then also another flyer about union dues and examples
Speaker 4: of business unions that you know, to anybody that doesn't
Speaker 4: know anything about unism, would seem high.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They also, in a letter that they sent out to
Speaker 4: all of us the night before our election talked complained
Speaker 4: about us seeking external assistance, and all of this just
Speaker 4: completely falls flat because you know, it's literally we've done
Speaker 4: those mostly by like having pot luckx together to talk
Speaker 4: about all of our issues at work and or like
Speaker 4: movie nights or some shit, and it's much tougher to
Speaker 4: convince people to vote against the person that they're on
Speaker 4: the floor with eight hours a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the overall like way that these papers were received
Speaker 3: is has been like met with kind of like a
Speaker 3: lot of skull emojis in group chats and like just
Speaker 3: kind of like generally making fun of the whole thing.
Speaker 3: And I think that like that's been really good for
Speaker 3: morale as well, because like, you know, it's just not
Speaker 3: getting to us. It's goofy and like just doesn't work.
Speaker 3: So and also the way that they've been handing these
Speaker 3: flyers out, I don't know about like other cafes, but
Speaker 3: at mine specifically, it's been kind of awkward, like haha,
Speaker 3: cover my eyes, here's this flyer that I have to
Speaker 3: hand you kind of thing, and it's just like okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really seems like it is something, you know,
Speaker 1: okay different. I'm not I'm not going to do my
Speaker 1: tangent about the infiltration of political parties here.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, really, political cults within the Greater
Speaker 4: Boston area continuously subvert and undermine Union elections are not
Speaker 4: just elections, but campaigns as well. I won't name examples
Speaker 4: because these same cults are also incredibly vindictive and they
Speaker 4: will try to dox me. But this is also the
Speaker 4: implicit threat that you know, like if you know, they
Speaker 4: can't turn a union into their own stupid vanguard, then
Speaker 4: they will try and push through something that rank and
Speaker 4: file don't want and try and undermine or tank the campaign.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that's something I think like to take
Speaker 1: to Okay, so to take a little step back. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's very common in union in
Speaker 1: sort of like local union spaces is there will be
Speaker 1: like there'll be like a local of a union or
Speaker 1: like maybe sometimes its own union that's just run by
Speaker 1: a cult, and these sort of like these sort of
Speaker 1: like I don't know, sometimes you're Stalins and under Trotskyites sometimes,
Speaker 1: like it depends, the ideology changes to some extent. But
Speaker 1: because because of like the you know, the because because
Speaker 1: you can run like a staff union with like five people, right,
Speaker 1: this is this is a pretty good way for them
Speaker 1: to sort of like like you know, gain something that
Speaker 1: looks like political power, and like it's a way for
Speaker 1: them to bring other people who don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on into like the influencers of their organization, and they
Speaker 1: this can get really bad and really dangerous, at least
Speaker 1: to the stuff you're talking about, where yeah, they start
Speaker 1: trying to sabotage campaigns because they're not you know, like
Speaker 1: these groups aren't actually in this for you know, like
Speaker 1: they're not they're not in this for class struggles by
Speaker 1: whatever they you know, will say about it. They're they're
Speaker 1: in this specifically to expand the influence of their own party.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you try to like actually do
Speaker 1: your own thing, this stuff happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred percent. It's uh, also really telling that
Speaker 4: despite the fact that you know, some of these groups
Speaker 4: are like known for undermining campaigns in this way or
Speaker 4: for harassing staffers that you know, don't play ball with
Speaker 4: them or whatever, that they continue to do the entriest thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't have any good ideas for how to
Speaker 4: subvert that, but I'm sure dear listeners will send me
Speaker 4: many of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think also at some point we're going to
Speaker 1: do the micro We're gonna do the micro sect episode.
Speaker 1: In Microsect episode to the to like introduce people to
Speaker 1: the basics of like, hey, you are like the range
Speaker 1: of tiny political parties in the US that are actually
Speaker 1: cults that show up at protests all the time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe that will help too, because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it is people just you know, they're
Speaker 1: you run into like the World Workers Party, and like,
Speaker 1: you don't know that this party is a weird cult, right,
Speaker 1: They're just sort of talking about workers stuff. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I think education will help with it too, but the
Speaker 1: bureaucratic maneuvering stuff is like the only thing they're good
Speaker 1: at because they're all these like weird micro party formations.
Speaker 4: So I don't know, yeah, one hundred percent. I only
Speaker 4: way that I think might help is you know, horizontalizing
Speaker 4: the structure somewhat, but then you still run into like
Speaker 4: the issue of like social capital within that structure. So
Speaker 4: if you know, somebody is savvy enough, they can still
Speaker 4: indoctrinate people into a silly cult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't know, that's that's just something
Speaker 1: that you're gonna have to I mean, and we should
Speaker 1: also mention too, like these thing these groups like they
Speaker 1: work with larger unions too sometimes, Like so one of
Speaker 1: the most famous examples of this is Pride at Work
Speaker 1: which is a really big afl CIO thing, but it's
Speaker 1: also jointly run with the Party of Socialism Liberation, which
Speaker 1: is another one of these cults because of a bunch
Speaker 1: of like long running actions, even though like a bunch
Speaker 1: of their really senior staffers unbelief to be transphobic, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's a whole thing there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something that is not just a problem with
Speaker 1: independent unions and not just a problem with sort of
Speaker 1: like random locals. It can and does get into actual
Speaker 1: like national unions. On the other hand, one way to
Speaker 1: avoid this is to in fact organize your own union
Speaker 1: and don't let them be.
Speaker 4: So this is actually something that we've thought consciously about
Speaker 4: with our own union is that on the we sent
Speaker 4: out a community support forum for people that wanted to
Speaker 4: show up the data, we announced our campaign, and on
Speaker 4: the form specifically, we made people tick a box saying
Speaker 4: that they wouldn't endorse or try to fly, or for
Speaker 4: or otherwise promote any group that they might have affiliation with,
Speaker 4: including political parties or you know, otherwise organizations that are
Speaker 4: not you know, our specific union. And so far that's worked.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: I would also say, like in our constitution by laws.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that if it's in the current ones.
Speaker 2: We're revising them soon anyways. But the conversation that we've
Speaker 2: had before also like people in like eyboard positions, what, yeah,
Speaker 2: what kind of affiliations can they have to outside political parties?
Speaker 2: Like where where are we drawing the line on that?
Speaker 2: Like that's something that I think we also considered very
Speaker 2: early on as well for people in the union.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think there's another aspect there too, which
Speaker 1: is like another thing that can happen to your union
Speaker 1: is that it gets eaten by the Democratic Party machine.
Speaker 1: And that's happened to I mean, like this is this
Speaker 1: is a lot of how like these giant business unions
Speaker 1: became business unions, is they became basically these like lobbying
Speaker 1: firms on behalf of like whatever random like local democratic
Speaker 1: machine is running, Like this happens to Chicago, Like all
Speaker 1: the time you get these like just like the most
Speaker 1: important machine like candidates you've ever seen come out of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party who are like guys who are like
Speaker 1: so comically corrupt that like you know, you're they're like
Speaker 1: walking down the street and like like bundles of cash
Speaker 1: are falling out of the suit cases and they're getting
Speaker 1: endorsed by like the team stars, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, I wonder what happened there legally legally
Speaker 1: legally conjecture, but you.
Speaker 4: Know, who's to say, really, yeah, you know, it just
Speaker 4: so happens that they have these large briefcases full of cash.
Speaker 4: Nobody can really say where the cash materialized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but amazingly, I was actually going to go on
Speaker 1: a different rancho political parties, So I'm going to circle
Speaker 1: back to there to close this out. Which is one
Speaker 1: of the nice things about independent unions is that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's something that all three of you were sort of
Speaker 1: getting at, which is that, like employers have been fighting
Speaker 1: these sort of large corporate unions business unions for like
Speaker 1: one hundred years now, right. They know how they operate,
Speaker 1: they know how their campaigns work, they know what levers
Speaker 1: to push against them. On the other hand, they have
Speaker 1: not been fighting you, specifically, random listener of this show,
Speaker 1: and you, specifically, random listener of this show, and your
Speaker 1: coworkers can do things to surprise them and can do
Speaker 1: things in ways that they don't understand. And you know,
Speaker 1: you have we have a moment, like right now, Like
Speaker 1: in like five years, they'll probably have worked out a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff aboutw to break independent unions. But right now,
Speaker 1: like literally right now, we have a we have a
Speaker 1: master strategic advantage because their playbook wasn't written to deal
Speaker 1: with people who are running these sort of like very
Speaker 1: low to the ground, very agile, very nimble, very sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, these spontaneous and creative campaigns, and
Speaker 1: you can use that to beat the crap out of
Speaker 1: your boss and get more money from them. So this
Speaker 1: is the BA endorsement of doing doing fun things with
Speaker 1: unions that your bosses don't expect. Hell yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: I think unless there's anything else where where else can
Speaker 1: people find you, we'll have a link to your link
Speaker 1: tree in the description. Is there anywhere else like social
Speaker 1: media stuff where people can find the union?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Our social media for Twitter and Instagram is bb
Speaker 2: I Union and then on TikTok, I believe it is
Speaker 2: BBIU sixteen. Cool.
Speaker 1: We will have that in the description too. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: thank you all so much for coming on. And yeah,
Speaker 1: make make Nestlie bleed for us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks so much for having us. We can't say
Speaker 4: how much we appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thank you of course, and yeah, this has
Speaker 1: been naked happened here. You can find us in the
Speaker 1: usual places, and yeah, you too can also go start
Speaker 1: your own union and make your bosses suffer from It
Speaker 1: could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.