Speaker 1: Also media welcome.
Speaker 2: Take it Up at here A Podcast boldly asked the
Speaker 2: question what if a whole bunch of your life wasn't
Speaker 2: controlled by the bizarre whims of random dictators.
Speaker 3: This is your host, Mia Wung And the last time.
Speaker 2: We saw the Blue Bottle Union they had stage to
Speaker 2: walk out treated eclipse. Now they are back again to
Speaker 2: talk about union shit and Yeah with me is Alex Pine,
Speaker 2: who's the president of Blue Bottle Union, and Abby Sadow,
Speaker 2: the secretary treasurer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, both of you two, welcome to the show. Hi,
Speaker 4: thanks for having us both back on. Yes, thank you
Speaker 4: so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really really I'm really excited to talk about
Speaker 2: this because the last one, I gotta say that was
Speaker 2: one of the absolute funniest you these I've ever heard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I still can't get over HOWDHS got called on
Speaker 4: us when we tried to file for our election.
Speaker 2: So what inge like, I feel like this is the
Speaker 2: That's one of the things about doing the show is
Speaker 2: like I'm like about to be five years into this, right,
Speaker 2: It's like you think you've seen it all and then
Speaker 2: just like no, just just the most unhinged bullshit you've
Speaker 2: ever heard in your entire life. Because like, just like,
Speaker 2: the capacity for cruelty and inventiveness of bosses is effectively infinite,
Speaker 2: so they can always find some bullshit.
Speaker 4: The pull that you've ever seen before, and they love
Speaker 4: to do it too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: This is one of the reasons why we unionized to
Speaker 4: begin with, is just because bosses can be petty tyrants. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and sometimes it seems like the only reason that they
Speaker 4: got into being a boss is because they want to
Speaker 4: be a petty tyrant but don't have the soul for
Speaker 4: politics anyways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we unionized last May. For anybody that's.
Speaker 4: Unaware, Blue Bottle is a so called specialty coffee chain
Speaker 4: that is owned entirely by Neslie. Yes, that one that
Speaker 4: everyone regards as whyly being evil.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: See an extremely log episode that I did, for example,
Speaker 2: about nice Lee chocolate and child labor is great. It's
Speaker 2: child slave labor, good stuff.
Speaker 5: We love capitalism, and their coffee business is truly no better.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean this is going to get wildly off topic
Speaker 4: before we even begin, but if anybody looks up the
Speaker 4: NGO Coffee Watch, they do a lot of great reporting
Speaker 4: and research on the supply chains of coffee, specifically Nestli's
Speaker 4: and Starbucks' and it's all very ugly stuff, but Blue Bottle.
Speaker 4: Blue Bottles, especially the coffee chain owned by Nesli. We
Speaker 4: unionized all six of their Greater Boston locations in May
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty four, and this year we added four
Speaker 4: locations in the East Bay area to our.
Speaker 3: Union in July. Hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: We also just concluded a multi day strike as an
Speaker 4: independent union at the end of November, so Black Friday.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, hell yeah, yeah yeah. So let's talk about
Speaker 3: that strike. Well, actually, I guess, okay, we should.
Speaker 2: We should probably do the run up to what has
Speaker 2: been happening until we go after that strike. I'm getting it.
Speaker 3: I'm getting strike excited.
Speaker 4: This is how I've been in my mind since September.
Speaker 4: It's just how do we make ustrike happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Hell yeah yeah. Let's talk about like what the
Speaker 3: sort of lead up stuff to the action world.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about like, yeah, what expanding was, Like, yeah, Abby,
Speaker 4: do you want to talk about the lead up?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So since we unionized last May, we've had multiple
Speaker 5: staged walkouts. In September of last year, one of our
Speaker 5: union wraps at the Harvard Square location well unjustly fired.
Speaker 5: We did a walk out over her termination. We did
Speaker 5: a walkout in January of this past year after Blue
Speaker 5: Bottle completely refused to negotiate with us over the renovation
Speaker 5: of the Prudential Center and a lot of employees we're
Speaker 5: going to be losing out on almost eight dollars in
Speaker 5: tips an hour is just hundreds of dollars a month.
Speaker 5: And the company was like, oh, well, we bargained to
Speaker 5: an impasse, so we're just gonna do whatever we want.
Speaker 5: We were like, okay, well that's not that's not a
Speaker 5: most works no. Yeah, And then in May of this year,
Speaker 5: we did another walk out when they made the same
Speaker 5: argument that we bargained towards impass when they tried to
Speaker 5: install security cameras.
Speaker 4: For anybody that's wondering, no, the cafes in Boston did
Speaker 4: not have cameras in them for the entire time that
Speaker 4: we were organizing or unionized until we began negotiating the
Speaker 4: installation of cameras as part of our contract. When they
Speaker 4: felt like they were done talking about cameras with us,
Speaker 4: they declared impass, which they can't do because we were
Speaker 4: negotiating it as part of the contract, so they would
Speaker 4: have had to get to an impass on the entire
Speaker 4: contract before doing it. Yeah, and their lawyer basically said, well,
Speaker 4: we weren't getting anywhere with that, so we're going to
Speaker 4: do it anyways.
Speaker 3: God, labor law is so fun because it's like like
Speaker 3: every boss breaks like one hundred million labor laws a second,
Speaker 3: and then kind of nothing happens unless you force it to.
Speaker 4: Speaking of breaking weird labor laws, since we unionized, one
Speaker 4: nice thing that has happened was until May of this year,
Speaker 4: they were negotiating over serious discipline, so final written warnings
Speaker 4: or terminations with us.
Speaker 3: In effect, what.
Speaker 4: This means is that they would sit down with us
Speaker 4: and just talk about why they felt like terminating someone
Speaker 4: was justified until they said we're not going to do
Speaker 4: anything else aside from fire them. But because of an
Speaker 4: NLRB ruling with Starbucks at the end of April, their
Speaker 4: lawyer said that they were done with that and they
Speaker 4: felt that they had no legal obligation to continue doing it.
Speaker 4: Oh fun, Yeah, which a break from past practice. And
Speaker 4: we have been writing them committing to negotiating over serious
Speaker 4: discipline with us. So less than a week after they
Speaker 4: say we're not going to bargain over discipline with you anymore.
Speaker 3: They fire one.
Speaker 4: Coworker of ours, and our store immediately walked out over it.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, which yeah, I continue to be proud of
Speaker 4: that walkout, specifically because it wasn't planned and because it
Speaker 4: was over something that is pretty technical labor law wise.
Speaker 4: Just the fact that they didn't negotiate over the termination
Speaker 4: that find that rock. Yes, that's like a girl who's
Speaker 4: read a bunch of weird labor history. This thing feels
Speaker 4: like a thing for a fucking weird labor history.
Speaker 2: The thing it reminds me of is that there was
Speaker 2: this thing in I think it was sibber Gora in Spain.
Speaker 2: She like the twenties and thirties where it was like
Speaker 2: this hyperbilitant labor like union like labor town, but they
Speaker 2: had a whole thing where they refused to strike over
Speaker 2: like improving economic conditions because they were like this is
Speaker 2: Burgeoise reformism, and they would only strike over political stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but if you arrested like one person, like the whole
Speaker 2: fucking city would go out.
Speaker 3: It's like this a lot. Yeah, No, we could just
Speaker 3: call it.
Speaker 2: We could just fucking instantly get get a fucking walk
Speaker 2: out to happen over just like over like them fucking
Speaker 2: with like kind of technical labor stuff like this rocks.
Speaker 3: We love to see it.
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, I was on the floor that day that
Speaker 5: our coworker was fired, and I remember I went on
Speaker 5: my ten minute break after she was fired, and there's
Speaker 5: like a pond behind our store and I was literally
Speaker 5: throwing rocks in the pond and I was like, this
Speaker 5: sucks so bad and I'm so angry. And then I
Speaker 5: was like, wait, we're a unionized. I was like, wait
Speaker 5: a minute, we have a union. And I go back
Speaker 5: into the store and I was like, hey, guys, if
Speaker 5: we don't walk out right now, then what is the point.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And everyone was like yeah, actually, if we don't walk
Speaker 5: out right now, what is the point?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Hell yeah.
Speaker 5: And then we all walked out and it was it
Speaker 5: was really beautiful.
Speaker 3: Actually, that's so sick. That's so beautiful.
Speaker 2: I don't know there's some kind of metaphor for like
Speaker 2: you walking in being like the first rip the rock
Speaker 2: hitting the pod in, the first ripples going out and
Speaker 2: the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, that's I don't know, it's gorgeous. I love it.
Speaker 3: That fucking rules.
Speaker 5: Congratulations tell yeah, One of my favorite things to say
Speaker 5: is that union is friendship, and friendship is unions, and
Speaker 5: when your friend gets fired, you should be able to
Speaker 5: walk out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it fuck that, like seriously.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And on the whole, we've had a I think
Speaker 4: pretty successful year, especially because I want to stress this,
Speaker 4: we're independent. So for all the walkouts that we've done,
Speaker 4: we've been able to replace the wages of baristas.
Speaker 3: Oh that's really sick.
Speaker 4: If anybody listening to this wants to help us be
Speaker 4: able to do more walkouts, you can go yes TinyURL
Speaker 4: dot com forward slash bbu dash strike will be in
Speaker 4: the description.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
Speaker 4: Because at this point the company is realized that they
Speaker 4: can't break our solidarity in any meaningful way by resorting
Speaker 4: to scare tactics or delaying, and so now they've just
Speaker 4: resorted to straight up firing people because yeah, like it's
Speaker 4: kind of like a break glass here in case of
Speaker 4: emergency thing where.
Speaker 3: They're like, we're all out of ideas. What do we do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just start trying to fire everyone.
Speaker 5: And that's what they've done.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Most recently, all the stores in both Boston and the
Speaker 4: East Bay area went on a four day strike this
Speaker 4: November because the company illegally fired Abbey, executive board member
Speaker 4: named Nora and an organizer of ours in the East
Speaker 4: Bay named Ashley for all incredibly petty reasons. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you want to speak more to why you
Speaker 4: were fire Abby.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so on the record, I was fired because I
Speaker 5: wore green pants. What I wore green pants like three
Speaker 5: weeks prior to me being fired. And let me tell you,
Speaker 5: there's nothing worse than waking up at four point thirty
Speaker 5: to go to your opening shift at your stupid cafe job,
Speaker 5: to then clock in and be immediately hit with separation
Speaker 5: forms because you wore green pants three weeks ago.
Speaker 4: What you must understand what a serious infraction it is
Speaker 4: to wear green pants.
Speaker 5: Of course, I mean clearly the green pants that I've
Speaker 5: been wearing for the better part of two years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, firing Abby was generous.
Speaker 4: Actually she should have been put to death for the
Speaker 4: crime of wearing green pants.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 5: Most likely.
Speaker 2: This is some like fucking medieval like, yeah, you pissed
Speaker 2: off the monarch by like you wore a color of
Speaker 2: pants that was like unfavorable to the eye of the king,
Speaker 2: and now he's drawn quarter Like what is this bullshit.
Speaker 5: Like, yep, I wore green pants in front of my manager,
Speaker 5: therefore I should not be able to make my rent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolute gibberish that that might be the all
Speaker 2: time dubbest fiery reason I've ever heard.
Speaker 5: Like what, oh yeah, it's just so egregious because the
Speaker 5: managers know that I have a great rapport with all
Speaker 5: my coworkers. I'm fronts with all of my coworkers, and
Speaker 5: they were like, hm, how can we, you know, make
Speaker 5: one of our long standing employees who is good at
Speaker 5: their job, you know, get fired? So green pants was
Speaker 5: the reasoning.
Speaker 2: Which and just like the idea of your employer being
Speaker 2: able to control what color of pants you wear is
Speaker 2: like is a thing that just on a fundamental level
Speaker 2: would not be accepted with any other kind of authority.
Speaker 2: That's everyone immediately recognizes, Wait, what the fuck? That's completely unhinged.
Speaker 2: Why should someone have the ability to tell you like, no,
Speaker 2: you have to wear this color pants, or you can't
Speaker 2: pay your rents and you can't eat Oh yeah no.
Speaker 4: And this is kind of the despotism of management that
Speaker 4: we were just talking about, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is the thing that in.
Speaker 4: Bargaining sessions for a contract their site is very interested
Speaker 4: in maintaining We've said multiple times that we want a
Speaker 4: better dress code policy, or at the very least, we
Speaker 4: don't want to wave our right to be able to
Speaker 4: wear a union memorabilia on the floor.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: And because he doesn't have any better ideas, their lawyer
Speaker 4: can only think to shoot that down by talking about
Speaker 4: how he doesn't, you know, wear his sexuality on his
Speaker 4: shirt or what.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, because he was like, why don't you want
Speaker 4: to be able to wave your right to wear a
Speaker 4: union memorabilia on the floor, and we said, we want
Speaker 4: to be able to show pride that we are unionized,
Speaker 4: and we want to be able to have more freedom
Speaker 4: for expression. Uh huh, because it's despotic to be able
Speaker 4: to have that level of control over.
Speaker 3: What somebody does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then he said, you know, well, I uh
Speaker 4: don't wear my sexuality. I'm my shirt and then realized
Speaker 4: that it was maybe inappropriate to say that, So then
Speaker 4: he talked about how he doesn't wear his daughters on
Speaker 4: his shirt.
Speaker 3: Which it's a more convoluted point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, because he's proud of his kids.
Speaker 3: I guess what are we doing here. Just come on,
Speaker 3: we gotta have better arguments than this, Like.
Speaker 5: No, this guy is really full of bad arguments.
Speaker 4: If you yeah, if you want to hear bad arguments,
Speaker 4: you should sit on the bargaining session where their lawyer
Speaker 4: goes on kind of incomprehensible tie rades about how the
Speaker 4: free market in the aggregate will make sure that the
Speaker 4: best person will get promoted over time, or that the
Speaker 4: company will become more profitable or run with the most
Speaker 4: efficiency as an enterprise, because anything else would be illogical
Speaker 4: because they wouldn't produce more profit.
Speaker 3: But what does that have to do with labor? Yes,
Speaker 3: because actually this is okay. So when I know who's
Speaker 3: a lawyer?
Speaker 2: Once told me that, like the this is this is
Speaker 2: not like a leftist, this is just like she's just
Speaker 2: like a corporate lawyer. Once told me that this is
Speaker 2: like the actual secret basis that doesn't exist of all
Speaker 2: corporate laws, that there is actually nothing in the law
Speaker 2: that says a company has to make more money or
Speaker 2: they even have the right to make money. Like that's
Speaker 2: that that doesn't exist, Like that's not that's not a thing,
Speaker 2: Like there's no, you don't actually have a legal right
Speaker 2: to make more money, like you simply don't. That's just
Speaker 2: that's not how this works. The thing that reminds me
Speaker 2: of is the other call is David Graeber wrote about
Speaker 2: I think you might have been quoting someone else, but
Speaker 2: I can't remember who was quoting. But he writes about
Speaker 2: how the relationship between sort of eloquence and violence where
Speaker 2: the less you have and this isn't somewhere in the
Speaker 2: utopia of rules. He writes about how you know people
Speaker 2: who have access to violence to compel people to do something,
Speaker 2: you don't even have to speak the same language as someone. Right,
Speaker 2: you can just point a gun at them and you
Speaker 2: know they have to obey you because you know they
Speaker 2: have force, right, But the less ability you have to
Speaker 2: actually use force to get someone to do something. Right, So,
Speaker 2: if you're a village chief in there's actually a lot
Speaker 2: of condigenous tribes that were like this, but you know
Speaker 2: you're you're in like sort of the northeast, and you
Speaker 2: don't actually have the ability to compel people to do things.
Speaker 2: So if you want people to go work in the morning,
Speaker 2: you have to like get up and make a giant
Speaker 2: show of like, oh, I'm getting up to work in
Speaker 2: the morning.
Speaker 3: Everyone follow me. Wow, look at how hard I working.
Speaker 2: And you have to like convince them through oratory and
Speaker 2: you know this, this is like why all these people
Speaker 2: when when Europeans run into them, everyone is like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: these are like the these are the best orders of
Speaker 2: every encountered because they have to be right. But the
Speaker 2: more power you have, the less eloquence you have to have,
Speaker 2: which I think is like, you know, this is like
Speaker 2: a Donald Trump thing, right, It's like, yeah, you've once
Speaker 2: you've reached this point in the process, you know, you
Speaker 2: can just compel people do things through violence. You can
Speaker 2: just like talk like a fourth grader and it's fine
Speaker 2: and it doesn't matter because you just have violence. And
Speaker 2: that's what this reminds me of a like, oh, we're
Speaker 2: the company like we have like we're fucking owned by
Speaker 2: nasty We have all this money. We don't have to
Speaker 2: make compelling arguments. We just have to like have power.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean pretty much personally, it reads to me
Speaker 4: it's like a way to delay actually talking about any
Speaker 4: of our demands at the table, because if you just
Speaker 4: eat up all the time, then there's no time to talk.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's also really beautiful to think about from
Speaker 4: a more abstract sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, also, just companies love fucking with negotiations. It's awful.
Speaker 2: I how okay, I should just start asking everyone who
Speaker 2: does negotiations about this. But on average, how late are
Speaker 2: manages to show up to meetings? I would say that
Speaker 2: actually both sides are equally late well to the negotiations,
Speaker 2: at least just because getting around the city is so difficult.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, so that's it's like a transit thing, not
Speaker 2: like a no.
Speaker 4: No, we're not deliberately showing up ly as far as
Speaker 4: I know, we just can't get Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: There should they already just be there?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Well, because this is something that's actually been
Speaker 4: a delay tactic for them, is they insist that we
Speaker 4: need to split the cost equally of a bargaining space.
Speaker 3: What what?
Speaker 4: And again we're independent, so they know that we can't
Speaker 4: on a regular basis commit to that. So if you
Speaker 4: want to donate to our unions that way, we can
Speaker 4: hate to sit down in front of these people.
Speaker 3: That's completely on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, having to have the union pave I've never heard
Speaker 2: of that before.
Speaker 3: That's completely deranged, that's what.
Speaker 4: And we we've even waived our right to meet in
Speaker 4: a neutral space.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: So we've asked if they would be willing to meet
Speaker 4: in the office of their legal representation or if they'd
Speaker 4: be willing to meet in the office of our legal representation,
Speaker 4: and they've said no to both because supposedly, despite being
Speaker 4: the second largest union avoidance firm in the world, they've
Speaker 4: said that their office doesn't have adequate space to hold us.
Speaker 4: But then space in the city is so fucking expensive
Speaker 4: that there's no feasible way to rent a space for
Speaker 4: eight hours for two days.
Speaker 3: You know, once a month.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which which is meant that we've ended up in
Speaker 4: some strange places, so college conference rooms, city hall. H
Speaker 4: we work what yeah, really know.
Speaker 2: This is the most deeply unseerious company I have ever encountered.
Speaker 4: Like there's all kinds of things like that that they've
Speaker 4: employed in the past year to attempt us making significant
Speaker 4: progress with negotiating. And it wasn't until November this year
Speaker 4: that they finally gave us a counter on economics after
Speaker 4: we told them we would file a bad faith bargaining
Speaker 4: charge if they didn't. Hell, yeah, do you want to
Speaker 4: guess what they're counter So for reference, our union's requesting
Speaker 4: thirty dollars an hour for brestas because that's a living
Speaker 4: wage according to the MIT Living Wage calculator. Do you
Speaker 4: want to get what Bluebottle said they would.
Speaker 3: Give us eighteen? No?
Speaker 4: Well, actually, strangely yes, they said, right now we make
Speaker 4: eighteen an hour, but they said they'll keep it the
Speaker 4: same and they want to retain the rate to change
Speaker 4: it whenever they want. They're they're making a floor. They're
Speaker 4: they're committing to a floor that I then tried to
Speaker 4: ask if they've ever in their history decreased wages. H
Speaker 4: huh and they're like no, I don't see why we
Speaker 4: would ever do that, and like, oh, so then this
Speaker 4: floor is bullshit.
Speaker 2: Actually, their baseline for negotiations is our starting position is nothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is a year after negotiating with them
Speaker 4: so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a year and it's like okay, like I'm
Speaker 2: at that that point. It's like, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like fucking are our starting position is we should have
Speaker 2: your house? Like this is like this is like equally
Speaker 2: like come on, like you having their house is a
Speaker 2: more reasonable demand than our basic negotiating position.
Speaker 3: Is nothing, like what are we doing here?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: No, idea just God, yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 2: Insert obligatory line here about how after you've went in
Speaker 2: an election, the most common way for unied to fail
Speaker 2: is bargaining the first contract. And companies know this, they
Speaker 2: will just do bullshit for several years to attempt to
Speaker 2: not have you get a contract.
Speaker 3: It sucks. Yeah, yeah, fuck them.
Speaker 5: It's their whole strategy. I mean, the whole like union
Speaker 5: avoidance of it all is they're just trying to like
Speaker 5: wait us out and then fire people who are involved
Speaker 5: and just like in their words like let turnover do
Speaker 5: its natural work. But it's like, isn't this specialty coffee?
Speaker 5: Don't you want people who are good at their jobs.
Speaker 5: I've watched some of my new coworkers pull a shot
Speaker 5: that I wouldn't feed to a dog, like.
Speaker 3: The same.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, why Look, you can't expect managers to know
Speaker 2: how to do things that's not their job.
Speaker 5: My manager, let me tell you. I used to have
Speaker 5: to open with her like three times a week, and
Speaker 5: she has this very beautiful habit of as she's dialing
Speaker 5: espresso and also she does this while she's counting cash.
Speaker 5: She will have her phone open on TikTok and then
Speaker 5: scroll through. I have this one horrific memory. It was
Speaker 5: six am and she was going through an entire TikTok
Speaker 5: storytime series for forty five minutes. And the whole story
Speaker 5: time was going on, and every time it was an
Speaker 5: introduction of like, I don't even remember what it was about.
Speaker 5: I think it was like She's like, oh, this is
Speaker 5: my story of being like a mob boss's wife. And
Speaker 5: I had to listen to that for forty five minutes while.
Speaker 2: Opening Oh, yeah, I think you should you should legally
Speaker 2: be allowed to have her card. I think I should.
Speaker 3: Have her house probably, yeah too.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's like our starting our starting demand is every
Speaker 2: time you pissed offs off, we get another one of
Speaker 2: your houses.
Speaker 5: Look for every TikTok watched on the clock, that's a
Speaker 5: dollar towards me per hour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are we doing here? They're owned Binesli.
Speaker 4: But I don't think that there's enough money in the
Speaker 4: world that would be able to give you that, Abby.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 5: No, I don't think I'll ever receive fair compensation.
Speaker 4: You didn't really piss off the modern monetary theory people,
Speaker 4: because they'd.
Speaker 3: Be like, no, even we can't account.
Speaker 5: For this, No one can account for the emotional damage.
Speaker 3: We ran out of data in our Federal Reserve data
Speaker 3: god to recap.
Speaker 4: So in the past year, we've done multiple walkouts, unionized
Speaker 4: four locations in the East Bay area, and then after
Speaker 4: Abbey was fired for bullshit reasons, along with two other organizers,
Speaker 4: we went on a four day strike which included both cities.
Speaker 4: And we've done this entirely as an independent union against
Speaker 4: a company that is owned by Nesle. Yeah, and interestingly,
Speaker 4: just because I'd be remiss to not mention this, the
Speaker 4: day that we ended our strike, there was an article
Speaker 4: published in Writers which was the most vibe based reporting
Speaker 4: that I've ever seen, where it said Nesley explores sale
Speaker 4: of Blue Bottle coffee sources say, where there's three unnamed sources.
Speaker 4: Incredible that all say that Neslie is considering or looking
Speaker 4: into selling Blue Bottle coffee. But interestingly says here quote
Speaker 4: once or said Neslie could decide to sell the cafes,
Speaker 4: but retain the brand's intellectual property to continue selling the
Speaker 4: products end.
Speaker 3: Quote what are we doing here?
Speaker 4: Like yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting as a tell
Speaker 4: because personally, I think it's just a scare tactic. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 4: Like I could consider walking into traffic. I could be
Speaker 4: looking into my options for how fast a car would
Speaker 4: hit me, but that doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: You didn't considering appropriating the mansions, like we're an exploratory committee.
Speaker 2: Sources say, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4: Think they'd publish that in writers, But uh, it's interesting
Speaker 4: that they would even say that, because like the entire
Speaker 4: value that Blue Bottle offers Neslie is to be able
Speaker 4: to put the brand onto you know, espressopods or whatever.
Speaker 4: And also just very weird timing with the strike ending
Speaker 4: the same day comes out.
Speaker 5: They are so scared, they are scared shitless and they
Speaker 5: don't know what to do about it, and they're breaking
Speaker 5: last left and right trying to maintain power. But it's,
Speaker 5: like Alex said earlier, like the solidarity that we have
Speaker 5: between our coworkers, it just cannot be broken by management.
Speaker 5: And even after they fired me and two of our
Speaker 5: other organizers, people still went out on the picket line.
Speaker 3: We kept telling.
Speaker 5: Five out of the six cafes closed in Boston, and
Speaker 5: the only reason one of them could stay open is
Speaker 5: because all of the managers banded together to keep the
Speaker 5: Credential Center open.
Speaker 3: I would hate to go.
Speaker 5: Say I don't think a single latte went out correctly
Speaker 5: that day, but hey, you know, at least at least
Speaker 5: they can still collect their nine dollars per latte.
Speaker 3: So if you got food poisoning the strike.
Speaker 5: Getting coffee, if you had a bad experience stirring the
Speaker 5: strike at the Podential Center, just know that that was
Speaker 5: not union made coffee, and we would never do that
Speaker 5: to you.
Speaker 2: I think it's really beautiful that, yeah, y'all have just
Speaker 2: kept fucking doing this, even though they're just doing this
Speaker 2: bullshit constantly, and it's like, no, we're just going to
Speaker 2: keep fighting them, and they're going to get so scared
Speaker 2: that they're leaking to the press that we're thinking about
Speaker 2: selling the things.
Speaker 3: We're a lot further along than I thought we would
Speaker 3: ever get.
Speaker 4: I thought they were going to fire us the day
Speaker 4: after we did the first walk out last year, which
Speaker 4: is you know, I thought all the more reason to
Speaker 4: try then. Yeah, but really, it's not tough for people
Speaker 4: that we work with to realize that they're getting a
Speaker 4: bad deal and that the reason that the job sucks
Speaker 4: is because they don't get paid enough to live in
Speaker 4: the city. Like I think most baristas at Blue Bottle
Speaker 4: see something like sixty percent of their income going towards
Speaker 4: rent because jesus, Yeah, we did a survey on this.
Speaker 4: Let me double check to make sure that I have
Speaker 4: the facts right. But yeah, this this is from you know, March,
Speaker 4: so it's a little bit old data. We'll do another
Speaker 4: survey soon. But most Blue Bottle Briste was a rent burden,
Speaker 4: spending more than thirty percent of their income on rent,
Speaker 4: the median rent paid by Blue Bottle employees being one thousand,
Speaker 4: forty five dollars, which is the equivalent of one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty Nora Lean style iced coffees. That it's one
Speaker 4: of the best selling drinks they have. Yeah, no, I know,
Speaker 4: for one hundred and fifty Nola. So you two can
Speaker 4: pay the median rent by paid by Barista and then
Speaker 4: on average it's sorry forty six percent of their income
Speaker 4: going towards rent, with roughly a third of Briste is
Speaker 4: paying over sixty percent.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: We told all these facts to their lawyer at a
Speaker 4: bargaining session and he just said that maybe the reason
Speaker 4: that we were all struggling to make ends me was
Speaker 4: because we were paying for too many streaming services.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, Like it's entirely.
Speaker 2: He knows this bush did they just get like a
Speaker 2: right wing ship poster.
Speaker 3: To their lawyer? Like, is this just like? Is this
Speaker 3: like fucking like? Is this is like the fail sun
Speaker 3: clone of Rudy Giuliani? Like this's gonna start melting off?
Speaker 3: What are we doing here? Come on? I wish I
Speaker 3: could tell you.
Speaker 4: I don't know what their strategy with saying obviously false
Speaker 4: things is, but they love to do it.
Speaker 3: It's so great, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, fuck it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read
Speaker 2: this quote. I was gonna use this for a diffid
Speaker 2: episode and I didn't, so all right, fuck it, this
Speaker 2: is I'm I'm gonna read this line from Dan Olson's
Speaker 2: documentary In Search of Flat Earth, which is like probably
Speaker 2: the best thing that's ever been done about flat Earth.
Speaker 2: Because they believe that power belongs to those with the
Speaker 2: greatest will to take it, And what greater sign of
Speaker 2: will than the ability to overwrite the truth. Their will
Speaker 2: is a hammer they are using to beat reality into
Speaker 2: a shape of their choosing a simple world where reality
Speaker 2: is exactly what it looks like through their eyes, devoid
Speaker 2: of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right, and
Speaker 2: their enemies are silent. They are trying to build a
Speaker 2: flat earth.
Speaker 3: That's just this shit. They're just like, no, fuck you,
Speaker 3: we can say whatever the fuck we want because we
Speaker 3: take the week, because.
Speaker 2: This is an expression of just power, even though we
Speaker 2: know that we're lying and you know that you're lying.
Speaker 4: Is I mean, if you want to talk about expression
Speaker 4: of power, you should read their management's rights clause. Sorry,
Speaker 4: they're so called management's rights clause. Oh god, let me
Speaker 4: see if I can pull that up. So just to clarify, so,
Speaker 4: management's rates is a clause that can be found in
Speaker 4: some union contracts because of collaborationists within unions in the
Speaker 4: fifties deciding that they actually didn't want to go for
Speaker 4: complete work or control of the means of production. They
Speaker 4: just wanted to collaborate with management in order to get
Speaker 4: a better deal for wages. I'm not going to comment
Speaker 4: on the history of that, but that and that's why
Speaker 4: they feel like they can include this in negotiations. Right now,
Speaker 4: we haven't agreed to any management rates, but quote, it
Speaker 4: is agreed that the management of the company's business and
Speaker 4: the direction of its working forces are vested exclusively in
Speaker 4: the company and that the company retains all rights that
Speaker 4: had before the execution of this agreement unless a rate
Speaker 4: is clearly contracted away in this agreement by language that
Speaker 4: is specific and unambiguous. These retained company rates include, but
Speaker 4: are not limited to, the following examples. The right to
Speaker 4: direct and supervise the work of its employees. The right
Speaker 4: to hire, promote, demote, transfer, and to discipline or discharge employees.
Speaker 4: The right to create or eliminate jobs, and to determine
Speaker 4: wage rates for newly created or materially modify jobs. The
Speaker 4: right to determine training requirements and provide training to employees.
Speaker 4: The right to uniform and hire standards. The right to plan, direct,
Speaker 4: and control operations. The right to determine products to be sold,
Speaker 4: services and products to be procured, used, and or distributed.
Speaker 4: The right to determine the type and quantity of machines, equipment,
Speaker 4: location of cafes. The right to determine the amount and
Speaker 4: quality of work needed. The right to determine schedules of
Speaker 4: cafe operations. The right to determine the number of employees needed,
Speaker 4: the right to determine the work schedule of employees. The
Speaker 4: right to lay off employees or relieve employees from work
Speaker 4: because of lack of work. The right to discontinue or
Speaker 4: introduce new or improved methods, operating practices and cafes. The
Speaker 4: right to change the content of jobs and the qualification
Speaker 4: for such jobs. And the right to establish, modify, and
Speaker 4: enforce work rules of conduct or policies, and discipline employees
Speaker 4: who violate such rules or policies. The right to establish, modify,
Speaker 4: Oh Jesus Christ, and force.
Speaker 5: And I forgot how bad it is.
Speaker 4: Wow, Because basically what they're saying is we want to
Speaker 4: be able to control everything that you do, and this
Speaker 4: is our They never say where they believe this right
Speaker 4: comes from. They on make like an argument from naturalism,
Speaker 4: where like we are vested by the universal power of
Speaker 4: management to be able to do this. They don't make
Speaker 4: any historical argument for it where oh this is you know,
Speaker 4: because of the contracts that have been negotiated since the fifties,
Speaker 4: something that's fairly standard. And we think that we have
Speaker 4: the right too because of like long standing president. They
Speaker 4: just think that they should be able to control fucking everything. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which is not unsurprising for Nesley. Yeah, yeah, Well, and
Speaker 4: I think there's.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of very very abstract theoretical debate you
Speaker 2: run into if you're like, instead of doing shit, you're
Speaker 2: like in theory circles about like oh, is like is
Speaker 2: capital its own autonomous entity or is it like a
Speaker 2: thing that's like costantly in like relation to like the
Speaker 2: actions and workers And it's like, okay, read something like
Speaker 2: this and it's like, oh no, they are so worried
Speaker 2: that they're going to have to react to what their
Speaker 2: workers are doing that they and they are already doing
Speaker 2: this right like this is you know you mean, this
Speaker 2: is this goes back to the whole like we're leaking
Speaker 2: to the media, we're going to sell the company thing
Speaker 2: that they're doing where it's like no, actually, like these
Speaker 2: people are so not like easily, but if if you
Speaker 2: are organized at all, it becomes so clear to them
Speaker 2: that they actually, oh no, wait, hold on, they're responding
Speaker 2: to us like they're not just purely the only thing
Speaker 2: they guess so like drive history forward and decide literally
Speaker 2: everything about your life the moment you like try to
Speaker 2: claw it away from them.
Speaker 3: They see how fragile.
Speaker 2: It is and they're like no, no, no, no, actually, we
Speaker 2: got to spell out the fact that we get to
Speaker 2: fucking dress you and whatever clothes we want you to wear.
Speaker 2: And it's like, Okay, this is like a thing that
Speaker 2: only exists if you do not resist them at all, but.
Speaker 3: Like, no, if you fucking fight them.
Speaker 2: They have to fucking write all this shit down that
Speaker 2: they think they've always been able to do, and it's ridiculous.
Speaker 5: And to hear it all in a bullet form, like
Speaker 5: in literally just a bullet list, like every single aspect
Speaker 5: of my life and everything that I've ever loved or
Speaker 5: thought was important to me in a list of what
Speaker 5: they think they can control. It's just crazy. And then
Speaker 5: we have to go back and say, Okay, well do
Speaker 5: you see how off base you are? Yeah, And then
Speaker 5: they make us sound like the crazy ones for wanting
Speaker 5: to live a good life and be able to, like
Speaker 5: you know, make ends meet.
Speaker 3: Pay less than sixty eight percent ever, and come towards rent.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, take a vacation maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One other thing that I think is a great point
Speaker 4: about how it's actually capital responding to the organization of
Speaker 4: Barista's people workers whatever is. They haven't done it recently,
Speaker 4: but last summer they sent a very long winded and
Speaker 4: angry email about all the bargaining updates and pressed that
Speaker 4: the union was getting.
Speaker 5: They're so mad at me that I'm good at my job.
Speaker 4: And then this past summer, after we did two walkouts
Speaker 4: in fairly quick succession and response to two different things,
Speaker 4: they attempted to accuse us of an intermittent striking just
Speaker 4: because they were so scared they didn't know what else
Speaker 4: to do, to try and be like, you didn't own me,
Speaker 4: I'm not mad, please some pot in the news that
Speaker 4: I met. Their lawyer even said in a bargaining session
Speaker 4: later on that he had a less than seventy five
Speaker 4: percent chance of ever winning that argument at the board.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: But they were just so mad that we walked out
Speaker 4: twice in May that they tried to claim that it
Speaker 4: was unprotected but that they're being benevolent by not disciplining
Speaker 4: anyone for it.
Speaker 3: God, And they.
Speaker 4: Haven't really given much of a response to our multi
Speaker 4: day strike yet, aside from their lawyer emailing us earlier
Speaker 4: this week to ask us for our entire legal justification
Speaker 4: for why the terminations of Abbey, Nora, and Ashley were
Speaker 4: illegal and what legal justification we have to say that
Speaker 4: they're negotiating a contract in bad faith, which is like
Speaker 4: the NLRA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Like what are we doing here? God? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So what's comed up next for y'all? What's the next stage?
Speaker 4: If you or anybody that you know either works at
Speaker 4: a Blue Bottle or wants to apply to a Blue
Speaker 4: Bottle to help organize it, please reach out to us
Speaker 4: by email at Blue Bottle Union at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4: If you want to support our independent unionism and help
Speaker 4: us remain independent and be able to go on multiple
Speaker 4: day strikes which clearly piss off our nestlie overlords, you
Speaker 4: can donate to us at TinyURL dot com forward slash
Speaker 4: bbu dash strike unless we're until we have a contract
Speaker 4: or they reinstate, Abby, Nora, Ashley and fingers crossed, hopefully
Speaker 4: not myself. We're calling on a boycott of all Blue
Speaker 4: Bottle coffee products. Helly, I have no idea what the
Speaker 4: overlap between it could happen here listeners and customer.
Speaker 2: You'd be surprised, But I'm sure there's a lot of
Speaker 2: about there.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Look, judging by the shit I have heard from our listeners,
Speaker 2: I love you all. Some of you are on some
Speaker 2: wild shit. If some of you are not the people
Speaker 2: you would expect to be so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So don't buy Blue Bottle.
Speaker 4: If some of the things that we've said about the
Speaker 4: bargaining sessions sounds too absurd to be true to you,
Speaker 4: then you can go to Bluebottle union dot org and
Speaker 4: under the tab for Buristas you can read every bargaining update,
Speaker 4: where we publish all of the proposals that the company
Speaker 4: has given us so far. You can read the shit
Speaker 4: that they make us read in the bargaining sessions. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so that's what's next in like the next month or so.
Speaker 4: There's other things that we're working on that we can't
Speaker 4: talk about yet.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, hell yeah. Love this.
Speaker 2: I'm trying so hard not to just read half the
Speaker 2: end or speech. Authority is the massive tyrany is brittle.
Speaker 5: If there ever were a time to read it, there's
Speaker 5: no time like the present is.
Speaker 3: You know what, fuck it, We're just we're doing it.
Speaker 3: We're doing it. The imperial need for control is so
Speaker 3: desperate because it is so unnatural. Terity requires constant effort.
Speaker 3: It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the
Speaker 3: mask of fear. Remember that and know this. The day
Speaker 3: will come when all these skirmishes in battles.
Speaker 2: These moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of
Speaker 2: the empire's authority, and then there will be one too many,
Speaker 2: one single thing will break the siege. Remember this, try,
Speaker 2: and that's my message to you all. You can fight
Speaker 2: your own bosses too, and you can beat them, and
Speaker 2: you can watch them running around in terror like fucking
Speaker 2: chickens with their head cut off, and you can get
Speaker 2: shit from them that they never would have wanted to
Speaker 2: give you in the first place.
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