Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Citizen The Bariton Day, a show
Speaker 1: where we reimagine the words citizen as a verb, reclaim
Speaker 1: it from those who weaponized it, and remind ourselves how
Speaker 1: to wield our collective power. This is a new episode.
Speaker 1: I'm Bariton Day. Like any healthy democracy, this show is
Speaker 1: stronger when you participate, and we have a number of
Speaker 1: ways for you to do that. If you're on the
Speaker 1: social media, use the hashtag how to Citizen when you
Speaker 1: post about the show, and we will lift up as
Speaker 1: many as we can. If you want to be more direct,
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Speaker 1: I am loving seeing your reflections the organizations you're starting.
Speaker 1: It's really great. Let's keep it up and speaking to
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Speaker 1: didn't ask you to rate and review the show wherever
Speaker 1: you're listening to it. I suggest five stars, but that's
Speaker 1: up to you. Citizen. A quick word on how we
Speaker 1: make this show. We do most of them live in
Speaker 1: zoom with a visible cameras on chat room, fired up audience,
Speaker 1: which could include you. You have a chance to ask
Speaker 1: our guest questions and literally help make the show. You
Speaker 1: can sign up for these invites by going to how
Speaker 1: to citizen dot com and joining my email list. And yes,
Speaker 1: I love the live audience experience. But you're special because
Speaker 1: you're right here, So don't worry. I'm gonna be back
Speaker 1: check in with you, certainly at the end of the show,
Speaker 1: where I give you particular ways that you can citizen.
Speaker 1: Now a we to pass the mic to myself as
Speaker 1: I set up this episode. We are gathered here today
Speaker 1: to talk about work and the people who do it
Speaker 1: in our society. For the past several decades, we've seen
Speaker 1: a consolidation of power in our country and in our economy.
Speaker 1: Productivity has gone up by seventent but wages have remained
Speaker 1: stagnant for the last forty years. In the midst of
Speaker 1: a pandemic, we are even more exposed to who has
Speaker 1: power in the economy. And while we talk in abstract
Speaker 1: terms about labor and capital, underneath of all that is people,
Speaker 1: and as we know from this show, we are all
Speaker 1: about that people power. One of the things we learned
Speaker 1: from Eric lew in episode two is that when we
Speaker 1: have power, we tend to consolidated. More power begets more power.
Speaker 1: It compounds like interest, and we've seen that happen so
Speaker 1: much with our economy and who has the power to
Speaker 1: flex within it. But we also learned something else from
Speaker 1: that seminal episode on power with Eric, that it's infinite
Speaker 1: that we can generate it by shifting our attention, our focus,
Speaker 1: our labors in the direction of distributing power more to
Speaker 1: the people. There is a new labor movement afoot in
Speaker 1: this country, and while we are drowning in the stories
Speaker 1: of things that aren't working, there are people working to
Speaker 1: make work itself work for so many of us. And
Speaker 1: we are honored to have two of those individuals here
Speaker 1: representing themselves and their organizations in building a new type
Speaker 1: of movement for and with workers. Michelle Miller is the
Speaker 1: co founder and co executive director of coworker dot org,
Speaker 1: ap peer based platform that deploys digital tools and data
Speaker 1: and strategies to help people improve their work lives. This
Speaker 1: organization describes itself as a laboratory for workers to experiment
Speaker 1: with power building strategies and win meaningful changes in the
Speaker 1: twenty one century economy. Before co founding coworker dot Org,
Speaker 1: Michelle spent a decade at the Service Employees International Union,
Speaker 1: where she used creative media and the arts to advance
Speaker 1: union campaigns. We are joined by Saru Jayaraman, the director
Speaker 1: of the Social Movement Center at the University of California, Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and because one job is not enough for this hard worker,
Speaker 1: the president of One Fair Wage, which is fighting to
Speaker 1: end sub minimum wages for tipped and other low wage
Speaker 1: workers and ensure that everybody who works in America receives
Speaker 1: at least a full fair minimum wage from their employer.
Speaker 1: Prior to One Fair Wage, Saro co founded Restaurant Opportunities
Speaker 1: Centers United to improve wages and working conditions for the
Speaker 1: nation's restaurant workforce. Both Michelle and Saru have been at
Speaker 1: this for a long time. In some cases they have
Speaker 1: degrees in it. They teach it, they've studied it, and
Speaker 1: they've practiced it. And they share something else in common.
Speaker 1: They both have a White House connect I'm speaking, of course.
Speaker 1: At the previous White House, Michelle co moderated a panel
Speaker 1: with then President Obama on worker Voice, Saru was recognized
Speaker 1: by that same White House as a champion of change back.
Speaker 1: So I want to start with a quote actually from
Speaker 1: the home page of coworker dot org, which says the following,
Speaker 1: at co worker, we believe people should have agency and
Speaker 1: power in their work lives. Most of us will spend
Speaker 1: a third of our adult lives at work, more time
Speaker 1: than we spend with our families, in school or participating
Speaker 1: in our community civic life. Yet many of us are
Speaker 1: silenced and unseen at our jobs. We deserve to have
Speaker 1: a voice in shaping our working conditions and the ways
Speaker 1: in which work happens. We are powerful, and together we
Speaker 1: can transform our jobs and workplaces. Amazing sentiments, very well
Speaker 1: stated and well said, and it sets the stage for
Speaker 1: why we're here. Even though it's from Coworker det work,
Speaker 1: that represents a lot of the work you've both have
Speaker 1: been doing across your whole careers. You're both on the
Speaker 1: front lines of new ways of looking at work, and
Speaker 1: I want to understand from you how, even if the
Speaker 1: types of workers your organizations focus on are different, some
Speaker 1: of the tactics and struggles you're seeing may actually be
Speaker 1: the same. Can you tell me about who you're supporting
Speaker 1: with your work and what that looks like. Michelle, I'll
Speaker 1: start with you. Sure, thank you so much. I'm very
Speaker 1: happy to be here with all of you. Um SO
Speaker 1: co worker is UM. We sometimes describe ourselves as the
Speaker 1: welcome that to the labor movement on the Internet. We're
Speaker 1: an open platform for anybody to start a workplace campaign
Speaker 1: around something they care about that they want to change,
Speaker 1: and we help the muse internet tools to build up
Speaker 1: a committee of their fellow co workers, no matter where
Speaker 1: those co workers are in the country. And so most
Speaker 1: of the people that we support are people in service sector,
Speaker 1: low wage jobs, people in the gig economy. We've worked
Speaker 1: closely with the organizations that RU founded rock UM in
Speaker 1: restaurant work, retail and gig and and many other parts
Speaker 1: of the economy where people are sort of doing that
Speaker 1: frontline work, frontline service work. The people that we interact
Speaker 1: with every day UM as we are going about our
Speaker 1: business so just quickly during COVID nineteen, one example is
Speaker 1: we supported campaigns by grocery store workers at almost every
Speaker 1: national and regional chain, and they were the people who
Speaker 1: were able to recognize very quickly the potential health impacts
Speaker 1: of having to work during the pandemic and the necessity
Speaker 1: of having grocery store employees on the front lines. And
Speaker 1: so they one hazard pay and made hazard pay like
Speaker 1: just an understood demand that they were able to win
Speaker 1: at the company level and then sort of in the
Speaker 1: media level, where when people were talking about what workers
Speaker 1: deserve in this moment, they were always including this idea
Speaker 1: of hawzard pay, and that has been for those workers.
Speaker 1: Just the act of coming together and winning hazard pay
Speaker 1: at places like Trader Joe's and and Whole Foods and
Speaker 1: other places engage them in an experience of their own
Speaker 1: collective power that has kept them together over time to
Speaker 1: ensure that those companies hang on to the protections that
Speaker 1: they want. So that's a little bit about who we're
Speaker 1: working with and how we're working on these campaigns. I
Speaker 1: love the way you put that engage them in the
Speaker 1: experience of their own collective power. You landed at the
Speaker 1: right podcast right now, Michelle um Saru. I have a
Speaker 1: similar question to you. You know, who is one fair
Speaker 1: wage supporting with its work? What does that work look like?
Speaker 1: Right after September eleven, two thousand one, I co founded
Speaker 1: the Restaurant Opportunity Center together with workers, restaurant workers with
Speaker 1: lost their jobs and their co workers lives at Windows
Speaker 1: on the World, which was the restaurant at the top
Speaker 1: of the World Trade Center Town one, and since that
Speaker 1: time nineteen years ago, been fighting to raise wages and
Speaker 1: working conditions in the restaurant industry and now more broadly
Speaker 1: in the service sector, all tipped workers. Um So, they're
Speaker 1: about thirteen points six million restaurant workers in America, or
Speaker 1: there were right before the pandemic. Another couple million other
Speaker 1: tipped workers now salon, car wash, wheelchair attendants, hair salon workers.
Speaker 1: These are all tipped workers. And then gig workers who
Speaker 1: received tips are also under our umbrella. And what we've
Speaker 1: been collectively fighting for is, you know, at this point,
Speaker 1: we're close to fifteen or sixteen million workers in America
Speaker 1: collectively fighting to end the sub minimum wage for tipped workers,
Speaker 1: which is still two dollars and thirteen cents an hour
Speaker 1: in the United States of America. And I'll tell you
Speaker 1: more about the history of why it's two dollars and
Speaker 1: thirteen cents an hour. It's a literal legacy of slavery
Speaker 1: and a little bit but just to say who these
Speaker 1: workers are. They are women, they're just proportionally women of color.
Speaker 1: They are adults, they're not teenagers, um the media ages
Speaker 1: thirty five. And they are literally the lowest paid workers
Speaker 1: in America. Every year the U. S. Department of Labor
Speaker 1: has put out a list of the ten lowest paying jobs,
Speaker 1: and every year, seven of the ten lowest paying jobs
Speaker 1: in America are all in one sector, the restaurant and
Speaker 1: service sector. So you know, it's the people who put
Speaker 1: food on our tables, who, frankly, even before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: couldn't put food on their own families tables. With the pandemic,
Speaker 1: it became an issue of life and death because sixty
Speaker 1: of these workers couldn't get unemployment insurance. About ten million
Speaker 1: of these fifteen million workers lost their jobs, and sixty
Speaker 1: of them couldn't get unemployment insurance, not because they weren't documented.
Speaker 1: There was a whole other issue for immigrants, but for
Speaker 1: documented workers, they couldn't get unemployment insurance because they were
Speaker 1: living off tips and their states told them you earned
Speaker 1: too little, it does look like you earned anything, or
Speaker 1: you earned too little for us to award you benefits.
Speaker 1: And so these workers were gaslight. They were told, because
Speaker 1: we pay you too little, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: benefits that, by the way, you pay taxes to get.
Speaker 1: And now these same workers are being asked to go
Speaker 1: back to work and enforce social distancing and mask rules
Speaker 1: with the very same customers from whom they're supposed to
Speaker 1: get tips to make up that two dollar wage and
Speaker 1: bring it to the full minimum wage. So you know
Speaker 1: who are these workers. They're the workers that frankly, are
Speaker 1: going to either stop or perpetuate a super spreader event
Speaker 1: this fall when indoor dining really becomes a thing in
Speaker 1: a lot of the East Coast, and the CDC has
Speaker 1: reported eating at a restaurant makes you twice as likely
Speaker 1: to get the virus, which means both the workers and
Speaker 1: everybody you know who eats in these restaurants is going
Speaker 1: to be at incredible risks. So we're relying on these
Speaker 1: workers who are protecting us, and we're paying them two
Speaker 1: dollars at the same time. That's who these workers are.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that overview, And I think bringing it
Speaker 1: to the tension, the sort of contradictory, the paradoxical demands
Speaker 1: that we've put on a certain set of workers to
Speaker 1: ingratiate themselves to customers, will also disciplining them and becoming
Speaker 1: some sort of rule enforcer and a and a public
Speaker 1: health official. That doesn't quite add up. It just sounds unreasonable.
Speaker 1: There is a word that we are getting more familiar
Speaker 1: with in this show and encouraging people to embrace as well,
Speaker 1: and that is power. And you know where does it
Speaker 1: reside and who has it? And in the age old
Speaker 1: question of employers and employees, there is a power dynamic
Speaker 1: and we've seen some shifts in that, certainly at the
Speaker 1: highest levels in the US over the past several decades,
Speaker 1: a declining union membership as one example, or the distribution
Speaker 1: of wages and earnings as another. But I'm curious what
Speaker 1: are you both seeing and what's different now than it
Speaker 1: was for fifty years ago. I can start, if you
Speaker 1: don't mind. This is where I'd love to bring in
Speaker 1: the history because why are we so focused on the
Speaker 1: fact that six or seven million people earn a two
Speaker 1: dollar wage. We're focused on it because it's the greatest
Speaker 1: power that the industry has over its workers, which is
Speaker 1: the power not to pay them at all and have
Speaker 1: customers essentially pay them for them. It's the power to
Speaker 1: say I will benefit from the value of your labor
Speaker 1: without actually paying for it. It's the power to basically
Speaker 1: have one group of working people, which is customers, pay
Speaker 1: for another group of working people's wages. And what's amazing
Speaker 1: in this moment is that literally thousands of workers are
Speaker 1: now rising up and saying I've had enough of this,
Speaker 1: and it's a hundred and fifty years overdue. Because tipping
Speaker 1: originated in feudal Europe, it was something that aristocrats and
Speaker 1: nobles gave to serve some vassals, but always on top
Speaker 1: of a wage. When it came to the United States,
Speaker 1: it was actually right around the time of emancipation eighteen
Speaker 1: fifties eighteen sixties, and the restaurant lobby demanded the right
Speaker 1: to hire newly freed slaves, mostly black women at the time,
Speaker 1: and not pay them anything and have them live entirely
Speaker 1: on tips. They wanted the ability to basically continue slavery
Speaker 1: um to have black workers that they didn't have to
Speaker 1: pay because they didn't value their labor much less so
Speaker 1: because they were black women, and so that idea that
Speaker 1: a black woman could be paid zero dollars an hour. Frankly,
Speaker 1: a black person could be paid zero dollars an hour
Speaker 1: and have to live off of tips. Became law in
Speaker 1: ninety eight, is part of the New Deal when everybody
Speaker 1: got the right to the minimum wage for the first
Speaker 1: time in the United States, except for three groups of
Speaker 1: black workers, farm workers, domestic workers, and tipped restaurant workers
Speaker 1: who were told, you get a zero dollar wage as
Speaker 1: long as tips bring you to the full minimum wage.
Speaker 1: We went from zero in eight to two dollars and
Speaker 1: thirteen cents an hour, a two dollar increase over one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years. And I think, I mean, we
Speaker 1: all know it wouldn't be two dollars if it were men,
Speaker 1: or if it were white men. But it's women, and
Speaker 1: it's women of color, and they largely work at eye
Speaker 1: hoops and Denny's and Red Lobsters, and they're struggling to
Speaker 1: make ends meet because for a hundred fifty years, because
Speaker 1: of the incredible power of a trade lobby called the
Speaker 1: National Restaurant Association. We call it the other n r A.
Speaker 1: It represents the chains, the eye hoops, the apple these
Speaker 1: the olive garden. And here's the thing, like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe this absurd legacy of slavery would have gone away
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for exactly what you said, the
Speaker 1: concentration of power among these chains who formed this formidable
Speaker 1: trade lobby and have been named the tenth most powerful
Speaker 1: lobbying group in Congress and in every state, the State
Speaker 1: Restaurant Association is the number one voice on the minimum wage,
Speaker 1: on paid sick leave, on paid family leave, on any
Speaker 1: worker issue. At the federal level, the n r A,
Speaker 1: the other n r A as we call it, is
Speaker 1: the number one voice on employment issues in Congress. And
Speaker 1: so until now it's been what we call Da Vita
Speaker 1: versus Goliath. It's not David versus Golliath, it's the Vita
Speaker 1: or Daniela versus Goliath, because these are women and women
Speaker 1: of color up against the most powerful trade lobby in
Speaker 1: the United States. And it's been a really, really tough fight.
Speaker 1: We've actually won a full minimum wage with tips on
Speaker 1: top three times in Michigan, Maine, and d c. And
Speaker 1: in every instance, this incredibly powerful trade lobby lobbied and
Speaker 1: bribed democrats, let's be real, to overturn the will of
Speaker 1: the people in each of those places. And so it's
Speaker 1: been a tough fight. You know, five steps forward two
Speaker 1: steps back because we're up against this huge lobby and
Speaker 1: finally we've reached this pandemic moment where we have literally
Speaker 1: thousands of workers who are saying that's it. I'm done.
Speaker 1: Enough is enough, because you know, you're asking me to
Speaker 1: go back to work for two and three dollars, put
Speaker 1: my life at risk and my mom they's life at
Speaker 1: risk for two or three dollars when tips are down.
Speaker 1: You're asking me to enforce these rules with these crazy
Speaker 1: customers who I don't know if you'll have seen the
Speaker 1: news clips, but they're assaulting servers right now. They are
Speaker 1: assaulting servers for trying to enforce these rules, and so
Speaker 1: workers have been going on strike. We organized the first
Speaker 1: strike August thirty one. I don't know if it's possible
Speaker 1: by tunity for me to share an image. I'd love
Speaker 1: to share an image from the strengths. Is that possible? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a podcast, and you cannot see what's Aru
Speaker 1: put up on her screen, So let me try to
Speaker 1: paint the picture with words. She shared a photograph. The
Speaker 1: setting is Time Square. There's a large crowd gathered to protest.
Speaker 1: They're all wearing face masks, their photographs, their signs that
Speaker 1: say things like paid sick days. Dominating the photo is
Speaker 1: a towering twenty four ft cutout of a black woman
Speaker 1: with long braids and a face mask that says fight,
Speaker 1: don't stop are She's wearing an apron and looking directly
Speaker 1: at the camera lens as she makes a fist with
Speaker 1: her right hand and a gesture very reminiscent of Rosie Deriveter.
Speaker 1: This isn't Rosie, though. This is Elena the Essential Worker.
Speaker 1: We erected her in Times Square and also in Sokolow
Speaker 1: Square in Chicago. There are five of hers. She'll be
Speaker 1: appearing also in Philly and d C in Boston. UM
Speaker 1: workers are going on strike all over the country to
Speaker 1: say enough is enough. We will not go back to
Speaker 1: work without a full fair minimum wage with tips on
Speaker 1: top and talking about power. What I think is one
Speaker 1: of the most extraordinary things about this moment is that
Speaker 1: I've seen hundreds of restaurant owners who actually opposed us
Speaker 1: on this issue, fought us on this issue, who suddenly
Speaker 1: come to us and said, enough is enough. We think
Speaker 1: you're right. The time has come to get rid of
Speaker 1: this legacy of slavery and to move on. And so
Speaker 1: workers are thrise s up and employers are responding, Michelle,
Speaker 1: I'd love you too talk about power dynamics in the industry.
Speaker 1: And I know you work in so many but one
Speaker 1: of the ones that feel so different to me from
Speaker 1: the world of tipped workers or grocery workers that we've
Speaker 1: heard about so far is the world of tech workers.
Speaker 1: And if I could kind of suggest getting your analysis
Speaker 1: on what the workplace power dynamics look like, they're because
Speaker 1: so many of us on the outside say these workers
Speaker 1: are highly compensated, they get everything they want, they have
Speaker 1: foodsball or what have you. What does that dynamic really
Speaker 1: look like, and what may some of us not understand
Speaker 1: about power in the tech workplace? So power really is
Speaker 1: central to this question. I think tech provides a really
Speaker 1: good illustration of how money doesn't always even equal power.
Speaker 1: So shortly after the election, there were many tech workers
Speaker 1: who started getting together and and you know, deciding that
Speaker 1: they were not going to participate in creating lists for deportation,
Speaker 1: that they were going to choose not to build surveillance software,
Speaker 1: that they were going to not participate in the further
Speaker 1: incursion of human rights via technology. And as they were
Speaker 1: having these conversations, one of the things they really realized
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, we've already kind of built all of this,
Speaker 1: like we've been doing this for many years. And these
Speaker 1: very well compensated workers, who in many of their companies
Speaker 1: had various forums where they could speak up and talk
Speaker 1: about things that were bothering them, had a sense that
Speaker 1: when they started talking about the sort of fundamental money
Speaker 1: makers inside of these companies, inside of places like Google,
Speaker 1: which is like the collection of data on every single
Speaker 1: user that touches even comes near a Google product, or
Speaker 1: at Facebook, the enabling of disinformation campaigns and and advise
Speaker 1: and and Twitter just being Twitter, that it was going
Speaker 1: to take something more than speaking up once or twice
Speaker 1: at a meeting. And so they came to us and
Speaker 1: they asked us. Their first question was is it legal
Speaker 1: and okay for us to use labor organizing around our
Speaker 1: ethics questions with our companies um? Which was such an
Speaker 1: interesting um way to approach this because for most low
Speaker 1: wage workers, like the rules in the law have literally
Speaker 1: never worked in their favor, and so there isn't that
Speaker 1: that question doesn't come up as much as for tech workers,
Speaker 1: even for folks who maybe came from more marginalized communities,
Speaker 1: like the rules have generally worked out, and so the
Speaker 1: first thing they had to do was really think about,
Speaker 1: like interrogate the idea that labor law and labor organizing
Speaker 1: is not necessarily governed by a set of fair rules
Speaker 1: at the outset, and you might just have to take
Speaker 1: a risk anyway to build the power that you need
Speaker 1: in order to debate changes. And so we started working
Speaker 1: specifically with a group of employees at Google who were
Speaker 1: concerned about a series of issues inside the company, both
Speaker 1: around internal harassment campaigns directed at people of color and
Speaker 1: queer people and trans people who worked at the company.
Speaker 1: That essentially what would happen would be that they would
Speaker 1: raise issues around their ethics, concerns about products that the
Speaker 1: company was building on internal message boards, and then more
Speaker 1: like conservative or racist people inside the company would go
Speaker 1: after them and attack them, and they couldn't get the
Speaker 1: company to take their complaints about what was happening seriously
Speaker 1: to kept asking someone to discipline the people who were
Speaker 1: going after them, and they couldn't get the company to respond.
Speaker 1: And so what they started having to do with something
Speaker 1: that they had never done before, which is organized themselves
Speaker 1: into a collective you know, we talked to them a
Speaker 1: lot about how like, if you are all individually fighting this,
Speaker 1: you are never actually going to make the progress that
Speaker 1: you need. You have to do it all together and
Speaker 1: then telling the story of what was happening to them publicly.
Speaker 1: And so you know, for these employees, the fights that
Speaker 1: they were having with these companies were not fights about
Speaker 1: whether or not they were getting enough pay or whether
Speaker 1: or not they were getting decent benefits, but really like
Speaker 1: what does our labor produce and what is the environment
Speaker 1: in which we are actually producing those things? So do
Speaker 1: I want to use my labor which I bring into
Speaker 1: this company to produce surveillance drones that are flying over
Speaker 1: the Middle East and able to identify people based on
Speaker 1: one pixel of information, which is what the project may
Speaker 1: have ben campaign at Google was run by Googlers, and
Speaker 1: and many of the Googlers who were involved in um
Speaker 1: demanding that Google stop a partnership with the Department of
Speaker 1: Defense to build those surveillance drones were themselves from Muslim
Speaker 1: families who knew that the people in their own families
Speaker 1: would be targeted in their own countries by these surveillance drones.
Speaker 1: And you know at Facebook there were questions about, like
Speaker 1: are we going to continue to turn a blind eye
Speaker 1: to the ways in which our platform is enabling genocide
Speaker 1: and Myanmar or um election funagling in Brazil. But again
Speaker 1: like this question of like what does my labor do
Speaker 1: and what is the result of what it performs, and
Speaker 1: what is my relationship to that? And can I organize
Speaker 1: around those things? And can I tell a company as
Speaker 1: a collective body that you are not going to use
Speaker 1: our labor, You're not going to use our engineering skills
Speaker 1: to do harm to people that we share the world
Speaker 1: with or that we share the country with. Another great
Speaker 1: example of that was when the information about detention centers
Speaker 1: being run by ICE was made public in in the
Speaker 1: summer of how many tech workers quickly recognized that Salesforce
Speaker 1: was providing software, that Wayfare was providing beds, that all
Speaker 1: of these companies were deeply embedded in these practices and
Speaker 1: actually enabling those practices to take place, And again people
Speaker 1: collectively coming together and saying like, you don't get to
Speaker 1: use my labor for this. And so what we've seen
Speaker 1: is this sort of ongoing interrogation of the ways in
Speaker 1: which the companies that people have been working for for
Speaker 1: many years who previously had promised them that the work
Speaker 1: they were doing was all about the betterment of the world.
Speaker 1: That like technology, remember like that, like technology was going
Speaker 1: to connect us all and make everything easier and better. Um,
Speaker 1: and that the root of the lie and that promise
Speaker 1: when you are built into the United States of America's
Speaker 1: imperial goals and further incursion on human rights, Like how
Speaker 1: do you contest with the fact that you are involved
Speaker 1: in that project and how do you use your labor
Speaker 1: to stop those things? When I'm hearing from both of
Speaker 1: you in different ways, is an attempt to rebalance power,
Speaker 1: whether that power has been used to take advantage of
Speaker 1: someone in a literal financial and physical sense or in
Speaker 1: a more moral and ethical sense, that we need to
Speaker 1: shift that balance of power between workers. And certainly they're
Speaker 1: very large employers who are consolidated and have some outsize
Speaker 1: amount of power and making the rules. What do you
Speaker 1: all think happens outside of the workplace. It feels like
Speaker 1: it's bigger than just the workplace. Are there ripple effects?
Speaker 1: Are their consequences for the larger society in not doing
Speaker 1: that and not rebalancing that power and that sort of
Speaker 1: taking on and giving workers more of a voice to
Speaker 1: use some of your language. Listen, the pandemic revealed so
Speaker 1: much that was so wrong for so long, you know,
Speaker 1: the dysfunction of the system, not just for workers, but
Speaker 1: for employers and consumers and frankly for our democracy. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to go in that order. The dysfunction didn't
Speaker 1: work for employers. You know, our industry has the highest
Speaker 1: rates of turnover of any industry United States. It's that's
Speaker 1: three turns in one position in one year. We actually
Speaker 1: calculated the cost and it's in the millions for any
Speaker 1: of these chains. They spend millions of dollars each year
Speaker 1: on rehiring and retraining and employee morale being low because
Speaker 1: they pay so little, so that it hurts employers themselves,
Speaker 1: even it hurts shareholders. It hurts people in these companies
Speaker 1: who are not actually achieving their best potential as companies
Speaker 1: because they're not paid. It hurts consumers because we end
Speaker 1: up bearing the brunt of the public health disaster that
Speaker 1: occurs when tipped workers cannot enforce these rules because they
Speaker 1: have to rely on tips. But it also hurts consumers
Speaker 1: because consumers are footing the bill for multibillion dollar corporations
Speaker 1: by paying their workers wages in tips. You know, we
Speaker 1: as consumers and taxpayers, we subsidize multibillion dollar corporations like
Speaker 1: Darden which is all of Gardens parent company, and I
Speaker 1: Hop and Denny's. We subsidize them through our tips, paying
Speaker 1: their workers wages to their tips. But we also subsidize
Speaker 1: them to the tune of sixteen point five billion with
Speaker 1: a B dollars annually in taxpayer funded public assistance. This is,
Speaker 1: you know, workers having to use Medicare or Medicaid, workers
Speaker 1: you know, using various forms of emergency room care. I mean,
Speaker 1: just all kinds of public assistance. But I think the
Speaker 1: biggest thing to think about when workers don't have power
Speaker 1: and they end up with a two dollar wage, which is,
Speaker 1: to me, the epitome of not having power. The biggest
Speaker 1: challenge is to our economy and our democracy, because what
Speaker 1: happens when the largest and fastest growing industry in America
Speaker 1: is the absolute lowest pain. It means that we're going
Speaker 1: from a country of one in three working Americans working
Speaker 1: and living in poverty to a country of one and
Speaker 1: two Americans. Half of all working Americans working full time
Speaker 1: and living in poverty. It means that our consumption power
Speaker 1: as a country is non existent. I think we're feeling
Speaker 1: that right now. When millions of people are out of work,
Speaker 1: unable to cover meals for their children, or or utilities
Speaker 1: or pay the rent, what happens to our ability to
Speaker 1: consume as a country. And then, worst of all, for
Speaker 1: those of you that have ever scratched your heads about
Speaker 1: why we don't vote as a country, why is it
Speaker 1: that Americans have such a low voter turnout rate? I
Speaker 1: will tell you why. It's because the largest and fastest
Speaker 1: growing industries in America are people who work two in
Speaker 1: three jobs and largely cannot, you know, afford to think
Speaker 1: or let alone engage in political activity, and frankly also
Speaker 1: feel disillusion and disengage because they're earning two dollars an
Speaker 1: hour and they've seen both Democrats and Republicans sell them
Speaker 1: down the river for the National Restaurant Association and leave
Speaker 1: them at two dollars an hour, even as other workers
Speaker 1: go up to fifteen. They've been left behind at two
Speaker 1: and three and five. I know if it were me,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't vote because I would say it's the point
Speaker 1: both parties have left me at two and three dollars.
Speaker 1: That's the result of a lack of power among low
Speaker 1: wage workers, a lack of voice, a lack of ability
Speaker 1: to change their circumstances. Those are the moments in which
Speaker 1: fascist rise. When workers don't have voice or power. They
Speaker 1: feel helpless, they feel hopeless, they feel disengaged. And what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is that definitely is changing. There
Speaker 1: is hope on the horizon. We've seen work these same
Speaker 1: workers now rising up and saying enough is enough, not
Speaker 1: just with regard to their wages, but also with regard
Speaker 1: to voting. They're feeling some hope with regard to voting.
Speaker 1: But the real consequence of us having allowed these workers
Speaker 1: for so long to not have power and to not
Speaker 1: get paid, and to not feel their voice or their power,
Speaker 1: or even their humanity at two dollars an hour is
Speaker 1: the loss of our democracy. Michelle, do you have anything
Speaker 1: you want to add to this idea of the effects
Speaker 1: on the workplace. I mean, as sorry was talking, I
Speaker 1: was really thinking a lot about the deeper layers of
Speaker 1: the loss of being able to vote and the fact
Speaker 1: that someone is working two to three jobs and probably
Speaker 1: taking care of someone in their family that doesn't have
Speaker 1: adequate access to medical care, and probably is also responsible
Speaker 1: for children and their family who don't have access to
Speaker 1: decent child care and is are really bearing the brunt
Speaker 1: of a number of structural and institutional failures in this country.
Speaker 1: Also then do not have the time or the mental
Speaker 1: space to contribute to the policies that will change those
Speaker 1: things and to actually be active members of our communities,
Speaker 1: and the ways in which that tears at community like
Speaker 1: that means that the commons only gets to be populated
Speaker 1: by people who have enough money in time to show
Speaker 1: up in the commons because everybody else at work. And
Speaker 1: when you can't show up, the things that you know
Speaker 1: about the ways in which the economy does function could function,
Speaker 1: the ways in which we can care for each other,
Speaker 1: the ways in which we distribute food and goods and
Speaker 1: logistics are all lost. It is like an aggregate loss
Speaker 1: to us in terms of actually being able to adequately
Speaker 1: govern our society and make good decisions about the ways
Speaker 1: in which we want to allocate resources to run a
Speaker 1: good economy. It is not just a matter of the
Speaker 1: fact that it's not fair and not right that folks
Speaker 1: are working all the time and forced to event poverty
Speaker 1: and suffering, although of course those things are true, but
Speaker 1: there is a deeper loss around the contributions that people
Speaker 1: can actually make to our culture and our society and
Speaker 1: the ideas that drive our government. When you think about
Speaker 1: the fact that most of the policy that has developed,
Speaker 1: most of the stories that are told about our economy
Speaker 1: are told by people who mostly operate and very similar
Speaker 1: circumstances to one another economically, and came from the same
Speaker 1: schools and live in the same places, you really can
Speaker 1: start to grock like why we have not been able
Speaker 1: to meet people and why people feel like there's nothing
Speaker 1: worth voting for because the institutions don't even know how
Speaker 1: to talk to and engage the people because they haven't
Speaker 1: included them in their governance. We call the show how
Speaker 1: to Citizen. We're trying to make it a verb. We're
Speaker 1: trying to define together what that means for us as people.
Speaker 1: But we also live in a society where corporations are
Speaker 1: people like entities, and there's an idea of corporate citizenship
Speaker 1: that sometimes means deeper things than other times, but there
Speaker 1: is a set of responsibilities and I'm curious what you
Speaker 1: all think of the role of a good corporate citizen.
Speaker 1: How does a company citizen, Well, what does it mean
Speaker 1: for them for the benefit of the society to do
Speaker 1: that better. We now have eight hundred and fifty restaurant
Speaker 1: companies who have joined forces with us and are coming
Speaker 1: with us to governors and and to city councils and
Speaker 1: state legislatures and Congress to say, we need livable wages
Speaker 1: for workers. We need it to be required across the board.
Speaker 1: We need fifteen dollars with tips on top. We need
Speaker 1: paid sickly, we need hazard pay. They are saying they
Speaker 1: need those things as employers, both because they believe that's
Speaker 1: good for workers and because they believe it's actually better
Speaker 1: for the bottom line for their business. But I will
Speaker 1: tell you that's not the chains. That's mostly not the chains.
Speaker 1: These are independent restaurants across the country that, although they
Speaker 1: also are struggling to survive, are saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're struggling to survive, but we know our workers are
Speaker 1: struggling ten thousand times more than we are. Where we
Speaker 1: may lose our businesses, they'll lose their homes. And so
Speaker 1: to me, they are model corporate citizens. They are the
Speaker 1: employers who are saying this is not just about me
Speaker 1: as the business owner making double triple digit profits. This
Speaker 1: is about me as not just a member of my community,
Speaker 1: but a provider for my community, an employer in my community. UM,
Speaker 1: somebody who not only you know, shut down my business,
Speaker 1: but then watched my workers suffer in my community, and
Speaker 1: that impacts me. Um. The model corporate citizen is the Frankly,
Speaker 1: the Henry Ford of today. I mean, let's be clear,
Speaker 1: Henry Ford was a Nazi and a racist. Let's be
Speaker 1: clear on who Henry Ford was. But the philosophy that
Speaker 1: he espoused that I have to make sure that my
Speaker 1: workers on the assembly line make enough to pay for
Speaker 1: the cars, frankly, was a selfish philosophy. Was a philosophy
Speaker 1: of I want to make sure there are consumers. And
Speaker 1: we've gone so far a field from you know, even
Speaker 1: Frankly basic economics Like that, to me is just basic economics.
Speaker 1: We've gone so far a field to ingreed and avarice
Speaker 1: and just extreme profit driven motive that they have cannibalized
Speaker 1: their own consumer base. In the restaurant industry, for example,
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, we had three segments fine dining, casual
Speaker 1: or family style restaurant. Those about eye Hoops and the
Speaker 1: Applebees that are full service but casual, and then quick
Speaker 1: service anything without a waiter. Well, fast food and fine
Speaker 1: dining were exploding because of the hour glass nature of
Speaker 1: our economy. The wealthy were eating out and low wage
Speaker 1: workers were eating in fast food. But the casual restaurants
Speaker 1: of America have stagnated. They've not died, but they've stagnated.
Speaker 1: They aren't growing as fast as the other two segments
Speaker 1: because the people who used to eat in casual restaurants
Speaker 1: were guess who, restaurant workers. That's where restaurant workers would
Speaker 1: go hang out after their ships. That's where they take
Speaker 1: their families. And at two dollars and thirteen cents an hour,
Speaker 1: they cannot afford eat even at the Olive Garden anymore.
Speaker 1: They can't afford to eat at Denny's. They can't afford
Speaker 1: to take their family out for a family meal at
Speaker 1: a family style restaurant. And that is an example of
Speaker 1: a corporate cannibal that is destroying their own consumer market.
Speaker 1: And so what we need is independent what we call
Speaker 1: them high road businesses, businesses that are taking the high
Speaker 1: road to profitability, that actually believe in investing in their
Speaker 1: workforce and then fighting for policy change alongside their workers.
Speaker 1: That's a true corporate citizen. Like a like a high
Speaker 1: road corporate citizen giving their workers a day off to
Speaker 1: go vote, that's a true corporate citizen. Michelle, what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on what a good corporate citizen is or does.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the structures
Speaker 1: that make it difficult for companies to act like good
Speaker 1: corporate citizens, because I think that they do all of
Speaker 1: the things that Sorru described, but many companies are owned
Speaker 1: by private equity firms hedge funds and have been financialized
Speaker 1: to the point that companies themselves are treated as speculative
Speaker 1: properties and rent seeking properties. I'm gonna pop in real
Speaker 1: quick to help break something down that Michelle just said
Speaker 1: when she described companies that have been financialized by hedge
Speaker 1: funds and private equity. She's talking about a process known
Speaker 1: as financialization. And I could just leave you hang in
Speaker 1: and let you look it up yourself, but I believe
Speaker 1: in you and I want to help you out, so
Speaker 1: let me define this term real quick. Financialization is when
Speaker 1: a company shifts away from generating its profits primarily through
Speaker 1: selling actual goods and services and starts to rely instead
Speaker 1: on financial instruments, debt, interests, capital gains. It's a trend
Speaker 1: in the economy overall, as financial services make up an
Speaker 1: increasing share of economic activity. Critics will argue that this
Speaker 1: is a poor way to generate value. It is short term.
Speaker 1: It prioritizes the gains of investors and insiders over workers
Speaker 1: and the general public, so it is a less real
Speaker 1: version of economic growth or in this case of corporate profits.
Speaker 1: I hope that helped back to our conversation. A great
Speaker 1: example is we work with Starbucks bustos for many, many years.
Speaker 1: We started seeing like as soon as they gave workers
Speaker 1: going across the board wage in what we started hearing
Speaker 1: from workers was that labor hours were being sneakily cut
Speaker 1: at stores all across the country. So like the CEO
Speaker 1: couldn't make the decision to give everybody a raise and
Speaker 1: just like have that be money that went into the
Speaker 1: pockets of workers, That money had to be made up
Speaker 1: for by cutting hours that people were able to work
Speaker 1: and understaffing stores because they're actually beholden to a bunch
Speaker 1: of shareholders. And when the pandemic hit, we had baristas
Speaker 1: who were asking at Starbucks clothes all of their cafes
Speaker 1: because they're they we're not providing an essential service, and
Speaker 1: that they wanted to be paid, and Starbucks was saying
Speaker 1: that they didn't have the money, and we discovered that
Speaker 1: at the same time, there were forty million dollars in
Speaker 1: stock buy backs that were taking place. Stock buy backs
Speaker 1: is when people in the company buy back the stock
Speaker 1: to raise the share price to make it more valuable
Speaker 1: so that they can it's Shenanigan's And so when that
Speaker 1: became public information, it allowed for there to be open
Speaker 1: questions about why Starbucks wasn't meeting the needs of their employees,
Speaker 1: and they actually ended up winning a Starbucks Bresta have
Speaker 1: had four to six weeks where they didn't have to
Speaker 1: go to work in the cafes and they were able
Speaker 1: to be paid. I just think it's really important when
Speaker 1: we're thinking about the policies that we want to implement
Speaker 1: in order to actually enable companies to be good corporate citizens,
Speaker 1: really thinking about the way that this financialized model makes
Speaker 1: it more desirable for people to use companies as speculative
Speaker 1: properties and making better and treating the entire economy like
Speaker 1: a casino than actually providing for goods and services that
Speaker 1: we need in our economy. Shenanigans is just a great
Speaker 1: definition of stock by backs. You like to start getting
Speaker 1: to the technical and like Shenanigans and we all kind
Speaker 1: of we all kind of feel you, We all kind
Speaker 1: of feel you on that is this our destiny to
Speaker 1: have this epic battle of labor versus capital. Could we
Speaker 1: live in a world where companies fight with their workers
Speaker 1: and not just against them and vice versa, where we
Speaker 1: align the incentives in the right way to move everybody forward.
Speaker 1: What would that world look like? How would we create
Speaker 1: that economic model. I'm gonna speak just very practically about
Speaker 1: what we can do right now to push for that world,
Speaker 1: because we cannot go back to the way things were.
Speaker 1: The way things were did not work for the majority
Speaker 1: of people in the world, not just in America. And
Speaker 1: if we learned anything from the pandemic, it's that we're interdependent.
Speaker 1: What happens to a waitress, you know, in a restaurant,
Speaker 1: affects you and me. Because last week, the CDC reported
Speaker 1: that you're twice as likely to get the pandemic if
Speaker 1: you eat in a restaurant. That restaurants are one of
Speaker 1: the top super spreader events in the United States. So
Speaker 1: what happens to her affects people in that restaurant, then
Speaker 1: it's gonna affect everybody you interact with. We are inter dependent.
Speaker 1: So if we're interdependent, let's reimagine our world and put
Speaker 1: a stake in the ground to fight for that reimagined world.
Speaker 1: But and in interdependent world, with the pandemic, we created
Speaker 1: an emergency fund for workers and a relief program for employers.
Speaker 1: We raised like twenty million dollars and two thousand workers
Speaker 1: applied for relief, and rather than just handing out five
Speaker 1: hundred dollar in cash payments, we actually have engaged two
Speaker 1: d two workers in fighting for one fair wage, in striking,
Speaker 1: and in voting and getting everybody else they know to vote.
Speaker 1: We started a voter program out of that relief fund.
Speaker 1: This is a population of people two or twenty workers.
Speaker 1: We check their voter record. They have a less than
Speaker 1: twenty less than twenty of them ever voted in their lives,
Speaker 1: and the vast majority are citizens that can vote on
Speaker 1: the employer's side. We worked with Governor Newsoman California, and
Speaker 1: then Marida Blasio in New York and now Mayor Douggan
Speaker 1: in Detroit to create a program called Highroad Kitchens that's
Speaker 1: providing relief cash grants to restaurants that commit to transitioning
Speaker 1: to a full livable wage with tips on top. And
Speaker 1: it's very different. Lots of cities are now and the
Speaker 1: government is looking at just blanket relief for restaurants and
Speaker 1: blanket relief for different sectors with no conditions and no
Speaker 1: requirements for change. And what we're doing is the opposite,
Speaker 1: which is saying, we've got to save independent restaurants, but
Speaker 1: we've got to only save independent restaurants if they're committed
Speaker 1: to change. Thank you, Michelle, saying to you, what does
Speaker 1: the world look like or how do we get to it?
Speaker 1: That aligns these incentives of what feels like an epic,
Speaker 1: everlasting pitch battle so that workers and companies they work
Speaker 1: within for are working together more. So I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: with one thing we can do and then how that
Speaker 1: enables a really radically different vision. About a quarter of
Speaker 1: the country is experiencing unemployment right now. We have rates
Speaker 1: of unemployment that we haven't seen since the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: And what people are experiencing in that is the absolute
Speaker 1: structural failure of our unemployment system as it is currently designed,
Speaker 1: the fact that the system is designed not to be navigable.
Speaker 1: It's designed to push you into employment based on this
Speaker 1: presumption that you always have to be working, and if
Speaker 1: you're not working, there's something wrong with you, that you're
Speaker 1: you're taking from our society, and that because the duty
Speaker 1: to care has been essentially abandoned in the public sector
Speaker 1: and has been kind of left to corporations. If you
Speaker 1: don't have a job, like there's no way for you
Speaker 1: to access the things that you need, And that the
Speaker 1: unemployment crisis is lining up with the eviction crisis, like
Speaker 1: the eviction crisis is actually an unemployment crisis, and vice versa,
Speaker 1: and also lining up with the debt crisis. That we
Speaker 1: have people that are in many ways experiencing all three
Speaker 1: of these structural failures all at once. But the opportunity
Speaker 1: that lies in that is that we can look at
Speaker 1: all of these systems and really start to talk about
Speaker 1: how they don't function to make people's lives actually better
Speaker 1: and more livable, and start interrogating questions about like why
Speaker 1: do we expect people to have to be working all
Speaker 1: of the time, Why is it not reasonable to expect
Speaker 1: that after you lose a job, you might take a
Speaker 1: few months to like recover and think about what you'd
Speaker 1: like to do next. Why is there an entire class
Speaker 1: of people in this country that we think shouldn't even
Speaker 1: have agency about what job they choose next, Because often,
Speaker 1: and specifically people in low income jobs, and mostly people
Speaker 1: of color who are working in service sector jobs are
Speaker 1: basically treated like they should just take whatever the next
Speaker 1: job that comes along to them is, regardless of their
Speaker 1: own agency and choice about what they like to be doing. So,
Speaker 1: what if we thought about our experience of work and
Speaker 1: not working as like equal parts of the ways in
Speaker 1: which we're engaged in the economy and ways of identifying
Speaker 1: what we would like to contribute ourselves. And and that
Speaker 1: actually is enabled by like, initially in a very practical way,
Speaker 1: radically reimagining how the unemployment system works. Like there was
Speaker 1: a time when you paid into the system, you got
Speaker 1: ten months of unemployment, you weren't shoved into whatever job
Speaker 1: was next, and you were able to actually like make
Speaker 1: active decisions about what you want to do with your life.
Speaker 1: It was not perfect, but it was better than what
Speaker 1: it is now. A lot of what we're doing right
Speaker 1: now is working with unemployed workers to have them articulate
Speaker 1: the system failures and then the things that they would
Speaker 1: like to see be different in the next phase of
Speaker 1: understanding unemployment. And the reason that again I think that
Speaker 1: is really connected to this question of like where could
Speaker 1: we get is that I would like it if the
Speaker 1: a that we thought about the economy was something that
Speaker 1: we all hold a piece of in our hands, and
Speaker 1: we hold that piece as we go to work, or
Speaker 1: as we pay our rent, or as we are consumers,
Speaker 1: but that we aren't sort of objects of the economy,
Speaker 1: where agents of the economy, and that we can make
Speaker 1: decisions together at the local level, the municipal level, the
Speaker 1: state level, about what do we want the economy to
Speaker 1: do right now? Like what is this for? If we
Speaker 1: are in a place where, um, a lot of growth
Speaker 1: has been tearing apart our parks and trees, and we
Speaker 1: know that climate change is coming and we need to
Speaker 1: do something about the land, we can make a decision that,
Speaker 1: like a growth mindset for the companies around us is
Speaker 1: probably not going to be good for our long term survival.
Speaker 1: We can make those decisions right now. There's so few
Speaker 1: people making those decisions who only have one interest, which
Speaker 1: is in growth and inlining their pockets, that that kind
Speaker 1: of actual negotiation around what we value is not possible.
Speaker 1: So I feel like this moment around confronting unemployment and
Speaker 1: eviction and all of these way so much. The economic
Speaker 1: setups haven't been working for people for a long time.
Speaker 1: There at their peak pressure point, gives us a moment
Speaker 1: to say, what do we actually want from what we
Speaker 1: get when we go to work, or we look for
Speaker 1: housing or we live in our cities and towns. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be thinking for a long time about not
Speaker 1: being an object of the economy, but an agent of
Speaker 1: the economy. That was so well said, and when you
Speaker 1: make it plural asians of the economy, it sounds like
Speaker 1: a new Marvel superhero series where we're all the superheroes
Speaker 1: because we're making active choices about how we want to
Speaker 1: contribute and how we want to participate. And it's just
Speaker 1: a more empowered way to see ourselves, which is the
Speaker 1: point of this practice and this exercise we're doing together.
Speaker 1: So thank you for that. It really moved me. We
Speaker 1: have a few questions lined up, so let's go to Tom.
Speaker 1: You are up. You know, we do have collective power
Speaker 1: as consumers, and I'm wondering, as a consumer, how do
Speaker 1: we use that power to further this movement? You know,
Speaker 1: how do we make sure we're supporting the right kind
Speaker 1: of restaurants and companies and how do we know that
Speaker 1: it's going to help the situation. Yeah, so we've been
Speaker 1: actually thinking and working on that very question for a
Speaker 1: really long time because in our industry we observed consumers
Speaker 1: very visibly have a real impact on restaurants with regard
Speaker 1: to local and organic and sustainable food. I remember twenty
Speaker 1: years ago restaurants in New York saying I'll never be
Speaker 1: able to afford locally sourced organic food. And then before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, restaurants were jumping over each other to say
Speaker 1: they provided locally sourced organic food, whether or not they
Speaker 1: actually did. And a lot of that came about because
Speaker 1: consumers read, you know, Omnivor's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation
Speaker 1: and saw movies about the food system, and then went
Speaker 1: to restaurants and said is this local, is this organic?
Speaker 1: Is this vegetarian? And there's that great Portlandia sketch, which
Speaker 1: we always think of as our kind of ideal. I
Speaker 1: don't know if everybody's watches Portlandia. But there's that sketch
Speaker 1: where the couple goes in and asked the waitress, you know,
Speaker 1: is this chicken organic? Did it have friends? What was
Speaker 1: its name? Did one chicken put their arm around the
Speaker 1: other chicken? Um? Calling the chicken that was it? And
Speaker 1: just imagine if consumers did the same thing to ask
Speaker 1: the manager is this server paid? Just imagine if the
Speaker 1: customer did the same thing to say, how come there
Speaker 1: are no people of color in the dining floor. There's
Speaker 1: plenty of people in the color in the kitchen. Um.
Speaker 1: Just imagine if they said, does everybody here have paid
Speaker 1: sickly even hazard pay? The kind of impact that could have.
Speaker 1: So we spent a lot of time looking at the sustainable, local,
Speaker 1: organic food movement and saying, not only how could we
Speaker 1: replicate that consumer activity, but also how could we expand
Speaker 1: the definition of sustainable food to include sustainable wages and
Speaker 1: working conditions for the people in the food system. And
Speaker 1: we created a Diner's Guide, an app that tells you
Speaker 1: which restaurants are doing the right thing. Every year, we're
Speaker 1: giving out awards to restaurants doing the right thing. We
Speaker 1: even created videos to show consumers how to walk into
Speaker 1: a restaurant or eat and at the end of the
Speaker 1: your meal, go up to your manager and say, I
Speaker 1: love the food here, love the service, but I actually
Speaker 1: would love to see you get a gold or silver
Speaker 1: award in this app. I'd love to see you pay
Speaker 1: livable wages. I'd love to see you do X, Y
Speaker 1: and Z. We have the app you can see it
Speaker 1: on in your app stores called RC National Diners Guide.
Speaker 1: But the pandemic happened, and a lot of those restaurants
Speaker 1: that have got a words in that app are now,
Speaker 1: you know, on the on the brink. The biggest impact
Speaker 1: you can have as consumers is to say to your
Speaker 1: elected officials, it's outrageous I refuse to continue to subsidize
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar corporations by paying their workers wages with my tips.
Speaker 1: It's outrageous I refuse to put my own public health
Speaker 1: at risk because the state or the city refuses to
Speaker 1: require paid sickly or paid family leave or hazard pay
Speaker 1: for these workers. So yes, we need you to absolutely
Speaker 1: effectuate change as consumers. But us consumers have power not
Speaker 1: just to effectuate that change with restaurants or businesses, but
Speaker 1: also with the people who represent you and those businesses.
Speaker 1: They value employers voices over everybody else, and the way
Speaker 1: that changes is by them hearing from consumers and workers
Speaker 1: as much as they hear from the Restaurant Association and
Speaker 1: big business and even small business. Sorry, I like that
Speaker 1: inspired a thought, which is if we form some kind
Speaker 1: of national Residents Association maybe the other other nr A
Speaker 1: to counter the other nr A lobbying for the people. Michelle,
Speaker 1: I want to give you a chance to quickly weigh
Speaker 1: in on what consumers and purchasers could do, and I
Speaker 1: want to get to at least one more question. We
Speaker 1: have someone waiting. Yeah, actually I just plus one everything
Speaker 1: sort of said to save time, and also tell you
Speaker 1: that there's a platform called spender rise that kind of
Speaker 1: mirrors what we do, but they do it on the
Speaker 1: consumer side, and where consumers can commit to spend money
Speaker 1: based on an employer making changes at the company that
Speaker 1: they're targeting. So I would suggest you check that out
Speaker 1: and get involved in spend rise. Spend Rise. Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: thank you. Next, and I think finally we're going to
Speaker 1: go to Sarah. Thank you very much for taking my
Speaker 1: question on air. I appreciate it. So in light of
Speaker 1: the things we're just talking about, and also the vision
Speaker 1: that you have. I'm interested in knowing whether there has
Speaker 1: been discussion of organizing a large scale general strike of
Speaker 1: as many workers as possible by your organizations or others
Speaker 1: that may be aware of UH in response to these
Speaker 1: compounded public health crises of systemic poverty, the pandemic itself,
Speaker 1: environmental devastation at large, and kind of how we're seeing
Speaker 1: the hollowing out of many of the system's folks have
Speaker 1: counted on or support when crises hit. If this is
Speaker 1: going to continue to happen, which ecologists, economists and others
Speaker 1: are saying it likely, is the workers collective power maybe
Speaker 1: the only real response. But I'm curious there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion of that. Sarah Nelson from the Flight
Speaker 1: Attendants Union essentially stop the government shut down by threatening
Speaker 1: a strike by airline employees, which sparked this conversation about
Speaker 1: general strike. I think that general strike is very challenging
Speaker 1: to put a pull off, and what people need is
Speaker 1: practice and building the muscles of really creating situations of
Speaker 1: collective care in order to be able to sustain the
Speaker 1: length of time that is required for a general strike.
Speaker 1: And so what I think we see workers doing right
Speaker 1: now is act really preparation for being able to engage
Speaker 1: in some kind of large scale walk out. I will
Speaker 1: also say that today we launched the Coworker Solidarity Fund,
Speaker 1: which we're piloting in the tech industry of the tech workers,
Speaker 1: where workers are raising funds to support people engaging in
Speaker 1: worker actions like walk out, some strikes, and other things,
Speaker 1: so that that's sort of crowdfunded within the company. Workers
Speaker 1: who make a little bit more money or people from
Speaker 1: the general public can contribute to the fund, so that
Speaker 1: when workers on other lower ends of the supply chain
Speaker 1: decided to take these actions, they're not bearing the financial
Speaker 1: burden and brunt of that all by themselves, but that
Speaker 1: there's something to supplement that. So I feel like we're
Speaker 1: all kind of getting the little pieces in place to
Speaker 1: make these kinds of things more possible. I just want
Speaker 1: to add that that is why I wanted to show
Speaker 1: you that twenty four ft Elena the Essential Workers Statute,
Speaker 1: because we're hoping she's the new Rosie the Riveter. We're
Speaker 1: working with an essential Worker coalition to get all the
Speaker 1: groups to use her and then to come together really
Speaker 1: to poton a general strike absolutely, that's absolutely the way
Speaker 1: we're thinking. I think that some of the most inspiring
Speaker 1: organizing work by independent contractors has been done through like
Speaker 1: groups like the Gig Workers Collective and Gig Workers Rising,
Speaker 1: these uber and lift drivers and people who work for
Speaker 1: instat Card and Postmates and all of these app based
Speaker 1: delivery models where the technology makes it really possible to
Speaker 1: enact incredible amounts of control over all of the actions
Speaker 1: that the worker takes. But then they sort of have
Speaker 1: this plausible deniability being like, well, it's flexible, so you're
Speaker 1: not really unemployee, and they've they've been able to really
Speaker 1: get away with not providing people with their basic rights.
Speaker 1: I would just add that there's a super exciting thing
Speaker 1: happening in California. We had about thirty five thousand workers
Speaker 1: apply to our relief fund, both gig workers, independent contractors,
Speaker 1: and restaurant workers, and they are coming together now to
Speaker 1: form a worker own kind of entity that we hope
Speaker 1: would be a compare editor in this space to the
Speaker 1: uber eats and the door dashes and the lifts um. So,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think there is an opportunity
Speaker 1: that sometimes the right goes too far and they end
Speaker 1: up creating opportunities for us UM and by basically disavowing
Speaker 1: these workers as their own employees, these workers are therefore
Speaker 1: free to put their skills together and maybe create a
Speaker 1: high road alternative to the uber eats and the door
Speaker 1: dashes through worker ownership. That could be a model, You're
Speaker 1: right to other sectors of more traditional employees. So we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about worker ownership at all today, but there
Speaker 1: is this huge moment of opportunity with the quarter of
Speaker 1: the country that's unemployed. As Michelle said, to think about
Speaker 1: people actually creating their own worker owned spaces at scale.
Speaker 1: And I'll just tell you one last thing. There are
Speaker 1: two worker own restaurant and catering companies in the world
Speaker 1: that exceed a hundred thousand workers. One is in Italy
Speaker 1: and one is in India. The one in Italy started
Speaker 1: in a severe economic depression in northern Italy and has
Speaker 1: become the third largest catering company in all of Europe.
Speaker 1: And so it is totally possible for workers to band
Speaker 1: together in moments like this of severe economic depression and
Speaker 1: create something entirely new that could revolutionize the way we
Speaker 1: think about work. Michelle Sarru, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: helping us reimagine workers and power and the balance thereof
Speaker 1: in our economy, and helping us see ourselves as not
Speaker 1: objects but agents of the economy. That's the thing that's
Speaker 1: gonna stick with me. I'm going to sleep on a
Speaker 1: lot of this, but you provided some solid examples. You
Speaker 1: diagnose the problem, and you pointed a really nice way out,
Speaker 1: many ways out in fact. So we appreciate your generosity
Speaker 1: and thanks for interacting with us showing us how to citizens.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. It's great to be with all
Speaker 1: of you. Hey you, it's just us again in our
Speaker 1: private Baritune day listener moment. I want to turn it
Speaker 1: over to you. Now it's your turn to citizen. We've
Speaker 1: gotten fired up, we're ready to go. Michelle and Saru
Speaker 1: dropped a lot of knowledge on us, and now it's
Speaker 1: time to practice citizen ng and put it to work ourselves.
Speaker 1: You can find all of these actions at how to
Speaker 1: citizen dot com in much more detail than I'm going
Speaker 1: to lay out right now. As always, there are two
Speaker 1: categories of things you can do, the internal work and
Speaker 1: the external work. Internally, here's a set of questions I
Speaker 1: want you to ask yourself thinking of yourself as a worker. First,
Speaker 1: there is the value I create for people in my community, society,
Speaker 1: or environment accurately reflected in how I'm compensated as a
Speaker 1: work or do I feel represented and protected by my
Speaker 1: HR department? If I experience my employer violating my rights
Speaker 1: or someone else's, Do I know the rules the process
Speaker 1: where the law stands on that? And a bit more
Speaker 1: arter sense, how does the consolidation of power in the
Speaker 1: hands of a fewer number of corporations? How does that
Speaker 1: affect me? Can I think of any ways that that
Speaker 1: shows up in my life? Externally? Here are three things
Speaker 1: you can actually do when you frequent local restaurant or business.
Speaker 1: I want you to ask management about how they're treating
Speaker 1: their workers. Asked, are they on a minimum wage and
Speaker 1: what is that? Ask if they get paid sick leave?
Speaker 1: Ask if this business promotes people from within? Are the
Speaker 1: opportunities for advancement Internally? There's an app I want you
Speaker 1: to put on your phone. It's called Rock National Diners
Speaker 1: Guide r o C. It's available for iOS and androids,
Speaker 1: so we've got pretty much everybody covered, and you can
Speaker 1: think of it like a YELP for local restaurants with
Speaker 1: a focus on labor rights. Check out that app. Find
Speaker 1: restaurants with the good ratings in your area, support them.
Speaker 1: If a restaurant you love isn't there, add them to
Speaker 1: the platform, get them registered in this database and ask
Speaker 1: them about their practices. Again, they'll see your demand and
Speaker 1: they'll adjust how they serve you and how they treat
Speaker 1: their workers in response. Finally, there's always efforts under way
Speaker 1: that you can join and support, and I want to
Speaker 1: hit you with a couple. There's a fund that's run
Speaker 1: by one Fair Wage SUS group. It's the one Fair
Speaker 1: Wage COVID Relief Fund. Find and support that. Coworker dot
Speaker 1: org also has a solidarity fund that we encourage you
Speaker 1: to contribute to and share. Finally, we are big in
Speaker 1: this show in thinking of ourselves not just as individuals,
Speaker 1: but as more empowered when we think as a collective,
Speaker 1: and that's really powerful in our role as consumers. So
Speaker 1: check out spend rise dot com and support an existing
Speaker 1: consumer campaign aim or start one based on the principles
Speaker 1: you've heard about in this episode. Again, those links are
Speaker 1: available at how to citizen dot com with a lot
Speaker 1: more detail around these actions and if you take any
Speaker 1: one of them, we want to hear about it, so
Speaker 1: send an email to action at how to citizen dot com.
Speaker 1: Help us out by putting the word work in the
Speaker 1: subject line. And if you want to tell the world too,
Speaker 1: we encourage that as well, so just use the hashtag
Speaker 1: how to citizen. That will help us find it and
Speaker 1: lift up your efforts in the process. You can follow
Speaker 1: Saru jayar Rolan on Twitter at s A R you
Speaker 1: j A y A R A M A M and
Speaker 1: Michelle I. Miller on Twitter as well. That's Michelle M
Speaker 1: I c h E L L E the letter I
Speaker 1: and then Miller M I double L E R one,
Speaker 1: fair wage dot com and co worker dot org. As always,
Speaker 1: if you are digging this show, let the platforms know
Speaker 1: with a positive rating and a review. And if you
Speaker 1: want to stay in touch and get updates directly from me,
Speaker 1: I've got something special for you. Text me two oh
Speaker 1: to eight nine four eight eight four or four, put
Speaker 1: the words citizen in the text, and you'll get alerted
Speaker 1: to future tapings. You'll get to chat back and forth
Speaker 1: with me, and you have a chance to find out
Speaker 1: more about the how to Citizen universe and about my
Speaker 1: own world. How to Citizen with Barrettuon Day is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio Podcasts. Executive produced by Miles Gray,
Speaker 1: Nick Stump, Elizabeth Stewart, and barretton Day Thursty, Produced by
Speaker 1: Joe L. Smith, Edited by Justin Smith. Powered by You