Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Get Happened Here, a podcast about things falling
Speaker 2: apart and how to put them back together again. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Miya Loong. As the new regime settles in,
Speaker 2: we face a struggle on a thousand fronts. It's bewildering,
Speaker 2: it's terrifying. It's an offensive design to overwhelm us with
Speaker 2: the sheer totality of the horror. But its diversity is
Speaker 2: also our greatest advantage, because every struggle on every front
Speaker 2: brings us closer to victory. And that allows us and
Speaker 2: it allows you to pick a field and hold it.
Speaker 2: One of the most important fronts in the years to
Speaker 2: come is labor. Much of what is to come will
Speaker 2: be decided on the shop floor, and today we're talking
Speaker 2: about that. And with me to talk about that is
Speaker 2: fellow worker do you know and IWW PiZZ union organizer
Speaker 2: in Berkeley, and fellow worker Cole who is AWW Pizza
Speaker 2: union organizer in Portland, and both of you two, welcome
Speaker 2: to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1: Hello, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2: Me too, I'm excited to talk to you both. So
Speaker 2: this is a Pete's Coffee Union. We have talked to
Speaker 2: several other unions, but this was kind of personal to
Speaker 2: me because this is one of the sort of coffee
Speaker 2: things that my dad kind of grew up on, and
Speaker 2: I'm now now here to deliver wrath against them for
Speaker 2: their many crimes. So, yeah, let's start off with can
Speaker 2: we talk a bit about how these unions came together
Speaker 2: and what the sort of like beginning process of this
Speaker 2: organizing look like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the first store that organized actually was in Davis, California.
Speaker 4: They organized I think in twenty twenty two. They launched
Speaker 4: their public campaign at the end in winter, and then
Speaker 4: they voted for their election back in January twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: That's around the same time period where a lot of
Speaker 4: media was writing about their unionization process and a couple
Speaker 4: of the Bay area stores heard about it and started
Speaker 4: to meet together, and that's kind of where we started.
Speaker 4: We weren't IWW at the start, but we eventually started
Speaker 4: meeting with unions and chose IWW.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, So it was it was an independent thing
Speaker 2: that became ANWW.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: When we joined the IWW, we were basically fully organized
Speaker 4: to the extent that we were going to be. We
Speaker 4: already had our like committee set up, We had our
Speaker 4: meetings regularly. We had like Roberts rules and everything already implemented.
Speaker 2: That's so cool. Do you want to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about like what the sort of process of doing
Speaker 2: that initial organizing before you went to the unions looked,
Speaker 2: like how how everything sort of came together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when we started organizing, it was very secretive, and
Speaker 4: it was a little bit scary at the time because
Speaker 4: there was a lot of already kind of union busting
Speaker 4: from management. There was a lot of managers kind of
Speaker 4: like trying to overhear people were talking about the union
Speaker 4: or already instigating themselves.
Speaker 3: And asking like what do you think about unions?
Speaker 4: And it was a little bit scary to try to
Speaker 4: just like go up to coworkers and be like, hey,
Speaker 4: like are you interested in you know, hanging out after
Speaker 4: work and you know, talking shit about our like manager
Speaker 4: or something like that. And over time we eventually started
Speaker 4: doing like on one conversations with our coworkers and meeting together.
Speaker 4: Once we had our three stores that really were solidified,
Speaker 4: we had at least one person in each store that
Speaker 4: was like willing to like drive the campaign forward for
Speaker 4: moms in maybe even years as some of us have
Speaker 4: been around for that long now, we felt ready to
Speaker 4: kind of like start sending things into stone. So we
Speaker 4: had like meetings every single week and we had bi
Speaker 4: weekly meetings. At some point we had committee meetings, and
Speaker 4: people started to kind of select themselves into like social
Speaker 4: media or we had outreach, we had intakes, so other
Speaker 4: stores were also reaching out to us because there was
Speaker 4: like just secret kind of like people knew what was happening,
Speaker 4: people didn't want to say it out loud. Yeah, So
Speaker 4: it was just a lot of like hanging out, having
Speaker 4: socials and things like that that kind of like created
Speaker 4: the foundations for like personal relationships for organizing, and at
Speaker 4: the time, it was mostly just us complaining for a
Speaker 4: really long time until we were like, what if we
Speaker 4: did something about this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, What I think I'm curious about is like how large,
Speaker 2: roughly are these are these shops.
Speaker 1: There tends to be about twelve to sixteen workers at
Speaker 1: each shop. So I think the biggest union shop that
Speaker 1: we have has sixteen workers in it. The shop that
Speaker 1: I work at is fairly small. We only have twelve
Speaker 1: workers right now, so fairly small. And I will say,
Speaker 1: just to give some context for the organizing process from
Speaker 1: my shop as well. Piece did not make it difficult
Speaker 1: to organize in terms of like the policies that they
Speaker 1: were pushing. Yeah, everyone was pissed off about how we
Speaker 1: were being treated, and so just sort of pushing people
Speaker 1: in one on one conversations to look for solutions rather
Speaker 1: than just bitching about it, which is great. That's where
Speaker 1: it all starts, right, Piece is pushing poor policies. They're
Speaker 1: cutting hours, that's one of the biggest thing. They're slicing
Speaker 1: our hours week after week, even as the volume of
Speaker 1: sales goes up, and so just being like, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want more hours, Like do you feel like it's
Speaker 1: fair for us to be staffed this way, Let's try
Speaker 1: to do something about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the staffing issues, this is one of the
Speaker 2: things we're talking to, I mean just people across sectors.
Speaker 2: It's really one of the it's one of the things
Speaker 2: that's the most obvious if you're working one of these jobs.
Speaker 2: And also somehow it's not something that ever gets talked
Speaker 2: about in the mainstream at all, Like it it's never
Speaker 2: a part of the discourse that you know, you don't
Speaker 2: have a set number of hours that you're going to work.
Speaker 2: You don't know when you're going to work them. And
Speaker 2: also you know, there's no guarantee that you're going to
Speaker 2: get to work enough hours to actually survive. And then
Speaker 2: also the entire condition of labor, like every sector is
Speaker 2: just chronic. It's just chronic underscheduling and chronic understaffing of everything,
Speaker 2: and you know, and that ranges from like coffee shops,
Speaker 2: like hospitals to schools to like everyone has decided that
Speaker 2: the way that you manage things is by by chronically
Speaker 2: overworking everyone and trying to pay people as little as
Speaker 2: possible by not giving them hours. You can talk a
Speaker 2: little bit more about about the kind of the actual
Speaker 2: effects of the understaffing and how that sort of drove
Speaker 2: people into the campaign.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would be more than happy to. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the sort of primary catalysts for organizing for
Speaker 1: our shop was the introduction of Uber Eats. So when
Speaker 1: I first started working at the shop, it was around
Speaker 1: two years ago, they had just recently introduced door Dash,
Speaker 1: so previously, you know, obviously it started it was just
Speaker 1: a cafe people would come in and get their coffee.
Speaker 1: Later on they ended up introducing mobile orders through pete
Speaker 1: Zone ordering system, and then when the pandemic hit initially
Speaker 1: and everything locked down, they started doing door dash to
Speaker 1: try to continue having a revenue stream. Now, after more
Speaker 1: things started open up, they open the shop up again. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they continued to have door Dash because it brings in
Speaker 1: a lot of revenue for them, and then without really
Speaker 1: any fore warning and certainly without any increase in staffing
Speaker 1: for us, they introduced uberre eats, which is a similar
Speaker 1: amount of volume increase, a similar amount of orders increase
Speaker 1: as door Dash, Like we're probably getting at peak like
Speaker 1: thirty forty drinks per hour in addition to what we're
Speaker 1: getting in store from door Dash and uber eats.
Speaker 2: That's a drink every like subtube minutes, yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 1: And we are expected to crank these out at less
Speaker 1: than three minutes in order, and that's per order, So
Speaker 1: an order might have like five drinks if it's DoorDash
Speaker 1: or uber eats, where in particular, people will order a
Speaker 1: lot of things at a time, because it seems like
Speaker 1: using these sort of apps and stuff, people will order
Speaker 1: much more egregious things, much larger orders than they do
Speaker 1: when they're in store. And so everyone's really annoyed about
Speaker 1: this just like, Okay, all of a sudden, we have
Speaker 1: all this extra work to do. They're not increasing our
Speaker 1: hours at all.
Speaker 2: You're not getting paid more either, well.
Speaker 1: Certainly not. And we don't get tips from that either.
Speaker 2: Oh Jesus, you don't get tipped from me?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No, I mean like, wait, oh, the chips all go
Speaker 2: to the drivers.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, I won't. Like, that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2: For the drivers, but you should get paid too.
Speaker 1: But it's like Uber who's taking the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the money from that and piece and so us and
Speaker 1: the drivers are both getting screwed over by this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we both have to do all the sextraneous work.
Speaker 1: So people were super fucking irritated about that, myself included
Speaker 1: for sure. And that really got people going with like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do about this? How can
Speaker 1: we try to push them to staff us better? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it seems like the incentive struckures for these delivery
Speaker 1: services add up really badly in terms of like the
Speaker 1: way that incenters people to order, because you know, you
Speaker 1: have these like minimums on the amount of like stuff
Speaker 1: you have to order to get below like there's all
Speaker 1: this you know, all those like threshold stuff of like
Speaker 1: if you do this, you get free delivery. You spend
Speaker 1: this much, you get blah blah blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: so that. Yeah, it seems like the sort of perfect
Speaker 1: Mailstrom for producing even more work. Yeah. And I will
Speaker 1: say this is that they like to push out promotions
Speaker 1: to people of like buy one, get one free, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing for like our PiZZ location constantly, and
Speaker 1: they they never tell us about it. So, you know,
Speaker 1: one day, we'll just be getting like five large mochas
Speaker 1: and like six different orders, and we're like, why are
Speaker 1: we getting five large mochas and all of these orders,
Speaker 1: And someone pulls up the door Dash app and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because there's like a half off if you get
Speaker 1: more than four mochas or you know something like that.
Speaker 1: It's just like, we never hear about this until it's
Speaker 1: actually happening. Yeah. And that's the case both for door
Speaker 1: Dash newber Eats, but also for just like internal pizza promotions,
Speaker 1: Like we tend not to hear about any of these
Speaker 1: things until we are on the shop floor working and
Speaker 1: people are asking us about it. Customers are asking us
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like the way that the integration of
Speaker 2: these apps into these business models is working. As it's
Speaker 2: just every every single thing they do just compounds the
Speaker 2: amount of work you have to do and compounds how
Speaker 2: awful the experience is, and speak speaking about how awful
Speaker 2: the experience is. Unfortunately, we are a podcast sponsored by ads,
Speaker 2: so go experience them or don't. I don't know. There's
Speaker 2: a if you have Apple, there's a there's a thing
Speaker 2: you can get called cold as that media where you
Speaker 2: don't have ads. De Android one. I don't even know
Speaker 2: what I'm legally allowed to say about that shit, but
Speaker 2: oh my god, it is the biggest legal clusterfuck I've
Speaker 2: ever seen in my entire life. We're gonna leave it
Speaker 2: at there, but we'll try it. We're doing our best.
Speaker 2: We are so back. Yeah, so let's go into other
Speaker 2: of their buried crimes.
Speaker 3: Oh man, where do I even start?
Speaker 4: So Pete, the second they found out that we were organizing,
Speaker 4: launched like their worst union busting campaign they could have
Speaker 4: ever imagined, wasting so much money.
Speaker 2: Oh god.
Speaker 4: Right after we went public, the first big thing that
Speaker 4: they messed up on was they took me off the
Speaker 4: schedule indefinitely and we had to like foule a whole
Speaker 4: unfair labor practice about it.
Speaker 3: An unfair labor practice is a.
Speaker 4: Charge with the National Labor Relations Board, and we claimed
Speaker 4: that they were being retaliatory. And at the time it
Speaker 4: was very clear that management thought I was a key organizer.
Speaker 4: I was very public and vocal about being a union
Speaker 4: member at the time, everyone was. But for some reason
Speaker 4: they signaled me out. That was one part of how
Speaker 4: they messed up. But they eventually put me back on
Speaker 4: the schedule, apologize, gave me back pay.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and we withdrew that.
Speaker 4: We withdrew the ULPE because they're like, all right, I
Speaker 4: guess it fixed itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing that happens. By the way, like
Speaker 2: if you're submitting an o fair labor practice and the
Speaker 2: company resolves it, you don't actually have to. And this
Speaker 2: is actually one of the things about up sometimes is
Speaker 2: that like neither you nor your employer wants to go
Speaker 2: sit in front of the National Labor Relations Board and
Speaker 2: like do a whole thing. So like sometimes you can
Speaker 2: get them to resolve it just by like just by
Speaker 2: the thread of it, and then you don't actually have
Speaker 2: to go sit in front of the Natural Labor relations
Speaker 2: board because they've done the thing they're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: So note for all you people out there who are
Speaker 2: considering file like one piece.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, just stack them up and sometimes that's
Speaker 4: enough to put pressure, especially for smaller businesses or people
Speaker 4: who just like especially corporations that don't necessarily have experience
Speaker 4: of union investing quite yet. Yeah, So at the time,
Speaker 4: that worked, and within a week I had my drop
Speaker 4: back and everything, And that was right after we had filed,
Speaker 4: which meant that if for some reason I wasn't put
Speaker 4: back on the schedule, I would have been gone leading
Speaker 4: up until the election, which would have been really bad
Speaker 4: in terms of you know, having those one on ones
Speaker 4: with coworkers making sure everyone was connected.
Speaker 2: I just I just want to mention here, like, it
Speaker 2: is illegal to fire someone for union organizing, Like it's
Speaker 2: not the most easily enforced thing, but they legally cannot
Speaker 2: do that. So just note for all the people who
Speaker 2: are listening to unte episodes for the first time, they
Speaker 2: can't do that. And if they do it, you can,
Speaker 2: you can launch campaigns and you can sort of force
Speaker 2: them to do it. But yeah, just this is the
Speaker 2: mea labor note of the episode.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, and I think especially something that's very IWW
Speaker 4: of how we reacted to that situation was that my
Speaker 4: coworkers were also just like being really like annoying to
Speaker 4: the manager and being like, what happened to Dino? Why
Speaker 4: aren't they at work? Like what's going on? And I
Speaker 4: think that internal pressure also made it really uncomfortable for
Speaker 4: management to realize how much that had fucked up, how
Speaker 4: much my coworkers were willing to have my back. There's
Speaker 4: definitely more talk of like actual direct action in other
Speaker 4: ways that eventually like we actually didn't do because I
Speaker 4: got my my hours back, so that was really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then yeah, so that was still within the first
Speaker 4: few weeks of when we filed our paperwork to have
Speaker 4: an election with the NLRB to be a certified shop
Speaker 4: according to the government. Not that that's always important, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's something that we.
Speaker 2: Wanted, especially as regime unfolds. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, it's really it's a really tough position, especially
Speaker 4: because I mean, we're we're IWW members, and I know
Speaker 4: that there's definitely an internal debate of whether or not,
Speaker 4: you know, contractual agreements versus direct action, but there's always
Speaker 4: the options to both a combination divers the fire tactics.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so that happened. They also hired a union buster.
Speaker 2: Of course they did.
Speaker 4: Now according to LM reports from the government that they
Speaker 4: have to file, they spent over one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: in like a span of like two weeks to hire
Speaker 4: this union investor.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't the way.
Speaker 4: And it's like a report that you file with the
Speaker 4: I think forgetting which department it is.
Speaker 1: But is it the OLM, the Office of Labor and Management.
Speaker 4: Think you Yeah, So they are required to file that
Speaker 4: by I think March thirtieth of the following year for
Speaker 4: like fiscal reasons. So we finally got those documents this
Speaker 4: previous year. So they did spend a lot of money.
Speaker 4: And this guy who is just basically messing with us
Speaker 4: for like two weeks, and he was, you know, trying
Speaker 4: to be super helpful answer any questions about the union
Speaker 4: and like tell people that the union was you know,
Speaker 4: like racist, not for them, or that the union was exclusionary,
Speaker 4: or that unions cost a lot of money. And thankfully
Speaker 4: that didn't work. We won all of our elections, but
Speaker 4: leading up to them, it definitely kind of morale dropped
Speaker 4: a lot. People felt a little bit they were questioning
Speaker 4: whether or not it was the right decision we made
Speaker 4: to unionize in their first place, because it seemed like
Speaker 4: this was just the start of Pete's just messing with
Speaker 4: us because they care on and it didn't seem like
Speaker 4: there was much that we could have done in that
Speaker 4: situation other than try to maybe have fun with the
Speaker 4: union buster and mess with him.
Speaker 3: But even then that still wasn't like.
Speaker 4: Enough to kind of out the fact that like people
Speaker 4: were just being messed with at work and they couldn't
Speaker 4: literally leave, like there was someone like on the floor
Speaker 4: asking them questions about their you know, activity.
Speaker 3: With the union.
Speaker 4: And even though now we know it's like illegal and
Speaker 4: we could have filed unfairly were practices on that at
Speaker 4: the time, we just didn't do it.
Speaker 3: And now we're learning about it.
Speaker 4: But that's something I definitely wish we knew and stood
Speaker 4: up for a little bit more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you tell a little bit about what the
Speaker 2: specific thing was, so that if people are like experiencing
Speaker 2: it themselves, they can know what they can do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So management shouldn't be asking for your like affiliation
Speaker 4: within like a union. They're not allowed to ask or
Speaker 4: make assumptions about it, So like if I'm a manager,
Speaker 4: I'm not allowed to like go up to me and
Speaker 4: be like, hey, do you know, like since you're in
Speaker 4: the union, like what is the union.
Speaker 3: Doing about X, Y and Z? Like that's not an
Speaker 3: appropriate question.
Speaker 4: And there's definitely times where, like my own manager asked
Speaker 4: me questions like that and I definitely had to like, hey,
Speaker 4: like this is actually like not appropriate for you to do,
Speaker 4: Like I don't feel comfortable with this. But that's not
Speaker 4: always the case, and some workers definitely were like disclosing
Speaker 4: private and confidential information about the union to management, and
Speaker 4: it was really hard to make sure that every worker
Speaker 4: felt comfortable. And they definitely picked out workers based on
Speaker 4: you know, like social like personalities and things like that,
Speaker 4: which is really disheartening to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really scummy. And I think morale is a traadeous
Speaker 2: struggle and that's one of the things here too, where
Speaker 2: it's like a lot of these efforts are just attempts
Speaker 2: to make everyone in a workplace miserable and to make
Speaker 2: people sort of too depressed and too despondent to sort
Speaker 2: of organize, and a lot of that. Yeah, again, it
Speaker 2: is like it's stuff you can organize against and stuff
Speaker 2: that like they're not allowed to do and whether or
Speaker 2: not they're going to be able to do it. It
Speaker 2: is a function of labor regulation, and labor law is
Speaker 2: not something that's enforced by the government. It's something that's
Speaker 2: enforced by you, as enforced by the people around you.
Speaker 2: And so you know, like the law can sometimes help
Speaker 2: and sometimes dozens. It's useful to cite to management. It's
Speaker 2: useful because it makes them think that there's like the
Speaker 2: full power of the state behind you or whatever. But
Speaker 2: like in terms of how you deal with this stuff,
Speaker 2: it is something that is enforced by you and by
Speaker 2: how organized you are, and by how organized your shop
Speaker 2: floor is, and by how who organize your community is.
Speaker 2: And that's something that's I think important for people to
Speaker 2: understand when you're forming your own unions, which you should
Speaker 2: also go do because you can just do it. I
Speaker 2: said it before and I'll say it again, Like the
Speaker 2: people who organize unions are just regular.
Speaker 1: People like you person, dear listener, So you can do
Speaker 1: this too. What they say it's like a union is
Speaker 1: just to workers talking to each other. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: just to expand on that point, a little bit. Like
Speaker 1: the NLRB is quite understaffed, and it will be more
Speaker 1: understaffed almost certainly as the Trump administration, you know, gets
Speaker 1: deeper into gutting the entirety of the government. It already
Speaker 1: takes months, two years to get unfair labor practice filings
Speaker 1: resolved for the NLRB to do most things. So that
Speaker 1: is a core tenet of the IWW is actually taking
Speaker 1: action on the shop floor. Yeah, Like that is the
Speaker 1: key aspect to unionism as a whole. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the great parts about the IWW is that
Speaker 1: it actually acknowledges that the power comes from the workers.
Speaker 1: It doesn't come from laws. The laws only came because
Speaker 1: workers were pushing for things on the shop floor in
Speaker 1: the first place. So it's like, let's get back to
Speaker 1: the root of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like the NLRB, We've talked about this on the
Speaker 2: ship before, but the National Labor Relations Act, I think
Speaker 2: that the established National Labor Relations Board like that that
Speaker 2: was part of effectively like a truce that was enforced
Speaker 2: by by the government because as a way to have
Speaker 2: like labor unions stop being armed and stop getting into
Speaker 2: shootouts with bosses. So yeah, it is as as as
Speaker 2: this framework comes apart, it is important to remember like
Speaker 2: why we had this in the first place, which was
Speaker 2: union militias would occasionally start, like small scale civil wars
Speaker 2: in the US with bosses over stuff, people in shoot
Speaker 2: canons at each other, and we're sort of distant from
Speaker 2: that period. But there's also another thing about direct action,
Speaker 2: which is that, yeah, it's hard to organize, but also
Speaker 2: like quite frankly, with the way that the NLRB is
Speaker 2: functioning right now, like the time to organize that A
Speaker 2: makes a union better and B is going to be
Speaker 2: faster than the NLRB right now. So yeah, this is
Speaker 2: this is this is your practical We have your ideological pitch.
Speaker 2: We have your practical pitch for direct action, which is
Speaker 2: that it's quick. Unfortunately, the other thing that's quick is
Speaker 2: the approach of this AD break. Here's ads. We are back.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about sort of what's happening right now
Speaker 2: with the union, how things are going, and what management
Speaker 2: has been doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so right now, I mean we're dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of the same issues as we have been dealing with.
Speaker 1: The staffing issue is only continuing to be worse.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we are trying to get.
Speaker 1: Initially is schedules further out right, now we get them
Speaker 1: two weeks out, more consistent scheduling, more scheduling, obviously better wages,
Speaker 1: better benefits, you know, all of these sort of things,
Speaker 1: and those are only continuing to get worse, and so
Speaker 1: we are continuing to try to think about tactics strategies
Speaker 1: to counter that right to give us more power. So
Speaker 1: we're both doing direct actions and trying to push for
Speaker 1: a contract right now. Now. One of the big difficulties
Speaker 1: is that Pizza has basically hired this law firm to
Speaker 1: do the contract negotiations on their behalf, and the law
Speaker 1: firm is basically stonewalling us, like they are responding to
Speaker 1: the emails, but basically by just kicking the can down
Speaker 1: the road yep, yep, and trying to not actually come
Speaker 1: to the bargaining table. And so it's this very frustrating
Speaker 1: thing of like how do we actually get them to
Speaker 1: come to the bargaining table. And that's definitely still something
Speaker 1: that we're wrestling with and that we're working on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't know if you have any more to add to that,
Speaker 1: do you know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I no, I think another thing that's kind of
Speaker 4: on everyone's mind is that a group of us got
Speaker 4: ridden up for another direct action that we did back
Speaker 4: in October, and then we got ridden up like the
Speaker 4: week of Thanksgiving and holidays and finals for most of
Speaker 4: us that were students, so that kind of just dropped
Speaker 4: morale and activity. And because of the holidays, people were
Speaker 4: either kind of not paying attention or just organizing. Activity
Speaker 4: tends to just drop during no holidays.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people are just a little bit of checks out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people check out, People go home, and especially for
Speaker 4: like us in like food service, retail, like a lot
Speaker 4: of people are kind of just like around for school.
Speaker 4: So my location were like a few blocks away from
Speaker 4: UC Berkeley, so most of the students like go home
Speaker 4: and they're not going to like log into zoom for
Speaker 4: thirty minute union meeting and like hear what's like you know,
Speaker 4: the most recent like check ins that we need to do.
Speaker 4: So that is a little bit frustrating that Pet's definitely
Speaker 4: wrote us up right at the perfect time that where
Speaker 4: activity kind of drops. So they're adapting, they're learning a
Speaker 4: little bit more, and it's kind of it's really frustrating.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I know a group of us, including me
Speaker 4: got ridden up for something, and it was just a
Speaker 4: blanket discipline and it started restricting all of our abilities
Speaker 4: to cover shifts, to swap shifts, to pick up hours,
Speaker 4: to call out, and they restrict everything so badly, and
Speaker 4: then are also like final warnings and there's no like
Speaker 4: period in which all these made up rules that they're
Speaker 4: making kind of end. I'm just like waiting to hear
Speaker 4: when my manager decides to like stop punishing me, which
Speaker 4: is like obviously very personal. And that's like really worries
Speaker 4: some because we tried to file agreements with pets. According
Speaker 4: to what they told us, all our district managers were like, yeah,
Speaker 4: file agreements with HR, we'll discuss it there.
Speaker 3: And then we did that.
Speaker 4: We filed agreements, we all signed on and then management
Speaker 4: turned around and was like, actually, you haven't bargained for
Speaker 4: a grievance procedure, so we actually don't care about this
Speaker 4: and unless it's legally mandated, we won't listen to you. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so now we're again stuck between like we want to bargain,
Speaker 4: we want to go to the table, we want to
Speaker 4: meet with Pete's, but they are creating these made up
Speaker 4: rules on how they want to bargain and meet with us,
Speaker 4: and they're unwilling to cooperate with us. There's like five
Speaker 4: public shops and they're like not willing to meet with us.
Speaker 4: At the same time, that actually makes no sense. We
Speaker 4: have like the same bargaining team members for all our shops.
Speaker 4: We're in the one big union. Like, it doesn't make
Speaker 4: any sense that they're trying to I mean, it makes
Speaker 4: perfect sense for management to try to divide us, but
Speaker 4: it's what the workers want to be in one contract
Speaker 4: to you know, be able to do like one grievance
Speaker 4: and like you know, go against management together. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it's like a really annoying thing and it's really frustrating
Speaker 4: to not really know exactly what our next is.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is something that I think both unied
Speaker 2: organizers and management knows, which is that the first place
Speaker 2: that unions fail is trying to get the vote, trying
Speaker 2: to get to which is trying to get enough people
Speaker 2: organized around the sort of campaign. So the second place
Speaker 2: that they fail is before the first contract or trying
Speaker 2: to negotiate the first contract. And so every company just
Speaker 2: like tries to draw the shit out as long as
Speaker 2: humanly possible, like it took us god, I think, but
Speaker 2: two years in bargaining and that's like not even that
Speaker 2: like for a first contract. I mean, that's like bad,
Speaker 2: but it's not even as bad as it can get.
Speaker 2: And there's the other aspect of it too that you've
Speaker 2: been talking about, which is that the way that companies
Speaker 2: break union is just terror. Right, It's just it's just
Speaker 2: a terror campaign. It is it is it is a
Speaker 2: campaign to inflict sort of fear and suffering on people.
Speaker 2: And the fact that this is the way that the
Speaker 2: system works that you know, there are a bunch of
Speaker 2: people in power who are to the way that they're
Speaker 2: attempting to keep their power is just through fear and
Speaker 2: through like inflicting pain on people is just ghastly. And
Speaker 2: if you want to sort of take a step back
Speaker 2: and go like why is everything like this, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: that's because because that's what this entire system is built on.
Speaker 2: It has always been built on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think in terms of countering that, one
Speaker 1: thing that I definitely want to call for from all
Speaker 1: of my fellow baristas out there is to organize your
Speaker 1: own shops, right, Like that is the key thing. The
Speaker 1: more people that we have pushing for better rights for
Speaker 1: workers in the workplace, whether that's through a contract or not,
Speaker 1: the more effective it's going to be. And it's when
Speaker 1: we feel alone and isolated that their terror is most effective.
Speaker 1: It's when we're together that it is the least effective.
Speaker 1: That they are the most scared by our tactics. So
Speaker 1: just keep pushing for it. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that the Starbucks campaign showed us.
Speaker 1: You know it. They still don't have their first contract, sure,
Speaker 1: but they're so much closer now, Like over what is
Speaker 1: it like almost three years down the road with over
Speaker 1: five hundred shops organized than they were when those first
Speaker 1: shops organized in Buffalo. And that's due to that persistence
Speaker 1: and due to having more weight on our side. So
Speaker 1: please organize, do it. That's just my little call for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a snowball rolling down the hills. Like the
Speaker 2: more the more shops are organized, the more that will
Speaker 2: convince other shops to organize. And the larger that snowball is,
Speaker 2: the harder it is to stop its momentum. But what
Speaker 2: do you think the next steps are going to be
Speaker 2: for this campaign? If you can actually talk about it
Speaker 2: in terms of like putting pressure on the company in
Speaker 2: terms of like drawing other people in in terms of
Speaker 2: like what's going on in the shops.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think one of the main things that we
Speaker 4: think that we've been really quiet about is how much
Speaker 4: do you need thing they've been doing and just talking
Speaker 4: to the public about that. I think part of why
Speaker 4: we're here today also is it's going to help with
Speaker 4: that a lot of people, especially when people were calling
Speaker 4: for boycott's on Starbucks, We're like, okay, we'll go to Petez.
Speaker 4: Then they're like the good company, And I think Peetz
Speaker 4: gets away with a lot because they have that kind
Speaker 4: of protection of like, oh, they were a small company
Speaker 4: from Berkeley and they're you know, still in the Bay Area.
Speaker 4: They're so small. Now they have like so many shops
Speaker 4: like across the world. They're like an international conglomerate. They're
Speaker 4: part of like a large holding company. They got bought
Speaker 4: out like over ten years ago, and the quality has
Speaker 4: been declining. They treat their workers like shit, we don't
Speaker 4: get any raises anymore unless it's like minimum wage increases
Speaker 4: are mandated by law. So a company that maybe was
Speaker 4: right and was maybe a little bit better is now
Speaker 4: like just going downhill, and I think people still like
Speaker 4: pride them themselves and being like a petnick and being
Speaker 4: a customer and being part of this like weird sub
Speaker 4: culture of coffee that is no longer kind of there's
Speaker 4: just like it's just not what it was back when
Speaker 4: it was created like in the sixties in Berkeley. It's
Speaker 4: not it's not the same and it can't go back
Speaker 4: to that anymore, just now with the way that they're
Speaker 4: union busting, not with the way that they're just cutting
Speaker 4: the quality of everything and over like yeah, everything the
Speaker 4: expectation of us and in other ways that they do
Speaker 4: is just not sustainable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you can see that it's not the
Speaker 2: same company by just like oh yeah, hey, they've you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, and this is this is this is not
Speaker 2: a defense of like small businesses, which also do just
Speaker 2: absolutely terrible shit to workers, like if you ever worked
Speaker 2: for one, like good lord, But you know, like as
Speaker 2: as these companies get larger and larger, and as as
Speaker 2: this sort of the endless march of capital goes on,
Speaker 2: you know, like you see the current like nightmare of
Speaker 2: oh hey, here's like an additional fifty percent of your workload.
Speaker 2: And also you don't get tips on it. And you know,
Speaker 2: unless this stuff is rolled back, and unless people understand
Speaker 2: what's happening, unless there's more organizing, Like that's just the
Speaker 2: latest terrible thing that's going to happen. There, they're like
Speaker 2: five years down the line, they're going to have invented
Speaker 2: a new app that like does something, though the magnitude
Speaker 2: of the horror of which we haven't even like comprehended yet,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know, we're probably two years out from
Speaker 2: like the Chinese style thing where you could order a
Speaker 2: coffee on a train and someone has to go run
Speaker 2: out to the train platform to the next station to
Speaker 2: hand it to you on the train. Like there there
Speaker 2: are there are, there are depths of even this algorithmic
Speaker 2: hell that we haven't hit yet. And the only way
Speaker 2: for us not to continue to plunge the depths of
Speaker 2: suffering with a line the size of the universe is
Speaker 2: by organizing more and by getting people to understand that,
Speaker 2: you know, all of these sort of progressive brands are
Speaker 2: a thin veneer for exploitation and suffering.
Speaker 1: Absolutely and honestly, one of the legitimate worries that we
Speaker 1: have about next steps in the evolution of what Pete's
Speaker 1: coffee shops are going to look like is the register
Speaker 1: folks being replaced with kiosks, you know, like self service kiosks.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's something that we've seen, you know, in
Speaker 1: a number of places, from grocery stores to like McDonald's
Speaker 1: now and Dunkin Donuts. They're even rolling out some like
Speaker 1: beta testing kiosk shops for Pete's in the Bay Area
Speaker 1: and Pizza's introduced this new service deployment system within the
Speaker 1: shops which basically pins the person on the register to
Speaker 1: the register where they're not allowed to do anything else.
Speaker 1: They're not even allowed to turn around and get coffee
Speaker 1: for the people. And you know, the more that we
Speaker 1: do this and the more that we get yelled at
Speaker 1: by our managers for literally trying to help a customer
Speaker 1: and get them something because we're you know, deployed to
Speaker 1: the register, the clearer it becomes that they're just trying
Speaker 1: to basically make that position obsolete so that they can
Speaker 1: shift it into a kiosk. Yeah, it's it's just more
Speaker 1: corporate cost cutting because you know, if they're not bringing
Speaker 1: in any more revenue, they got to make that profit
Speaker 1: line go up somehow, right, and so, Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the big things that we're doing right now to try
Speaker 1: to push back against that is doing this sort of
Speaker 1: pr campaign to try to just bring more people into
Speaker 1: the organizing effort on the worker side of things and
Speaker 1: then on the customer side of things, just making people
Speaker 1: more aware of what's actually going on here and that
Speaker 1: you know, we're not actually better than Starbucks. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not the better option. We're part of a massive
Speaker 1: conglomerate that is practicing the same horrible anti labor business
Speaker 1: practices as the rest of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a good place to end. If
Speaker 2: people want to support y'all, where should they go. We'll
Speaker 2: also have links to stuff and what other things can
Speaker 2: they do to help?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you can go to our social media at
Speaker 4: Pete's Labor Union.
Speaker 3: We also have our website.
Speaker 4: We have an intake form, so if any Burista is
Speaker 4: interested in reaching out learning more about organizing with that
Speaker 4: entails and if you want to organize their own shop,
Speaker 4: we have members part of our organizing committees that are
Speaker 4: willing to meet with you sustain tell ye contact through
Speaker 4: however long you need for your campaign, and you'll be
Speaker 4: part of our organizing we have shops across the country
Speaker 4: organizing with us.
Speaker 3: It's very exciting.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there might be a shop near you already
Speaker 4: organizing and we can get y'all connected as well.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and sus christ I had a terrible based
Speaker 2: coffee people of the world unite pun thing, but it's
Speaker 2: slipped from my mind. All right, all of you will
Speaker 2: be spared by terrible coffee related puns as long as
Speaker 2: you go organize your so go do that, Go join
Speaker 2: the struggle, go make it stronger. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: like there's going to be a number of you for
Speaker 2: whom this is like not your terrain, right and if
Speaker 2: this isn't your terrain, find it. Find find the struggle
Speaker 2: that you were going to do, and wait and wage
Speaker 2: it there and take your field.
Speaker 3: And hold it.
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