February 18, 2025 • 35 mins
Mia talks with Dino and Cole, two organizers with the Peet's Labor Union, about their ongoing campaign and how the rise of delivery services has increased their exploitation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Get Happened Here, a podcast about things falling
apart and how to put them back together again. I'm
your host, Miya Loong. As the new regime settles in,
we face a struggle on a thousand fronts. It's bewildering,
it's terrifying. It's an offensive design to overwhelm us with
the sheer totality of the horror. But its diversity is
also our greatest advantage, because every struggle on every front
(00:27):
brings us closer to victory. And that allows us and
it allows you to pick a field and hold it.
One of the most important fronts in the years to
come is labor. Much of what is to come will
be decided on the shop floor, and today we're talking
about that. And with me to talk about that is
fellow worker do you know and IWW PiZZ union organizer
(00:49):
in Berkeley, and fellow worker Cole who is AWW Pizza
union organizer in Portland, and both of you two, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Hello, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Me too, I'm excited to talk to you both. So
this is a Pete's Coffee Union. We have talked to
several other unions, but this was kind of personal to
me because this is one of the sort of coffee
things that my dad kind of grew up on, and
I'm now now here to deliver wrath against them for
their many crimes. So, yeah, let's start off with can
we talk a bit about how these unions came together
(01:20):
and what the sort of like beginning process of this
organizing look like.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Yeah, so the first store that organized actually was in Davis, California.
They organized I think in twenty twenty two. They launched
their public campaign at the end in winter, and then
they voted for their election back in January twenty twenty three.
That's around the same time period where a lot of
media was writing about their unionization process and a couple
(01:46):
of the Bay area stores heard about it and started
to meet together, and that's kind of where we started.
We weren't IWW at the start, but we eventually started
meeting with unions and chose IWW.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Hell yeah, So it was it was an independent thing
that became ANWW.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
When we joined the IWW, we were basically fully organized
to the extent that we were going to be. We
already had our like committee set up, We had our
meetings regularly. We had like Roberts rules and everything already implemented.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
That's so cool. Do you want to talk a little
bit about like what the sort of process of doing
that initial organizing before you went to the unions looked,
like how how everything sort of came together.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Yeah, when we started organizing, it was very secretive, and
it was a little bit scary at the time because
there was a lot of already kind of union busting
from management. There was a lot of managers kind of
like trying to overhear people were talking about the union
or already instigating themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
And asking like what do you think about unions?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
And it was a little bit scary to try to
just like go up to coworkers and be like, hey,
like are you interested in you know, hanging out after
work and you know, talking shit about our like manager
or something like that. And over time we eventually started
doing like on one conversations with our coworkers and meeting together.
Once we had our three stores that really were solidified,
(03:06):
we had at least one person in each store that
was like willing to like drive the campaign forward for
moms in maybe even years as some of us have
been around for that long now, we felt ready to
kind of like start sending things into stone. So we
had like meetings every single week and we had bi
weekly meetings. At some point we had committee meetings, and
people started to kind of select themselves into like social
(03:30):
media or we had outreach, we had intakes, so other
stores were also reaching out to us because there was
like just secret kind of like people knew what was happening,
people didn't want to say it out loud. Yeah, So
it was just a lot of like hanging out, having
socials and things like that that kind of like created
the foundations for like personal relationships for organizing, and at
(03:52):
the time, it was mostly just us complaining for a
really long time until we were like, what if we
did something about this?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, What I think I'm curious about is like how large,
roughly are these are these shops.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
There tends to be about twelve to sixteen workers at
each shop. So I think the biggest union shop that
we have has sixteen workers in it. The shop that
I work at is fairly small. We only have twelve
workers right now, so fairly small. And I will say,
(04:24):
just to give some context for the organizing process from
my shop as well. Piece did not make it difficult
to organize in terms of like the policies that they
were pushing. Yeah, everyone was pissed off about how we
were being treated, and so just sort of pushing people
(04:45):
in one on one conversations to look for solutions rather
than just bitching about it, which is great. That's where
it all starts, right, Piece is pushing poor policies. They're
cutting hours, that's one of the biggest thing. They're slicing
our hours week after week, even as the volume of
sales goes up, and so just being like, hey, do
(05:05):
you want more hours, Like do you feel like it's
fair for us to be staffed this way, Let's try
to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, and the staffing issues, this is one of the
things we're talking to, I mean just people across sectors.
It's really one of the it's one of the things
that's the most obvious if you're working one of these jobs.
And also somehow it's not something that ever gets talked
about in the mainstream at all, Like it it's never
a part of the discourse that you know, you don't
(05:35):
have a set number of hours that you're going to work.
You don't know when you're going to work them. And
also you know, there's no guarantee that you're going to
get to work enough hours to actually survive. And then
also the entire condition of labor, like every sector is
just chronic. It's just chronic underscheduling and chronic understaffing of everything,
and you know, and that ranges from like coffee shops,
(05:58):
like hospitals to schools to like everyone has decided that
the way that you manage things is by by chronically
overworking everyone and trying to pay people as little as
possible by not giving them hours. You can talk a
little bit more about about the kind of the actual
effects of the understaffing and how that sort of drove
people into the campaign.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, I would be more than happy to. I mean,
one of the sort of primary catalysts for organizing for
our shop was the introduction of Uber Eats. So when
I first started working at the shop, it was around
two years ago, they had just recently introduced door Dash,
(06:36):
so previously, you know, obviously it started it was just
a cafe people would come in and get their coffee.
Later on they ended up introducing mobile orders through pete
Zone ordering system, and then when the pandemic hit initially
and everything locked down, they started doing door dash to
try to continue having a revenue stream. Now, after more
(06:59):
things started open up, they open the shop up again. Obviously,
they continued to have door Dash because it brings in
a lot of revenue for them, and then without really
any fore warning and certainly without any increase in staffing
for us, they introduced uberre eats, which is a similar
amount of volume increase, a similar amount of orders increase
(07:23):
as door Dash, Like we're probably getting at peak like
thirty forty drinks per hour in addition to what we're
getting in store from door Dash and uber eats.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That's a drink every like subtube minutes, yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And we are expected to crank these out at less
than three minutes in order, and that's per order, So
an order might have like five drinks if it's DoorDash
or uber eats, where in particular, people will order a
lot of things at a time, because it seems like
using these sort of apps and stuff, people will order
(08:03):
much more egregious things, much larger orders than they do
when they're in store. And so everyone's really annoyed about
this just like, Okay, all of a sudden, we have
all this extra work to do. They're not increasing our
hours at all.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
You're not getting paid more either, well.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Certainly not. And we don't get tips from that either.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Oh Jesus, you don't get tipped from me?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
No?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
No, I mean like, wait, oh, the chips all go
to the drivers.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Jesus Christ, I won't. Like, that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
For the drivers, but you should get paid too.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But it's like Uber who's taking the vast majority of
the money from that and piece and so us and
the drivers are both getting screwed over by this. Yeah,
but we both have to do all the sextraneous work.
So people were super fucking irritated about that, myself included
for sure. And that really got people going with like, Okay,
what are we going to do about this? How can
(08:55):
we try to push them to staff us better? Yeah,
And it seems like the incentive struckures for these delivery
services add up really badly in terms of like the
way that incenters people to order, because you know, you
have these like minimums on the amount of like stuff
you have to order to get below like there's all
this you know, all those like threshold stuff of like
(09:15):
if you do this, you get free delivery. You spend
this much, you get blah blah blah blah blah, and
so that. Yeah, it seems like the sort of perfect
Mailstrom for producing even more work. Yeah. And I will
say this is that they like to push out promotions
to people of like buy one, get one free, that
sort of thing for like our PiZZ location constantly, and
(09:40):
they they never tell us about it. So, you know,
one day, we'll just be getting like five large mochas
and like six different orders, and we're like, why are
we getting five large mochas and all of these orders,
And someone pulls up the door Dash app and they're like, oh,
it's because there's like a half off if you get
more than four mochas or you know something like that.
It's just like, we never hear about this until it's
(10:01):
actually happening. Yeah. And that's the case both for door
Dash newber Eats, but also for just like internal pizza promotions,
Like we tend not to hear about any of these
things until we are on the shop floor working and
people are asking us about it. Customers are asking us
about it.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, it seems like the way that the integration of
these apps into these business models is working. As it's
just every every single thing they do just compounds the
amount of work you have to do and compounds how
awful the experience is, and speak speaking about how awful
the experience is. Unfortunately, we are a podcast sponsored by ads,
(10:38):
so go experience them or don't. I don't know. There's
a if you have Apple, there's a there's a thing
you can get called cold as that media where you
don't have ads. De Android one. I don't even know
what I'm legally allowed to say about that shit, but
oh my god, it is the biggest legal clusterfuck I've
ever seen in my entire life. We're gonna leave it
at there, but we'll try it. We're doing our best.
(11:08):
We are so back. Yeah, so let's go into other
of their buried crimes.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Oh man, where do I even start?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
So Pete, the second they found out that we were organizing,
launched like their worst union busting campaign they could have
ever imagined, wasting so much money.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Oh god.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Right after we went public, the first big thing that
they messed up on was they took me off the
schedule indefinitely and we had to like foule a whole
unfair labor practice about it.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
An unfair labor practice is a.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Charge with the National Labor Relations Board, and we claimed
that they were being retaliatory. And at the time it
was very clear that management thought I was a key organizer.
I was very public and vocal about being a union
member at the time, everyone was. But for some reason
they signaled me out. That was one part of how
they messed up. But they eventually put me back on
(12:02):
the schedule, apologize, gave me back pay.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Oh yeah, and we withdrew that.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
We withdrew the ULPE because they're like, all right, I
guess it fixed itself.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, that's the thing that happens. By the way, like
if you're submitting an o fair labor practice and the
company resolves it, you don't actually have to. And this
is actually one of the things about up sometimes is
that like neither you nor your employer wants to go
sit in front of the National Labor Relations Board and
like do a whole thing. So like sometimes you can
(12:32):
get them to resolve it just by like just by
the thread of it, and then you don't actually have
to go sit in front of the Natural Labor relations
board because they've done the thing they're supposed to do.
So note for all you people out there who are
considering file like one piece.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, I know, just stack them up and sometimes that's
enough to put pressure, especially for smaller businesses or people
who just like especially corporations that don't necessarily have experience
of union investing quite yet. Yeah, So at the time,
that worked, and within a week I had my drop
back and everything, And that was right after we had filed,
which meant that if for some reason I wasn't put
(13:04):
back on the schedule, I would have been gone leading
up until the election, which would have been really bad
in terms of you know, having those one on ones
with coworkers making sure everyone was connected.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I just I just want to mention here, like, it
is illegal to fire someone for union organizing, Like it's
not the most easily enforced thing, but they legally cannot
do that. So just note for all the people who
are listening to unte episodes for the first time, they
can't do that. And if they do it, you can,
you can launch campaigns and you can sort of force
them to do it. But yeah, just this is the
(13:37):
mea labor note of the episode.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Yeah, no, and I think especially something that's very IWW
of how we reacted to that situation was that my
coworkers were also just like being really like annoying to
the manager and being like, what happened to Dino? Why
aren't they at work? Like what's going on? And I
think that internal pressure also made it really uncomfortable for
management to realize how much that had fucked up, how
(14:00):
much my coworkers were willing to have my back. There's
definitely more talk of like actual direct action in other
ways that eventually like we actually didn't do because I
got my my hours back, so that was really good.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
And then yeah, so that was still within the first
few weeks of when we filed our paperwork to have
an election with the NLRB to be a certified shop
according to the government. Not that that's always important, Yeah,
that's something that we.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Wanted, especially as regime unfolds. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, No, it's really it's a really tough position, especially
because I mean, we're we're IWW members, and I know
that there's definitely an internal debate of whether or not,
you know, contractual agreements versus direct action, but there's always
the options to both a combination divers the fire tactics.
But yeah, so that happened. They also hired a union buster.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Of course they did.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Now according to LM reports from the government that they
have to file, they spent over one hundred thousand dollars
in like a span of like two weeks to hire
this union investor.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
And it wasn't the way.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
And it's like a report that you file with the
I think forgetting which department it is.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
But is it the OLM, the Office of Labor and Management.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Think you Yeah, So they are required to file that
by I think March thirtieth of the following year for
like fiscal reasons. So we finally got those documents this
previous year. So they did spend a lot of money.
And this guy who is just basically messing with us
for like two weeks, and he was, you know, trying
(15:43):
to be super helpful answer any questions about the union
and like tell people that the union was you know,
like racist, not for them, or that the union was exclusionary,
or that unions cost a lot of money. And thankfully
that didn't work. We won all of our elections, but
leading up to them, it definitely kind of morale dropped
(16:04):
a lot. People felt a little bit they were questioning
whether or not it was the right decision we made
to unionize in their first place, because it seemed like
this was just the start of Pete's just messing with
us because they care on and it didn't seem like
there was much that we could have done in that
situation other than try to maybe have fun with the
(16:24):
union buster and mess with him.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
But even then that still wasn't like.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Enough to kind of out the fact that like people
were just being messed with at work and they couldn't
literally leave, like there was someone like on the floor
asking them questions about their you know, activity.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
With the union.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
And even though now we know it's like illegal and
we could have filed unfairly were practices on that at
the time, we just didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
And now we're learning about it.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
But that's something I definitely wish we knew and stood
up for a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, did you tell a little bit about what the
specific thing was, so that if people are like experiencing
it themselves, they can know what they can do.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yeah, So management shouldn't be asking for your like affiliation
within like a union. They're not allowed to ask or
make assumptions about it, So like if I'm a manager,
I'm not allowed to like go up to me and
be like, hey, do you know, like since you're in
the union, like what is the union.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Doing about X, Y and Z? Like that's not an
appropriate question.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
And there's definitely times where, like my own manager asked
me questions like that and I definitely had to like, hey,
like this is actually like not appropriate for you to do,
Like I don't feel comfortable with this. But that's not
always the case, and some workers definitely were like disclosing
private and confidential information about the union to management, and
it was really hard to make sure that every worker
(17:42):
felt comfortable. And they definitely picked out workers based on
you know, like social like personalities and things like that,
which is really disheartening to see.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, really scummy. And I think morale is a traadeous
struggle and that's one of the things here too, where
it's like a lot of these efforts are just attempts
to make everyone in a workplace miserable and to make
people sort of too depressed and too despondent to sort
of organize, and a lot of that. Yeah, again, it
is like it's stuff you can organize against and stuff
that like they're not allowed to do and whether or
not they're going to be able to do it. It
(18:13):
is a function of labor regulation, and labor law is
not something that's enforced by the government. It's something that's
enforced by you, as enforced by the people around you.
And so you know, like the law can sometimes help
and sometimes dozens. It's useful to cite to management. It's
useful because it makes them think that there's like the
full power of the state behind you or whatever. But
like in terms of how you deal with this stuff,
(18:36):
it is something that is enforced by you and by
how organized you are, and by how organized your shop
floor is, and by how who organize your community is.
And that's something that's I think important for people to
understand when you're forming your own unions, which you should
also go do because you can just do it. I
said it before and I'll say it again, Like the
people who organize unions are just regular.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
People like you person, dear listener, So you can do
this too. What they say it's like a union is
just to workers talking to each other. Yeah, and yeah,
just to expand on that point, a little bit. Like
the NLRB is quite understaffed, and it will be more
understaffed almost certainly as the Trump administration, you know, gets
(19:17):
deeper into gutting the entirety of the government. It already
takes months, two years to get unfair labor practice filings
resolved for the NLRB to do most things. So that
is a core tenet of the IWW is actually taking
action on the shop floor. Yeah, Like that is the
(19:43):
key aspect to unionism as a whole. And I think
one of the great parts about the IWW is that
it actually acknowledges that the power comes from the workers.
It doesn't come from laws. The laws only came because
workers were pushing for things on the shop floor in
the first place. So it's like, let's get back to
(20:03):
the root of that.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, Like the NLRB, We've talked about this on the
ship before, but the National Labor Relations Act, I think
that the established National Labor Relations Board like that that
was part of effectively like a truce that was enforced
by by the government because as a way to have
like labor unions stop being armed and stop getting into
shootouts with bosses. So yeah, it is as as as
(20:26):
this framework comes apart, it is important to remember like
why we had this in the first place, which was
union militias would occasionally start, like small scale civil wars
in the US with bosses over stuff, people in shoot
canons at each other, and we're sort of distant from
that period. But there's also another thing about direct action,
which is that, yeah, it's hard to organize, but also
(20:48):
like quite frankly, with the way that the NLRB is
functioning right now, like the time to organize that A
makes a union better and B is going to be
faster than the NLRB right now. So yeah, this is
this is this is your practical We have your ideological pitch.
We have your practical pitch for direct action, which is
that it's quick. Unfortunately, the other thing that's quick is
(21:08):
the approach of this AD break. Here's ads. We are back.
So let's talk about sort of what's happening right now
with the union, how things are going, and what management
(21:31):
has been doing.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, so right now, I mean we're dealing with a
lot of the same issues as we have been dealing with.
The staffing issue is only continuing to be worse.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
One of the things that we are trying to get.
Initially is schedules further out right, now we get them
two weeks out, more consistent scheduling, more scheduling, obviously better wages,
better benefits, you know, all of these sort of things,
and those are only continuing to get worse, and so
we are continuing to try to think about tactics strategies
(22:10):
to counter that right to give us more power. So
we're both doing direct actions and trying to push for
a contract right now. Now. One of the big difficulties
is that Pizza has basically hired this law firm to
do the contract negotiations on their behalf, and the law
(22:32):
firm is basically stonewalling us, like they are responding to
the emails, but basically by just kicking the can down
the road yep, yep, and trying to not actually come
to the bargaining table. And so it's this very frustrating
thing of like how do we actually get them to
come to the bargaining table. And that's definitely still something
(22:56):
that we're wrestling with and that we're working on. Yeah,
don't know if you have any more to add to that,
do you know?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Yeah, I no, I think another thing that's kind of
on everyone's mind is that a group of us got
ridden up for another direct action that we did back
in October, and then we got ridden up like the
week of Thanksgiving and holidays and finals for most of
us that were students, so that kind of just dropped
(23:23):
morale and activity. And because of the holidays, people were
either kind of not paying attention or just organizing. Activity
tends to just drop during no holidays.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, people are just a little bit of checks out.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah, people check out, People go home, and especially for
like us in like food service, retail, like a lot
of people are kind of just like around for school.
So my location were like a few blocks away from
UC Berkeley, so most of the students like go home
and they're not going to like log into zoom for
thirty minute union meeting and like hear what's like you know,
(23:55):
the most recent like check ins that we need to do.
So that is a little bit frustrating that Pet's definitely
wrote us up right at the perfect time that where
activity kind of drops. So they're adapting, they're learning a
little bit more, and it's kind of it's really frustrating.
But yeah, I know a group of us, including me
got ridden up for something, and it was just a
(24:16):
blanket discipline and it started restricting all of our abilities
to cover shifts, to swap shifts, to pick up hours,
to call out, and they restrict everything so badly, and
then are also like final warnings and there's no like
period in which all these made up rules that they're
(24:38):
making kind of end. I'm just like waiting to hear
when my manager decides to like stop punishing me, which
is like obviously very personal. And that's like really worries
some because we tried to file agreements with pets. According
to what they told us, all our district managers were like, yeah,
file agreements with HR, we'll discuss it there.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
And then we did that.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
We filed agreements, we all signed on and then management
turned around and was like, actually, you haven't bargained for
a grievance procedure, so we actually don't care about this
and unless it's legally mandated, we won't listen to you. Yeah,
so now we're again stuck between like we want to bargain,
we want to go to the table, we want to
meet with Pete's, but they are creating these made up
(25:20):
rules on how they want to bargain and meet with us,
and they're unwilling to cooperate with us. There's like five
public shops and they're like not willing to meet with us.
At the same time, that actually makes no sense. We
have like the same bargaining team members for all our shops.
We're in the one big union. Like, it doesn't make
any sense that they're trying to I mean, it makes
(25:41):
perfect sense for management to try to divide us, but
it's what the workers want to be in one contract
to you know, be able to do like one grievance
and like you know, go against management together. But yeah,
it's like a really annoying thing and it's really frustrating
to not really know exactly what our next is.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
I mean, this is something that I think both unied
organizers and management knows, which is that the first place
that unions fail is trying to get the vote, trying
to get to which is trying to get enough people
organized around the sort of campaign. So the second place
that they fail is before the first contract or trying
to negotiate the first contract. And so every company just
like tries to draw the shit out as long as
humanly possible, like it took us god, I think, but
(26:22):
two years in bargaining and that's like not even that
like for a first contract. I mean, that's like bad,
but it's not even as bad as it can get.
And there's the other aspect of it too that you've
been talking about, which is that the way that companies
break union is just terror. Right, It's just it's just
a terror campaign. It is it is it is a
campaign to inflict sort of fear and suffering on people.
(26:45):
And the fact that this is the way that the
system works that you know, there are a bunch of
people in power who are to the way that they're
attempting to keep their power is just through fear and
through like inflicting pain on people is just ghastly. And
if you want to sort of take a step back
and go like why is everything like this, it's like, well,
(27:06):
that's because because that's what this entire system is built on.
It has always been built on.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, And I think in terms of countering that, one
thing that I definitely want to call for from all
of my fellow baristas out there is to organize your
own shops, right, Like that is the key thing. The
more people that we have pushing for better rights for
(27:34):
workers in the workplace, whether that's through a contract or not,
the more effective it's going to be. And it's when
we feel alone and isolated that their terror is most effective.
It's when we're together that it is the least effective.
That they are the most scared by our tactics. So
(27:56):
just keep pushing for it. I mean, I think that's
one of the things that the Starbucks campaign showed us.
You know it. They still don't have their first contract, sure,
but they're so much closer now, Like over what is
it like almost three years down the road with over
five hundred shops organized than they were when those first
shops organized in Buffalo. And that's due to that persistence
(28:21):
and due to having more weight on our side. So
please organize, do it. That's just my little call for that.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, it's a snowball rolling down the hills. Like the
more the more shops are organized, the more that will
convince other shops to organize. And the larger that snowball is,
the harder it is to stop its momentum. But what
do you think the next steps are going to be
for this campaign? If you can actually talk about it
in terms of like putting pressure on the company in
terms of like drawing other people in in terms of
(28:52):
like what's going on in the shops.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Yeah, I think one of the main things that we
think that we've been really quiet about is how much
do you need thing they've been doing and just talking
to the public about that. I think part of why
we're here today also is it's going to help with
that a lot of people, especially when people were calling
for boycott's on Starbucks, We're like, okay, we'll go to Petez.
Then they're like the good company, And I think Peetz
(29:16):
gets away with a lot because they have that kind
of protection of like, oh, they were a small company
from Berkeley and they're you know, still in the Bay Area.
They're so small. Now they have like so many shops
like across the world. They're like an international conglomerate. They're
part of like a large holding company. They got bought
out like over ten years ago, and the quality has
(29:39):
been declining. They treat their workers like shit, we don't
get any raises anymore unless it's like minimum wage increases
are mandated by law. So a company that maybe was
right and was maybe a little bit better is now
like just going downhill, and I think people still like
pride them themselves and being like a petnick and being
(30:02):
a customer and being part of this like weird sub
culture of coffee that is no longer kind of there's
just like it's just not what it was back when
it was created like in the sixties in Berkeley. It's
not it's not the same and it can't go back
to that anymore, just now with the way that they're
union busting, not with the way that they're just cutting
(30:22):
the quality of everything and over like yeah, everything the
expectation of us and in other ways that they do
is just not sustainable.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, and then you can see that it's not the
same company by just like oh yeah, hey, they've you know,
I mean, and this is this is this is not
a defense of like small businesses, which also do just
absolutely terrible shit to workers, like if you ever worked
for one, like good lord, But you know, like as
as these companies get larger and larger, and as as
this sort of the endless march of capital goes on,
(30:53):
you know, like you see the current like nightmare of
oh hey, here's like an additional fifty percent of your workload.
And also you don't get tips on it. And you know,
unless this stuff is rolled back, and unless people understand
what's happening, unless there's more organizing, Like that's just the
latest terrible thing that's going to happen. There, they're like
five years down the line, they're going to have invented
(31:15):
a new app that like does something, though the magnitude
of the horror of which we haven't even like comprehended yet,
Like I don't know, we're probably two years out from
like the Chinese style thing where you could order a
coffee on a train and someone has to go run
out to the train platform to the next station to
hand it to you on the train. Like there there
(31:37):
are there are, there are depths of even this algorithmic
hell that we haven't hit yet. And the only way
for us not to continue to plunge the depths of
suffering with a line the size of the universe is
by organizing more and by getting people to understand that,
you know, all of these sort of progressive brands are
a thin veneer for exploitation and suffering.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Absolutely and honestly, one of the legitimate worries that we
have about next steps in the evolution of what Pete's
coffee shops are going to look like is the register
folks being replaced with kiosks, you know, like self service kiosks.
I mean, that's something that we've seen, you know, in
(32:20):
a number of places, from grocery stores to like McDonald's
now and Dunkin Donuts. They're even rolling out some like
beta testing kiosk shops for Pete's in the Bay Area
and Pizza's introduced this new service deployment system within the
shops which basically pins the person on the register to
(32:43):
the register where they're not allowed to do anything else.
They're not even allowed to turn around and get coffee
for the people. And you know, the more that we
do this and the more that we get yelled at
by our managers for literally trying to help a customer
and get them something because we're you know, deployed to
the register, the clearer it becomes that they're just trying
(33:06):
to basically make that position obsolete so that they can
shift it into a kiosk. Yeah, it's it's just more
corporate cost cutting because you know, if they're not bringing
in any more revenue, they got to make that profit
line go up somehow, right, and so, Yeah, one of
the big things that we're doing right now to try
(33:26):
to push back against that is doing this sort of
pr campaign to try to just bring more people into
the organizing effort on the worker side of things and
then on the customer side of things, just making people
more aware of what's actually going on here and that
you know, we're not actually better than Starbucks. Yeah, you know,
(33:49):
we're not the better option. We're part of a massive
conglomerate that is practicing the same horrible anti labor business
practices as the rest of us.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah. I think that's a good place to end. If
people want to support y'all, where should they go. We'll
also have links to stuff and what other things can
they do to help?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Yeah, so you can go to our social media at
Pete's Labor Union.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
We also have our website.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
We have an intake form, so if any Burista is
interested in reaching out learning more about organizing with that
entails and if you want to organize their own shop,
we have members part of our organizing committees that are
willing to meet with you sustain tell ye contact through
however long you need for your campaign, and you'll be
part of our organizing we have shops across the country
(34:40):
organizing with us.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's very exciting.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
I'm sure there might be a shop near you already
organizing and we can get y'all connected as well.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Oh yeah, and sus christ I had a terrible based
coffee people of the world unite pun thing, but it's
slipped from my mind. All right, all of you will
be spared by terrible coffee related puns as long as
you go organize your so go do that, Go join
the struggle, go make it stronger. And I don't know,
like there's going to be a number of you for
whom this is like not your terrain, right and if
(35:08):
this isn't your terrain, find it. Find find the struggle
that you were going to do, and wait and wage
it there and take your field.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
And hold it.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here.
Listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Get Happened Here, a podcast about things falling
apart and how to put them back together again. I'm
your host, Miya Loong. As the new regime settles in,
we face a struggle on a thousand fronts. It's bewildering,
it's terrifying. It's an offensive design to overwhelm us with
the sheer totality of the horror. But its diversity is
also our greatest advantage, because every struggle on every front
(00:27):
brings us closer to victory. And that allows us and
it allows you to pick a field and hold it.
One of the most important fronts in the years to
come is labor. Much of what is to come will
be decided on the shop floor, and today we're talking
about that. And with me to talk about that is
fellow worker do you know and IWW PiZZ union organizer
(00:49):
in Berkeley, and fellow worker Cole who is AWW Pizza
union organizer in Portland, and both of you two, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Hello, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Me too, I'm excited to talk to you both. So
this is a Pete's Coffee Union. We have talked to
several other unions, but this was kind of personal to
me because this is one of the sort of coffee
things that my dad kind of grew up on, and
I'm now now here to deliver wrath against them for
their many crimes. So, yeah, let's start off with can
we talk a bit about how these unions came together
(01:20):
and what the sort of like beginning process of this
organizing look like.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Yeah, so the first store that organized actually was in Davis, California.
They organized I think in twenty twenty two. They launched
their public campaign at the end in winter, and then
they voted for their election back in January twenty twenty three.
That's around the same time period where a lot of
media was writing about their unionization process and a couple
(01:46):
of the Bay area stores heard about it and started
to meet together, and that's kind of where we started.
We weren't IWW at the start, but we eventually started
meeting with unions and chose IWW.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Hell yeah, So it was it was an independent thing
that became ANWW.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
When we joined the IWW, we were basically fully organized
to the extent that we were going to be. We
already had our like committee set up, We had our
meetings regularly. We had like Roberts rules and everything already implemented.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
That's so cool. Do you want to talk a little
bit about like what the sort of process of doing
that initial organizing before you went to the unions looked,
like how how everything sort of came together.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Yeah, when we started organizing, it was very secretive, and
it was a little bit scary at the time because
there was a lot of already kind of union busting
from management. There was a lot of managers kind of
like trying to overhear people were talking about the union
or already instigating themselves.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
And asking like what do you think about unions?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
And it was a little bit scary to try to
just like go up to coworkers and be like, hey,
like are you interested in you know, hanging out after
work and you know, talking shit about our like manager
or something like that. And over time we eventually started
doing like on one conversations with our coworkers and meeting together.
Once we had our three stores that really were solidified,
(03:06):
we had at least one person in each store that
was like willing to like drive the campaign forward for
moms in maybe even years as some of us have
been around for that long now, we felt ready to
kind of like start sending things into stone. So we
had like meetings every single week and we had bi
weekly meetings. At some point we had committee meetings, and
people started to kind of select themselves into like social
(03:30):
media or we had outreach, we had intakes, so other
stores were also reaching out to us because there was
like just secret kind of like people knew what was happening,
people didn't want to say it out loud. Yeah, So
it was just a lot of like hanging out, having
socials and things like that that kind of like created
the foundations for like personal relationships for organizing, and at
(03:52):
the time, it was mostly just us complaining for a
really long time until we were like, what if we
did something about this?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, What I think I'm curious about is like how large,
roughly are these are these shops.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
There tends to be about twelve to sixteen workers at
each shop. So I think the biggest union shop that
we have has sixteen workers in it. The shop that
I work at is fairly small. We only have twelve
workers right now, so fairly small. And I will say,
(04:24):
just to give some context for the organizing process from
my shop as well. Piece did not make it difficult
to organize in terms of like the policies that they
were pushing. Yeah, everyone was pissed off about how we
were being treated, and so just sort of pushing people
(04:45):
in one on one conversations to look for solutions rather
than just bitching about it, which is great. That's where
it all starts, right, Piece is pushing poor policies. They're
cutting hours, that's one of the biggest thing. They're slicing
our hours week after week, even as the volume of
sales goes up, and so just being like, hey, do
(05:05):
you want more hours, Like do you feel like it's
fair for us to be staffed this way, Let's try
to do something about it.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, and the staffing issues, this is one of the
things we're talking to, I mean just people across sectors.
It's really one of the it's one of the things
that's the most obvious if you're working one of these jobs.
And also somehow it's not something that ever gets talked
about in the mainstream at all, Like it it's never
a part of the discourse that you know, you don't
(05:35):
have a set number of hours that you're going to work.
You don't know when you're going to work them. And
also you know, there's no guarantee that you're going to
get to work enough hours to actually survive. And then
also the entire condition of labor, like every sector is
just chronic. It's just chronic underscheduling and chronic understaffing of everything,
and you know, and that ranges from like coffee shops,
(05:58):
like hospitals to schools to like everyone has decided that
the way that you manage things is by by chronically
overworking everyone and trying to pay people as little as
possible by not giving them hours. You can talk a
little bit more about about the kind of the actual
effects of the understaffing and how that sort of drove
people into the campaign.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, I would be more than happy to. I mean,
one of the sort of primary catalysts for organizing for
our shop was the introduction of Uber Eats. So when
I first started working at the shop, it was around
two years ago, they had just recently introduced door Dash,
(06:36):
so previously, you know, obviously it started it was just
a cafe people would come in and get their coffee.
Later on they ended up introducing mobile orders through pete
Zone ordering system, and then when the pandemic hit initially
and everything locked down, they started doing door dash to
try to continue having a revenue stream. Now, after more
(06:59):
things started open up, they open the shop up again. Obviously,
they continued to have door Dash because it brings in
a lot of revenue for them, and then without really
any fore warning and certainly without any increase in staffing
for us, they introduced uberre eats, which is a similar
amount of volume increase, a similar amount of orders increase
(07:23):
as door Dash, Like we're probably getting at peak like
thirty forty drinks per hour in addition to what we're
getting in store from door Dash and uber eats.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That's a drink every like subtube minutes, yeah, Jesus.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And we are expected to crank these out at less
than three minutes in order, and that's per order, So
an order might have like five drinks if it's DoorDash
or uber eats, where in particular, people will order a
lot of things at a time, because it seems like
using these sort of apps and stuff, people will order
(08:03):
much more egregious things, much larger orders than they do
when they're in store. And so everyone's really annoyed about
this just like, Okay, all of a sudden, we have
all this extra work to do. They're not increasing our
hours at all.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
You're not getting paid more either, well.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Certainly not. And we don't get tips from that either.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Oh Jesus, you don't get tipped from me?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
No?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
No, I mean like, wait, oh, the chips all go
to the drivers.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Jesus Christ, I won't. Like, that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
For the drivers, but you should get paid too.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
But it's like Uber who's taking the vast majority of
the money from that and piece and so us and
the drivers are both getting screwed over by this. Yeah,
but we both have to do all the sextraneous work.
So people were super fucking irritated about that, myself included
for sure. And that really got people going with like, Okay,
what are we going to do about this? How can
(08:55):
we try to push them to staff us better? Yeah,
And it seems like the incentive struckures for these delivery
services add up really badly in terms of like the
way that incenters people to order, because you know, you
have these like minimums on the amount of like stuff
you have to order to get below like there's all
this you know, all those like threshold stuff of like
(09:15):
if you do this, you get free delivery. You spend
this much, you get blah blah blah blah blah, and
so that. Yeah, it seems like the sort of perfect
Mailstrom for producing even more work. Yeah. And I will
say this is that they like to push out promotions
to people of like buy one, get one free, that
sort of thing for like our PiZZ location constantly, and
(09:40):
they they never tell us about it. So, you know,
one day, we'll just be getting like five large mochas
and like six different orders, and we're like, why are
we getting five large mochas and all of these orders,
And someone pulls up the door Dash app and they're like, oh,
it's because there's like a half off if you get
more than four mochas or you know something like that.
It's just like, we never hear about this until it's
(10:01):
actually happening. Yeah. And that's the case both for door
Dash newber Eats, but also for just like internal pizza promotions,
Like we tend not to hear about any of these
things until we are on the shop floor working and
people are asking us about it. Customers are asking us
about it.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, it seems like the way that the integration of
these apps into these business models is working. As it's
just every every single thing they do just compounds the
amount of work you have to do and compounds how
awful the experience is, and speak speaking about how awful
the experience is. Unfortunately, we are a podcast sponsored by ads,
(10:38):
so go experience them or don't. I don't know. There's
a if you have Apple, there's a there's a thing
you can get called cold as that media where you
don't have ads. De Android one. I don't even know
what I'm legally allowed to say about that shit, but
oh my god, it is the biggest legal clusterfuck I've
ever seen in my entire life. We're gonna leave it
at there, but we'll try it. We're doing our best.
(11:08):
We are so back. Yeah, so let's go into other
of their buried crimes.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Oh man, where do I even start?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
So Pete, the second they found out that we were organizing,
launched like their worst union busting campaign they could have
ever imagined, wasting so much money.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Oh god.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Right after we went public, the first big thing that
they messed up on was they took me off the
schedule indefinitely and we had to like foule a whole
unfair labor practice about it.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
An unfair labor practice is a.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Charge with the National Labor Relations Board, and we claimed
that they were being retaliatory. And at the time it
was very clear that management thought I was a key organizer.
I was very public and vocal about being a union
member at the time, everyone was. But for some reason
they signaled me out. That was one part of how
they messed up. But they eventually put me back on
(12:02):
the schedule, apologize, gave me back pay.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Oh yeah, and we withdrew that.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
We withdrew the ULPE because they're like, all right, I
guess it fixed itself.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, that's the thing that happens. By the way, like
if you're submitting an o fair labor practice and the
company resolves it, you don't actually have to. And this
is actually one of the things about up sometimes is
that like neither you nor your employer wants to go
sit in front of the National Labor Relations Board and
like do a whole thing. So like sometimes you can
(12:32):
get them to resolve it just by like just by
the thread of it, and then you don't actually have
to go sit in front of the Natural Labor relations
board because they've done the thing they're supposed to do.
So note for all you people out there who are
considering file like one piece.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, I know, just stack them up and sometimes that's
enough to put pressure, especially for smaller businesses or people
who just like especially corporations that don't necessarily have experience
of union investing quite yet. Yeah, So at the time,
that worked, and within a week I had my drop
back and everything, And that was right after we had filed,
which meant that if for some reason I wasn't put
(13:04):
back on the schedule, I would have been gone leading
up until the election, which would have been really bad
in terms of you know, having those one on ones
with coworkers making sure everyone was connected.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I just I just want to mention here, like, it
is illegal to fire someone for union organizing, Like it's
not the most easily enforced thing, but they legally cannot
do that. So just note for all the people who
are listening to unte episodes for the first time, they
can't do that. And if they do it, you can,
you can launch campaigns and you can sort of force
them to do it. But yeah, just this is the
(13:37):
mea labor note of the episode.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Yeah, no, and I think especially something that's very IWW
of how we reacted to that situation was that my
coworkers were also just like being really like annoying to
the manager and being like, what happened to Dino? Why
aren't they at work? Like what's going on? And I
think that internal pressure also made it really uncomfortable for
management to realize how much that had fucked up, how
(14:00):
much my coworkers were willing to have my back. There's
definitely more talk of like actual direct action in other
ways that eventually like we actually didn't do because I
got my my hours back, so that was really good.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
And then yeah, so that was still within the first
few weeks of when we filed our paperwork to have
an election with the NLRB to be a certified shop
according to the government. Not that that's always important, Yeah,
that's something that we.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Wanted, especially as regime unfolds. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, No, it's really it's a really tough position, especially
because I mean, we're we're IWW members, and I know
that there's definitely an internal debate of whether or not,
you know, contractual agreements versus direct action, but there's always
the options to both a combination divers the fire tactics.
But yeah, so that happened. They also hired a union buster.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Of course they did.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Now according to LM reports from the government that they
have to file, they spent over one hundred thousand dollars
in like a span of like two weeks to hire
this union investor.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
And it wasn't the way.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
And it's like a report that you file with the
I think forgetting which department it is.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
But is it the OLM, the Office of Labor and Management.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Think you Yeah, So they are required to file that
by I think March thirtieth of the following year for
like fiscal reasons. So we finally got those documents this
previous year. So they did spend a lot of money.
And this guy who is just basically messing with us
for like two weeks, and he was, you know, trying
(15:43):
to be super helpful answer any questions about the union
and like tell people that the union was you know,
like racist, not for them, or that the union was exclusionary,
or that unions cost a lot of money. And thankfully
that didn't work. We won all of our elections, but
leading up to them, it definitely kind of morale dropped
(16:04):
a lot. People felt a little bit they were questioning
whether or not it was the right decision we made
to unionize in their first place, because it seemed like
this was just the start of Pete's just messing with
us because they care on and it didn't seem like
there was much that we could have done in that
situation other than try to maybe have fun with the
(16:24):
union buster and mess with him.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
But even then that still wasn't like.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Enough to kind of out the fact that like people
were just being messed with at work and they couldn't
literally leave, like there was someone like on the floor
asking them questions about their you know, activity.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
With the union.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
And even though now we know it's like illegal and
we could have filed unfairly were practices on that at
the time, we just didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
And now we're learning about it.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
But that's something I definitely wish we knew and stood
up for a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, did you tell a little bit about what the
specific thing was, so that if people are like experiencing
it themselves, they can know what they can do.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yeah, So management shouldn't be asking for your like affiliation
within like a union. They're not allowed to ask or
make assumptions about it, So like if I'm a manager,
I'm not allowed to like go up to me and
be like, hey, do you know, like since you're in
the union, like what is the union.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Doing about X, Y and Z? Like that's not an
appropriate question.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
And there's definitely times where, like my own manager asked
me questions like that and I definitely had to like, hey,
like this is actually like not appropriate for you to do,
Like I don't feel comfortable with this. But that's not
always the case, and some workers definitely were like disclosing
private and confidential information about the union to management, and
it was really hard to make sure that every worker
(17:42):
felt comfortable. And they definitely picked out workers based on
you know, like social like personalities and things like that,
which is really disheartening to see.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, really scummy. And I think morale is a traadeous
struggle and that's one of the things here too, where
it's like a lot of these efforts are just attempts
to make everyone in a workplace miserable and to make
people sort of too depressed and too despondent to sort
of organize, and a lot of that. Yeah, again, it
is like it's stuff you can organize against and stuff
that like they're not allowed to do and whether or
not they're going to be able to do it. It
(18:13):
is a function of labor regulation, and labor law is
not something that's enforced by the government. It's something that's
enforced by you, as enforced by the people around you.
And so you know, like the law can sometimes help
and sometimes dozens. It's useful to cite to management. It's
useful because it makes them think that there's like the
full power of the state behind you or whatever. But
like in terms of how you deal with this stuff,
(18:36):
it is something that is enforced by you and by
how organized you are, and by how organized your shop
floor is, and by how who organize your community is.
And that's something that's I think important for people to
understand when you're forming your own unions, which you should
also go do because you can just do it. I
said it before and I'll say it again, Like the
people who organize unions are just regular.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
People like you person, dear listener, So you can do
this too. What they say it's like a union is
just to workers talking to each other. Yeah, and yeah,
just to expand on that point, a little bit. Like
the NLRB is quite understaffed, and it will be more
understaffed almost certainly as the Trump administration, you know, gets
(19:17):
deeper into gutting the entirety of the government. It already
takes months, two years to get unfair labor practice filings
resolved for the NLRB to do most things. So that
is a core tenet of the IWW is actually taking
action on the shop floor. Yeah, Like that is the
(19:43):
key aspect to unionism as a whole. And I think
one of the great parts about the IWW is that
it actually acknowledges that the power comes from the workers.
It doesn't come from laws. The laws only came because
workers were pushing for things on the shop floor in
the first place. So it's like, let's get back to
(20:03):
the root of that.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, Like the NLRB, We've talked about this on the
ship before, but the National Labor Relations Act, I think
that the established National Labor Relations Board like that that
was part of effectively like a truce that was enforced
by by the government because as a way to have
like labor unions stop being armed and stop getting into
shootouts with bosses. So yeah, it is as as as
(20:26):
this framework comes apart, it is important to remember like
why we had this in the first place, which was
union militias would occasionally start, like small scale civil wars
in the US with bosses over stuff, people in shoot
canons at each other, and we're sort of distant from
that period. But there's also another thing about direct action,
which is that, yeah, it's hard to organize, but also
(20:48):
like quite frankly, with the way that the NLRB is
functioning right now, like the time to organize that A
makes a union better and B is going to be
faster than the NLRB right now. So yeah, this is
this is this is your practical We have your ideological pitch.
We have your practical pitch for direct action, which is
that it's quick. Unfortunately, the other thing that's quick is
(21:08):
the approach of this AD break. Here's ads. We are back.
So let's talk about sort of what's happening right now
with the union, how things are going, and what management
(21:31):
has been doing.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yeah, so right now, I mean we're dealing with a
lot of the same issues as we have been dealing with.
The staffing issue is only continuing to be worse.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
One of the things that we are trying to get.
Initially is schedules further out right, now we get them
two weeks out, more consistent scheduling, more scheduling, obviously better wages,
better benefits, you know, all of these sort of things,
and those are only continuing to get worse, and so
we are continuing to try to think about tactics strategies
(22:10):
to counter that right to give us more power. So
we're both doing direct actions and trying to push for
a contract right now. Now. One of the big difficulties
is that Pizza has basically hired this law firm to
do the contract negotiations on their behalf, and the law
(22:32):
firm is basically stonewalling us, like they are responding to
the emails, but basically by just kicking the can down
the road yep, yep, and trying to not actually come
to the bargaining table. And so it's this very frustrating
thing of like how do we actually get them to
come to the bargaining table. And that's definitely still something
(22:56):
that we're wrestling with and that we're working on. Yeah,
don't know if you have any more to add to that,
do you know?
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Yeah, I no, I think another thing that's kind of
on everyone's mind is that a group of us got
ridden up for another direct action that we did back
in October, and then we got ridden up like the
week of Thanksgiving and holidays and finals for most of
us that were students, so that kind of just dropped
(23:23):
morale and activity. And because of the holidays, people were
either kind of not paying attention or just organizing. Activity
tends to just drop during no holidays.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, people are just a little bit of checks out.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah, people check out, People go home, and especially for
like us in like food service, retail, like a lot
of people are kind of just like around for school.
So my location were like a few blocks away from
UC Berkeley, so most of the students like go home
and they're not going to like log into zoom for
thirty minute union meeting and like hear what's like you know,
(23:55):
the most recent like check ins that we need to do.
So that is a little bit frustrating that Pet's definitely
wrote us up right at the perfect time that where
activity kind of drops. So they're adapting, they're learning a
little bit more, and it's kind of it's really frustrating.
But yeah, I know a group of us, including me
got ridden up for something, and it was just a
(24:16):
blanket discipline and it started restricting all of our abilities
to cover shifts, to swap shifts, to pick up hours,
to call out, and they restrict everything so badly, and
then are also like final warnings and there's no like
period in which all these made up rules that they're
(24:38):
making kind of end. I'm just like waiting to hear
when my manager decides to like stop punishing me, which
is like obviously very personal. And that's like really worries
some because we tried to file agreements with pets. According
to what they told us, all our district managers were like, yeah,
file agreements with HR, we'll discuss it there.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
And then we did that.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
We filed agreements, we all signed on and then management
turned around and was like, actually, you haven't bargained for
a grievance procedure, so we actually don't care about this
and unless it's legally mandated, we won't listen to you. Yeah,
so now we're again stuck between like we want to bargain,
we want to go to the table, we want to
meet with Pete's, but they are creating these made up
(25:20):
rules on how they want to bargain and meet with us,
and they're unwilling to cooperate with us. There's like five
public shops and they're like not willing to meet with us.
At the same time, that actually makes no sense. We
have like the same bargaining team members for all our shops.
We're in the one big union. Like, it doesn't make
any sense that they're trying to I mean, it makes
(25:41):
perfect sense for management to try to divide us, but
it's what the workers want to be in one contract
to you know, be able to do like one grievance
and like you know, go against management together. But yeah,
it's like a really annoying thing and it's really frustrating
to not really know exactly what our next is.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
I mean, this is something that I think both unied
organizers and management knows, which is that the first place
that unions fail is trying to get the vote, trying
to get to which is trying to get enough people
organized around the sort of campaign. So the second place
that they fail is before the first contract or trying
to negotiate the first contract. And so every company just
like tries to draw the shit out as long as
humanly possible, like it took us god, I think, but
(26:22):
two years in bargaining and that's like not even that
like for a first contract. I mean, that's like bad,
but it's not even as bad as it can get.
And there's the other aspect of it too that you've
been talking about, which is that the way that companies
break union is just terror. Right, It's just it's just
a terror campaign. It is it is it is a
campaign to inflict sort of fear and suffering on people.
(26:45):
And the fact that this is the way that the
system works that you know, there are a bunch of
people in power who are to the way that they're
attempting to keep their power is just through fear and
through like inflicting pain on people is just ghastly. And
if you want to sort of take a step back
and go like why is everything like this, it's like, well,
(27:06):
that's because because that's what this entire system is built on.
It has always been built on.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, And I think in terms of countering that, one
thing that I definitely want to call for from all
of my fellow baristas out there is to organize your
own shops, right, Like that is the key thing. The
more people that we have pushing for better rights for
(27:34):
workers in the workplace, whether that's through a contract or not,
the more effective it's going to be. And it's when
we feel alone and isolated that their terror is most effective.
It's when we're together that it is the least effective.
That they are the most scared by our tactics. So
(27:56):
just keep pushing for it. I mean, I think that's
one of the things that the Starbucks campaign showed us.
You know it. They still don't have their first contract, sure,
but they're so much closer now, Like over what is
it like almost three years down the road with over
five hundred shops organized than they were when those first
shops organized in Buffalo. And that's due to that persistence
(28:21):
and due to having more weight on our side. So
please organize, do it. That's just my little call for that.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, it's a snowball rolling down the hills. Like the
more the more shops are organized, the more that will
convince other shops to organize. And the larger that snowball is,
the harder it is to stop its momentum. But what
do you think the next steps are going to be
for this campaign? If you can actually talk about it
in terms of like putting pressure on the company in
terms of like drawing other people in in terms of
(28:52):
like what's going on in the shops.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Yeah, I think one of the main things that we
think that we've been really quiet about is how much
do you need thing they've been doing and just talking
to the public about that. I think part of why
we're here today also is it's going to help with
that a lot of people, especially when people were calling
for boycott's on Starbucks, We're like, okay, we'll go to Petez.
Then they're like the good company, And I think Peetz
(29:16):
gets away with a lot because they have that kind
of protection of like, oh, they were a small company
from Berkeley and they're you know, still in the Bay Area.
They're so small. Now they have like so many shops
like across the world. They're like an international conglomerate. They're
part of like a large holding company. They got bought
out like over ten years ago, and the quality has
(29:39):
been declining. They treat their workers like shit, we don't
get any raises anymore unless it's like minimum wage increases
are mandated by law. So a company that maybe was
right and was maybe a little bit better is now
like just going downhill, and I think people still like
pride them themselves and being like a petnick and being
(30:02):
a customer and being part of this like weird sub
culture of coffee that is no longer kind of there's
just like it's just not what it was back when
it was created like in the sixties in Berkeley. It's
not it's not the same and it can't go back
to that anymore, just now with the way that they're
union busting, not with the way that they're just cutting
(30:22):
the quality of everything and over like yeah, everything the
expectation of us and in other ways that they do
is just not sustainable.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, and then you can see that it's not the
same company by just like oh yeah, hey, they've you know,
I mean, and this is this is this is not
a defense of like small businesses, which also do just
absolutely terrible shit to workers, like if you ever worked
for one, like good lord, But you know, like as
as these companies get larger and larger, and as as
this sort of the endless march of capital goes on,
(30:53):
you know, like you see the current like nightmare of
oh hey, here's like an additional fifty percent of your workload.
And also you don't get tips on it. And you know,
unless this stuff is rolled back, and unless people understand
what's happening, unless there's more organizing, Like that's just the
latest terrible thing that's going to happen. There, they're like
five years down the line, they're going to have invented
(31:15):
a new app that like does something, though the magnitude
of the horror of which we haven't even like comprehended yet,
Like I don't know, we're probably two years out from
like the Chinese style thing where you could order a
coffee on a train and someone has to go run
out to the train platform to the next station to
hand it to you on the train. Like there there
(31:37):
are there are, there are depths of even this algorithmic
hell that we haven't hit yet. And the only way
for us not to continue to plunge the depths of
suffering with a line the size of the universe is
by organizing more and by getting people to understand that,
you know, all of these sort of progressive brands are
a thin veneer for exploitation and suffering.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Absolutely and honestly, one of the legitimate worries that we
have about next steps in the evolution of what Pete's
coffee shops are going to look like is the register
folks being replaced with kiosks, you know, like self service kiosks.
I mean, that's something that we've seen, you know, in
(32:20):
a number of places, from grocery stores to like McDonald's
now and Dunkin Donuts. They're even rolling out some like
beta testing kiosk shops for Pete's in the Bay Area
and Pizza's introduced this new service deployment system within the
shops which basically pins the person on the register to
(32:43):
the register where they're not allowed to do anything else.
They're not even allowed to turn around and get coffee
for the people. And you know, the more that we
do this and the more that we get yelled at
by our managers for literally trying to help a customer
and get them something because we're you know, deployed to
the register, the clearer it becomes that they're just trying
(33:06):
to basically make that position obsolete so that they can
shift it into a kiosk. Yeah, it's it's just more
corporate cost cutting because you know, if they're not bringing
in any more revenue, they got to make that profit
line go up somehow, right, and so, Yeah, one of
the big things that we're doing right now to try
(33:26):
to push back against that is doing this sort of
pr campaign to try to just bring more people into
the organizing effort on the worker side of things and
then on the customer side of things, just making people
more aware of what's actually going on here and that
you know, we're not actually better than Starbucks. Yeah, you know,
(33:49):
we're not the better option. We're part of a massive
conglomerate that is practicing the same horrible anti labor business
practices as the rest of us.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah. I think that's a good place to end. If
people want to support y'all, where should they go. We'll
also have links to stuff and what other things can
they do to help?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Yeah, so you can go to our social media at
Pete's Labor Union.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
We also have our website.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
We have an intake form, so if any Burista is
interested in reaching out learning more about organizing with that
entails and if you want to organize their own shop,
we have members part of our organizing committees that are
willing to meet with you sustain tell ye contact through
however long you need for your campaign, and you'll be
part of our organizing we have shops across the country
(34:40):
organizing with us.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
It's very exciting.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
I'm sure there might be a shop near you already
organizing and we can get y'all connected as well.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Oh yeah, and sus christ I had a terrible based
coffee people of the world unite pun thing, but it's
slipped from my mind. All right, all of you will
be spared by terrible coffee related puns as long as
you go organize your so go do that, Go join
the struggle, go make it stronger. And I don't know,
like there's going to be a number of you for
whom this is like not your terrain, right and if
(35:08):
this isn't your terrain, find it. Find find the struggle
that you were going to do, and wait and wage
it there and take your field.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
And hold it.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here.
Listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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