April 17, 2025 • 48 mins
Mia and Spencer Jordan of the Urban Ore Workers Union discuss the workplace as a microcosm of the authoritarianism currently sweeping the American political system and how their strike is fighting back.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Day It Happened Here, a podcast increasingly well
named as as the Days go On. I'm your host,
Bio Wong, and it occurs to me over the course
of the many, many, many, many many union episodes we've
done in this podcast, we haven't really done much coverage
of just straight up how do you do a strike?
(00:27):
So today we are going to be covering a pretty
long running strike. We're gonna say how many days has
been going. It's unclear when this episode is gonna come out,
so who fucking knows how long it'll be when when
you hear it. But yeah, with me to talk about
this strike is Spencer Jordan, who is a rank and
file member of the Urban or Workers Union. Spencer, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Hey, thank you so much for having me Miah.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about this. So
this is what day is today. I should know this
April fifteenth, and as of April fifteenth, you've been outright
for twenty five days.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Yeah, that's just about right. Yeah, it started on the
twenty second of March. We held our strike vote like
a solid twelve days before.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Before we actually went out on the picket line.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
And one that strike vote with fourteen yes is a
single no, and I think four extensions pretty good.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yeah, so ninety of those voting voted yes. Yeah, which
good of good ratios. Good ratios.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I think like typically you want at least like mid
seventies if we're going to do this kind of thing.
But you know, as listener to the show hopefully understand
by now you can't just like call a strike and
have it happen. You know, you have to do a
whole bunch of organizing. So I want to kind of
start at the dynamics of the organizing of how this
(01:49):
shop got going, because this is a pretty small shop
from the sounds of it. And yeah, yeah, so do
you want to talk a bit about what the basic
process of getting this organizing started was like and what
the sort of like social mapping look like and stuff
like that.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Yeah, So the organization process started around like a year
and a half before we actually had our unionization vote,
which was actually we had the vote in March and
we got our win on April seventh, two years ago,
so we actually just had our union two year birthday birthday.
(02:28):
But yeah, so preceding that was, like, like I said,
about a year and a half organizing that involved, you know,
the typical thing of like one on one conversations with
like all the staff, making the you know, color coded
spreadsheet and everything, which all of this was not my
my purview. I'm a lot more involved now than I
(02:48):
was at the start of the process. And I was
approached by like one of our lead organizers really shortly
after being hired just to kind of you know, read
the dipstick as too, like my sentiments about it and whatnot.
I was pretty on board right away. I mean, you know, like,
(03:09):
I'm from the Bay Area, so it's not.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
There are there are only two types of people from
the Bay Area. You wouldn't be having one of the one.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Of the ship, Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I'm of the
ladder type.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
So you know, it being pro union is isn't a
isn't like a foreign thing to my background. You know,
you don't look like a techwork Yeah, yeah, especially like
my family's from the Midwest and everything, so there's yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
My my aunt actually just learned that she was like
a clerk working.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
For the railroads back in the day when my railroad
jobs were still like a big thing.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
You could have anyways.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
But yeah, so I had had my like own sort
of like just observations of like whoah, like what's what's
going on in the workplace aside from like my own
just like prediliction to thinking, you know, more.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Worker power is better.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah, also kind of seeing like some of the factors
that precipitated it, Like, for instance, like when I was
hired here, I was hired in my interview, it was
the one of the owners and the manager of my department,
my department being salvage and recycling department of the urban
or which is kind of like not super public facing.
(04:23):
We like go to the dump and like root around
through the garbage, like you know, is or whatever, get
to get stuff for the store. But that manager, you know,
he was there in the interview, and we got to
the portion where the owner explained what at will employment is,
(04:43):
oh and she and she went, so we're at will here.
So Sam, well, Sam was my manager. Swell, how long
have you been here? Twenty one years? He's there, hands
folded on the table. Yes, what at will means is, uh,
it could be tomorrow. I could say, you know, Samuel,
it's been a great twenty one years.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I really appreciate all the work you've done. Today's your
last day. And he has to sit there and go.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
And then she says, of course, likewise, tomorrow Samuel could
come to me and say, hey, Mary Lou, it's been
twenty one years, I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I'm quitting.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So you know, the sort of sword over his neck
is being cast is somehow equal to him not being
like indentured.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yes, it's also just I mean, like you know, yeah,
on the basic level. Yeah, it's like, Okay, your opponent,
I guess they argue, put it your boss. Your boss
can just instantly fire you for any reason whatsoever, for
any bout of time. And then also you could quit
the job. And then I really just as a plane,
(05:57):
just like as a management tactic, like are you like
trying to piss off your support? And it's like, what,
I have never had a boss like just do that
in a hiring meeting.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
What, Yeah, I mean have you have you worked at
like a like a like I saw a small like
mom and pop quote unquote business.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I mean that's that's probably That's probably why because
I've usually had like larger my shitty jobs have either
been like government jobs or like like larger companies, so
there was less of the like I heard a line
recently that I wish I remember where it was from.
It might be a line from Star Trek. It's like
one of the Ferengi rules is just like treat your
(06:42):
employees like family, exploit them ruthlessly, which I like, you.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Know, that's a that's a traditional line in business, especially
in small business, and it's it's no stranger here. Yeah,
that question of like wanting to piss off your supports
or whatever, it's a I don't know if pissing off
is necessarily like the concern, but the ownership here definitely.
(07:10):
I've gotten the impression that they enjoy showing their power,
and I've gotten the impression that the sort of like
uncertainty and like my mom would call it jockeying for
position that you have to do is a dynamic that
they I can't say, I really can't say they honestly
because the other owner, he hasn't been very active in
(07:33):
the business since since my hiring, but at least Mary
Lou Yeah, tends to lean on.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
That's kind of like the uh, the special quality that.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
You get with like a small business and organizing in
a small workplace is that like you know, you can
see sort of in their public communications the way.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That like the Zucks and the Bezoses and.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
The rest of them feel about their employees, and you know,
you can get a sense of perhaps how they might
act towards their employees if they like interacted with them
on a daily basis. But in a small business setting,
you really get a keen.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
View into how like.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
The power of the employer mixes very readily with a
person's like predilection towards discipline, pred election towards like personal
what did you call it personal battling?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Almost yeah, well, and it's and it's also like it's
inescapable in a way that it isn't with like you know,
if you're dealing with people who are you know, you're
at a larger company, you're not dealing with the person.
Like there's an old Chinese expression that is like heaven
is high and the emperor is far away. So you know,
it's like you know, like a lot of times you're
dealing with Okay, yeah, there is like you know, your
(08:54):
Zuckerberg is there, but he's like he never interacts with you.
But with this it's like no, like the small business
tyrant is right there in your face all the time,
and all of the weird petty shit that they want
to do, and all of this sort of like you know,
and I would say, this isn't just just like a
unique thing of like small business owners. Like people in
all positions, like in all portions of of like the
class society have in them kind of like the capacity
(09:18):
for cruelty. And there's just people like that, but they
don't normally have the ability to just do it to
you directly in your face. And that's yeah, and that's
like that's you know, this is what you've been talking about,
is like, yeah, you have like these small business tyrants
like every Suddenly in the same way that's like I
don't know, you're dealing with like like one of the
random King Louis and you're like in the court and
(09:39):
suddenly just like the fact that this guy doesn't like
people going to the bathroom means that everyone around him
doesn't get it, doesn't get she doesn't get a shit, right,
Like it's just like, yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
It's like it's actually an argument that she's deployed in
her Reddit correspondence, which has been simmingly a pretty active
of part of her spare.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Time that she's not spending at the bargaining table with us.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
You know, made this comparison of like, this isn't a
question about.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Oligarchs or whatever.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
And it's true, like the small businessman is not an oligarch,
but the small business is a microcosm of like the
larger capitalist social order. And while the small business man
might not have the scope of power of the oligarch,
(10:31):
or like the actual capital resources of an oligarch, the
behavior certainly rhymes yea yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And again it's like it's a lot of it is about.
It's just how much power you have access to, right, Like,
lots of people can be like this, but only the few,
the proud of the small business type get to do it.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And you know, ultimately the employer or wherever they are,
they're in this privileged position of being a to Yeah.
You spend most people more than like a third of
your life at work. Yeah, the employer has this unique
power to dictate what that third of your life looks like.
You know, yeah, we talk about I mean, shit, we don't.
(11:14):
People are not so much talking about democracy writ large
in the US in the same way now that they
used to. But you know, you talk about this idea
of like living in a democracy, but democracy ends at
the shop door.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah yeah, And like the kind of power that these
people have is something that like these people get to
control when you can go to the bathroom, like what
clothes you where, like literally what you can do, what
you can say at any given time. If you employed
the exact level of control that your boss has over
(11:53):
you on a state, it would be a totalitarian state.
And yet everyone seems to think that this is sort
of like you know, and this is an nugument I've
been making about like Trump is that like yeah, this
is this is this is what sort of Trump and
Elon and like that whole Caudra and and you know,
and Beck if you want to go into the sort
of idealogues behind it too. This is what people like
Peter Thiel want when when they say run the government
(12:16):
like a business, what they mean is that they want
to like to import the sort of like just the
pure tyranny of the workplace and expand it into the
entire political system so that they're they're like sort of
just pure like totalitarian corporate rule can't be challenged.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, wasn't it Miscellani who coined the
term the corporate state?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Probably, although it would not surprise me if it was
like some other fascist theorists and Wessolini just started saying
it because yeah, but yeah, like that's you know, that's
a substantive thing here. And what this also means is
that like, even in ways that are sort of hard
to see, like a fight over democracy in the workplace, right,
(12:58):
is a is a part of the larger struggle against
all of all the things that's happening. Because if you know,
if we're going to survive this, and if we're going
to make sure that we don't all live in a
world where you like, if you say the wrong thing,
you can be sent to a prison camp. Democracy, if
you want this to survive, is going to have to
march into like into the layer of the beast. It
(13:18):
is going to have to go into the source of
this tyranny itself, which is the workplace, and it's going
to have to crush it there.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you said it very very aptly there,
Like the corporate structure maras the totalitarian structure. And you know,
not only does like fighting the corporate structure at the
level of labor makes sense in that right, labor is
what enables the flow of capital that sustains the totalitarian state.
(13:51):
But also, like you said, you're you're you're addressing the
structure in its I don't know, I almost think of
it as like the you know, like Grendel's mother in
the then or whatever, and like, like, you know, the
the authoritarian thing is like it's like Grendel maybe, and
(14:12):
like Grendel's mother is like this capitalist, hierarchical structure. Yeah,
you know, you take it on with an insistence on
workplace democracy as kind of libby as that's that sounds.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Okay, speaking speaking speaking of capitalist will tellitariotism. Here are
the ads that we are required to run by our.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Let's hear them, and we are back.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So let's get back a little bit towards the more
concrete parts of the union, though, I do you have
more to say eventually at some point about the way
that sort of labor liberalism co opted democracy in the
workplace from like you know, the idea the old sort
of like anarchist idea of workers control right. But Okay,
(15:13):
So one thing I wanted to talk about before we
sort of get into the more formal stuff about about
the strike is I was I'm really interested to hear
you talk about what the process of kind of onboarding
you to get more involved in the union is, because
this is something that like, Okay, every functional union wants
to do this, Like if your union is not trying
(15:34):
to bring people like its members like more to get
more involved in the union and become more of the
people becoming like core organizers and becoming you know, like
they're the people who are doing your bargaining people are
doing anything like your union is, there's weird shit about it,
and you should probably like be looking into that, but
it's pretty hard. So yeah, can can you talk a
bit about the process of like how you were brought
(15:55):
in and what sort of worked and what didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Well.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
I think ultimately, like the easiest thing is a sort
of ramping up degree of like responsibility within the organization. Right, So,
like at the start.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I would come to some of the meetings, I would
miss some of them.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
I would be like, Oh, I'm fucking so busy with
whatever is going on in my life, and you know,
I was supportive and sort of involved, but you know,
I wasn't like, I mean, I stain wasn't doing things
like this. And you know, eventually one we like kind
(16:36):
of persisted as a union over a longer period of time,
the necessity of involvement became more like obvious to me, right,
And that's that's a hard ask, you know, Like you're organizing,
you want momentum and you want yeah, you want to
(16:56):
be able to change your conditions for the better as
soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, And with.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
URBANIR, you know, lots of workplaces that need unionization have
high turnover, right, and urbanor is no different. And so
I saw, you know, like some of the more committed
elements of the bargaining unit.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Be fired or quit or whatever.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
And you know they'd be replaced with other people and
you have to begin to work organizing over again. And
with some of them you succeed with something that you don't,
you know, you have different dynamics. I feel like the
hiring procedures may have changed a little bit afteryone our election,
but you know, I can't say that for certain. So
the sort of like necessity of like keeping that like
(17:45):
flame going, especially after we had won the election, we
were in contract bargain for a long period of time.
Made me feel like a sort of sense of like
I need to be more active in this because like
this is an important struggle, and like I see our
like main organizers taking on like a fuckload of work
and like needing more voices at the table, needing more
(18:10):
more uh, needing more people to be more involved. And
so like I, you know, volunteered to run for treasure.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
That was the only candidate. Yeah, but theoretically I could
have been voted down.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
They could have been like I don't know about thatszer,
and you know, like ended up having like a little
bit more direct responsibilities, Like I was like receiving some
of the donations to our strike fund once we started
fund raising for the strike, and to keep track of
those and you know, put the special bank account and
then eventually take that money, get it to like the
(18:46):
the IWW branch, uh hand it hand a big check
to Dino, that kind of stuff, and just like having
like little things to be doing, like yeah, spurs involved
other people, you know, became responsible for like parts of
social media outreach, make graphics stuff like that, and also
(19:10):
like sort of I guess, giving people the opportunity to
leverage their individual connections within the work because every workplace
is like clicks and groups and subgroups and all that,
to leverage those connections in like service of bettering everyone's conditions.
So like to a certain degree, I've I've been like
(19:32):
important as like an envoid to my particular department because
it's our job takes us away from the job site
or like from like the main the main work site
often and stuff like that, so there's less of a
direct avenue for communication there. So I can say that's
my experience. Yeah, as far as organizing goes, like, I'm easy.
You know, I was already I was already believing in it,
(19:54):
and like there are others that it have that it's
been harder. I will say though, that the strike itself
is I mean, a strike is a conflict, and when
you're in conflict together, it's an extremely cohering force. Which
(20:16):
isn't to say that like necessarily you want your unionization
to come to a strike, but perhaps like raising a
sort of consciousness of like the fact that like you
are ultimately like in conflict with the boss. The boss
doesn't want you to unionize. The boss doesn't want you
to force concessions out of them, and that like, as
a union, we are taking on this like responsibility to
(20:41):
look after each other's interests and to support each other
like tangibly in terms like what we do, and also
intangibly in terms of like the kind of conversations we
have around like morale planning and stuff like that, you know,
to succeed together. I think those are like really potent
cohering forces. And you know, it helps to have a
(21:02):
good a good opponent. You know, the boss is the
best organizer. And at urban or it's you don't go
along without coming head to head with like the with
with conflict with ownership or with like ownership through the
mediator of management. Like although like support for the union
(21:29):
might be divided a bit at the workplace, one thing
that's pretty universal is like a frustration with ownership.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, so okay, speaking of speaking of a frustration with ownership,
it is time for us to go to ads one
last time.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
That beautiful but then ever.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Come back, strike strike, strike.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Strike, strikes, strike.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
Just after this message, okay, we are back from a
bunch of people who almost assuredly do not want you
to go on strike.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
But yeah, so let's let's let's let's get into the
process of how you actually organize a strike. Yeah, let's
start from just like the very beginning, one of the
kinds of things that were happening that you know, made
people think that you needed to do this in the
first place.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
So the strike itself is a result specifically, like, this
is a ULP strike, So it's in response to something
that falls under the category of unfairly or practice according
to the National Labor Relations Act, And it's you know,
backed up by charges filed with the board, as opposed
(22:46):
to like what's called an economic strike, which is a
strike that is specifically about economic issues at the workplace.
So the specific ULP that's being cited for our strike
is bad faith bargaining. And for us, what that's looked
like is two years of completely stalled negotiations where we
(23:09):
are basically being faced with a take it or leave
it offer of the status quo in the vast majority
of our proposals. Bargaining is very, very slow, and ownership
has held tightly to the to the offense at us
(23:29):
having unionized it all, which to my understanding is pretty
typical of small workplaces. Ownership takes it very personally, and
that personal feeling of the trail or whatever becomes like
a stumbling block in the negotiation process. I know that
was the case with mos Another's bookshop in Berkeley that
(23:50):
also unionized with the AWW. So, you know, we've had
our whole proposal on ownership's table for a.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Year and a half now.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
We had started with a bargaining proposal by proposal. They said, well,
how can we possibly agree to any of this without
understanding the full context, especially the economic context, And so
we gave them a full proposal and they said, oh
my god, how do you expect us to read all
of this in time to bargain? This is way too much.
(24:20):
How we're going to.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Evaluate this all? We got to do a proposal by proposal.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
So it's been really unclear to us if ownership has
even actually like read the entirety of our collective bargaining
agreement that we put on their desk. I know that
in the past the lawyers have the lawyers have said
things like, oh, my, my eyes glazed over when I
read your email, so I missed such and such part
(24:46):
of it.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
It's literally your job contract. You have one job.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Yeah, you would think like a lawyer would have like
a little bit more like Jesus beyond like a tweet
tweet sized reading capacity.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
But well they give any one law degrees.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yeah, or like ownership saying like well, I just thought
it was so ridiculous. I didn't feel they need to
read all of it stuff like that. Oh my god,
does these readers bad faith bargaining?
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, that's bad by like the standards of like normal,
it takes two years to do a fucking contract because
they're just not doing shit, and like, good lord, usually.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
In those long contract negotiations, by two years at least
there's like been some progress.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, yeah, well that they've read the proposals, Like yes, okay,
will will will your boss show up to your meeting
an hour and a half late because they didn't bother
to look through the proposals until literally right at the
time the meeting was going to start. Yes, but will
they have done it?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Usually yes, mm hmm yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
And in fact, in the sort of company propaganda where
they're claiming that this like bad faith bargaining charge has
no grounds, they're like ownership has come to like twenty
five to thirty bargaining sessions neglecting to mention they're been
somewhere in the range of like fifty to sixty.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And of course half maybe they've shown up to more
than half. I don't want to be.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Libelous, but yeah, but still, like it's at the point
of which you are failing to show up for any
bargaining session, I think you can like, look, I have
always advocated that if that advantagement doesn't show up to
a bargaining session, you should just be allowed to take
the company, because clearly they're not serious about it.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
But hey, you know, they've been talking about a worker
cup for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Not performost reforms.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
But yeah, so those kind of things.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
And then like finally, like one of the bigger precipitating
factors is, like we've been trying to bargain over economics,
ownership has implied a lot of times that they cannot
afford to pay what we're asking. They say it'll ruin
the company, they say a company will go bankrupt, or
they say it's unsustained, they say this and that, and
(27:01):
then when they get to the table they say, we
have never and we'll never argue inability to pay. Because
the thing is is that to say inability to pay right,
it obligates you to furnish information to prove that, and they,
for whatever reason do not want.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Wow, I wonder why British financial information.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
So these have been some of the sticking points, and
that's why we've been out on the picky line for
about three weeks now, still waiting for them to come
to the table.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
God damn it.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
So okay, let's let's talk about like the just sort
of the process of like how the discussions went for
doing this, What did those sort of look like, and
how did how did you sort of you know, just
like plant plan this thing out?
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Well, I guess the process towards like deciding that I
needed to come to a strike was like you know
that that is a sort of thing that builds over
a long period of time. You know, you see the
ownership doing bad faith pargning. You go, what more conciliatory
approaches can we take first? You know, can we try this,
Can we try offering this to make you know, can
we try this display of good faith? Can we offer
(28:05):
this compromise? One of the things that was a big
part was of some of the not exactly contract related discussions,
but like has been talking for a long time about
a co op transition that it's never happened. It's been
twenty years, and you know, now that we've unionized, they're
like our people who we were talking to about doing
(28:26):
the co op thing. They don't work with unions and
so the only way that they were going to be
a co op is if the union goes away. And
so in response to that, we said, well, we're totally
opened to a transition to a co op that involves
the union, and here is such and such organization.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
It was our lead negotiator who actually provide the information.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Some er the name of the organization, but you know,
here's such and such organization that actually specifically deals with
union co op workplace transitions. Was not received with interest.
So it's like massive catalogue of bad faith bargaining and
you end up in your strategy discussions with the whole
(29:06):
unit testing the wires of like when is too much?
What's our red line that we need to take more
direct action? And what that began with for us was first, well,
if we're going to have if we're gonna have a strike,
we need funds for it. The IWW is an organization
(29:27):
that affords its unions a lot of freedom and a
lot of mutual support and solidarity. Is not an organization
with a huge amount of money. And so we did
start with trying to get like a sense of like
what we could get from, you know, the branches reserve,
(29:49):
and we moved on from that to how we were
going to fundraise and stuff like that. So we held
informational pickets that had donations, we sold sure posters, stuff
like that. We held like a big strike fundraiser, I
think something around like a month in advance of our
or it was maybe like a month and a half
(30:10):
in advance of our of our strike. We also gave
management like a courtesy notice about this so they could
pass it on to ownership, saying, hey, we've started fundraising
for a strike in the hopes that like being aware
that we're taking active preparations to go on strike would
facilitate bargaining.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Sometimes it works, I've seen I've seen it before. I've
seen it before.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Sometimes it works, yeah, and sometimes you know, sometimes you
end up on a podcast talking about how.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It didn't know.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
You never know until you try it.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah, you never know. But we did.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Yeah, we did give them that sort of early warning
and our readiness to strike kind of like depended then
on like where we were at in the fundraisings. So
we continue to sort of listening donations, reaching out to
various organizations in the area that are, you know, pro labor.
You know, we talked to like DSA whenever because you know,
(31:12):
they have their like a workplace organizing committee, yeah you walk, yeah,
and various other you know, yeah organizations that are pro labor.
And once we got to a point where you felt
like we were reasonably like prepared to sustain, they open
(31:32):
end to strike because that's what we're doing. This is
a strike with no set end date. Then we announced
our intention to hold a strike vote. We held our
strike vote. Strike vote passes. The ownership was made aware
at the Barney session before the strike vote, so it
was like the Monday before the strike vote, which is
on I think like a Saturday. So in total, it
(31:54):
was like around maybe like two weeks in change that
they knew like death it possibility past the strike vote.
Twelve days later, the strike begins with unfortunately no bargaining
in between.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Good lord, yeah, the whole way. You hope that they'll
come to the table. You hope that they.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Will come to their senses.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yeah, take it, take the risks seriously, take the risk seriously,
and unfortunately this is not what's happened here. Yeah, and
I think part of that is maybe an age thing here.
Ownership is is in their eighties, and they've pretty consistently
held the view that, like the union is like a
(32:36):
bunch of young people who don't know what the hell
they're talking about, you know, even though like the age
range of our union spans the age range of the workplace.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
We've got people in their.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Fifties and forties and thirties and twenties, you know, which
is a which is of course the problematic group. But yeah,
the young radicals. Yeah, so there's there's bad this sort
of patronizing attitude that I think has resulted in like
a real strategic failure on their part to seriously prepare
(33:09):
for the strike.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Or you know, bargain to avoid it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
One more fundraising things that I just I just want
to mention this for people if if you're trying to
fundraise for your own thing. Something that's actually we've had
a lot of success with up in Portland is getting
bands to do benefit shows. So like because it's Portland, right, Like,
the local hardcore scene has a lot of bands that
you know, are just supportive of stuff. And we've we've
do done this for a whole bunch of different causes,
and this is this this this can also be a
(33:36):
good way to just sort of do fundraising things that
are fun and also raise morale because yeah, you're doing
the show.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Yeah I was. I was hoping to have that be
more of a thing with our fundraiser.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
But yeah, it can be hard to organize sometimes.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Yeah, the people I knew were didn't get quite their response.
I was hoping from the community.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
If you are a hardcore band, if you are abandoned,
click there's still time.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
I believe that is that is totally a good option.
What we did, we ended up doing that.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
There wasn't music, But it's also like, why have our
organizers is really cooking? You like, did like a barbecue thing, Yeah,
sold food stuff like that and had a raffle.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
A raffle is a great way to fundraise for us.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
We like raffled off like stuff we have, But honestly,
you can even do like a straight monetary raffle is
still a great fundraising tool.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
You know, where everyone puts in money.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
The winner, the top three winners or whatever get like
a certain percentage like the total pool, and the rest
of the pool is is a to the cause. It's
really simple, really effective.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Yeah, there's a reason it's not good, but there is
a reason why a whole bunch of state education budgets
are footed are flooded by the lattery. It does work,
and where.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Where people love to gamble much better.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, he says, having turned off her lunch her path
of exile to lunch break to come to this interview
such cases. Okay, so let's speaking of I guess this
is something that has been tied in to sort of
volve over and saying here, but yeah, let's talk about,
you know, sort of maintaining the strike when it starts
(35:21):
to sort of Yeah, what have been the processes of
like keeping morale up and keeping people engaged?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
And yeah, yeah, I mean definitely, when you go into
a strike, you want to go in with a militant
core group. You want to basically be sure that everyone
is committed to holding the line until a collective decision
is made. Otherwise you don't want people like peeling off.
That's really bad pr for your strike. Yeah, yeah, and
(35:48):
like the bosses will grab on that. So like, for instance,
like you know, we have some people who are respecting
our picket line but chose not to picket with us,
which is fine as far as I'm concerned. But the
issue with that pr wise is that now the bosses
are saying and they're like tallying up of who's working
and who's not working. They're counting them as working. You know,
(36:11):
they're like, oh, it's only whatever they've been saying eight people.
I think it's more nine or ten. We're on the
picket line, but the rest is the rest of the
employees are working. They count themselves as employees in that count,
of course, and they count these these people who are
not crossing the picket line but not on it also
(36:33):
as among that count of the rest of the employees
that are working. What And they've had the opportunity to
really inflate that count because in a sort of you
know classic move, really all the moves are classic. You know,
you read your organizing books and you're like, can it
happen here?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
It does?
Speaker 4 (36:53):
So like we got a lot of new assistant managers
after we want our election, so right now, like the
composition of the workplace, right, got thirty four people fifteen managers.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I really wonder when we're going to see the day
where you have companies that have six like non managers
and fifty five managers. Like I feel like we're not
that far out.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Well, we're leading the charge here. We have a department
that's two people a manager and assistant managers.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Manager.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
God, So yeah, you know they're they're they've had these
particular angles to you know, sort of do their propaganda from.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
And I mean, honestly, I think.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
A big part of again the boss is the best organizer,
and like a thing that keeps you committed on the
line is like reading all this bullshit they say about
you and knowing otherwise and being.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Able to talk to each other and be like have
you seen this? Isn't this crazy? Like what the hell? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:54):
Also, you know, is this is where the sort of
like see of organizing all the way that you start
all the way back at the beginning of your union
campaign become you know, you show themselves is like really
important again because like the start, right anyone will tell
you is it's like getting to know people, like being
like you know, being on like a hey, how's it
(38:16):
going kind of level, you know, and having like a
personal rapport with the people you're on the line with
is vital just in the sense that you know, obviously
like you know each other, you're sort of friends, You're
going to be more.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Likely to stick up for each other.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
But also like you're out there nine hours walking in
a circle with these people, Yeah, you know, you got
to you gotta have positive, strong relationships with them. You
want to be able to have the kind of rapport
where like you can talk to people about like what
they're feeling anxious about, you know, like where they're worried
and like the strike strategy. Like you know, you need
(38:51):
to have that like trust between each other that you
can have like an open dialogue about how it feels
to be on the picket line, because you're not going
to maintain if ever, if like everyone feels.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Like they've got things they got a hold in about it.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Like yeah, there's a room to be like shit, like
are they going to close the business?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Like and what are we going to do?
Speaker 4 (39:11):
And like sort of like talk through that from a
from a place beyond like you know, like what you're not.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Letting in speaking to a crowd of a million people
or whatever.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
You're just like two people, yeah, going through a stressful
experience together.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah. Yeah, and you have to actually grapple with that
in a way. That's not the sort of like weird
corporate like we had to improve morale things, like that's
not what that means. It means, like you know, it
means actually grappling and engaging with people's feelings and how
and what they need in a moment and yeah, and
their fears and their concerns and yeah, you can't just
(39:47):
sort of brush them aside. You have to actually grapple
with it, because that's that's that's what.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Doing this stuff means, Yeah, exactly, having like these authentic
conversations with people because like like yeah, that's like a
totally great point you bring up there, Like the HR
speak that's the boss's tool, and it's the bosses tool
to divide and create disunity. So you can't lean on
that model for morale within your union. It just creates distrust.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, And I mean I've seen that happen with unions
where it's like you guys did not do a good
job of like talking to people about this, and like yeah,
and it can be really disruptive to attempts to do this.
But on the other hand, if if you do it well,
it's like it's the most powerful single thing that you
can like possibly do, like forging relationships that are based
(40:36):
on like the actual experience of having gone through struggle
together and having had to like literally had to face
your fields out of the picket line.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Yeah, Like ideally, you know, the union is a is
a community, and it's a community of interest, right, It's
a community of work interest, but it is ideally a community.
It's not a family, right, And it's certainly not not
not a family in the way that the bosses will
tell you the workplace is. But it is a community,
and it's a community in the way that that an employer's.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Idea of a community is fundamentally like incompatible with.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, there's this this Piki Ostro wallet line that I
think about a lot from her book and defensive fluting,
where she talks about how I feel like it was
Ferguson that this is about like the police chiefs talking
about the damage of the community, and they keep saying
our Walmart. It's like going into a Walmart and buying
something is not a community, right, like you know, they
(41:39):
like that, like those those kind of relations are not
actual community relations. But when the boss talk about community,
that's what they mean. They mean like like our collective
community Walmart. They mean preserving the relation of extraction that
they have. Yeah, and we are, you know, using the
same word and reading something literally so radically different than.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
That, and you have to make sure and you're in
the way that you're acting that that radically different meaning
is clear. Yeah, and yeah, it's funny you bring that up,
because that's just bringing to mind, like you see the
difference in those attitudes, like when you're out there on
the picket line like interact because you know, our picket
line a really pivotal part of it because there are
(42:22):
so many managers in there that they're able to maintain
this like Skeleton Crew is. The community outreach part is
like talking to every single person who's coming up and
being like, Hey, how's it going that I've been on
strike such and such long, this is what's up. Please
don't cass our picket line.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
And you know, I've.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Noticed you get this real funny situation where there are
the people who are like I've shopped.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Here for twenty years. You don't know what the hell
you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
I don't know you and have to be like, well
I normally at the dump, get in the merchandise you're buying.
But and who attribute the entire attribute everything that they
like about the business to the bosses. And then there's
the other part of the community that is coming by
frequently and like hanging out with us on on on
(43:08):
the picket line, you know, I pet the dog and
we chat about what's going on.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
They're like, how's the strike going.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
They're like, you know, I know it's been rough on
you guys for such and such, and like these people
are are are our shoppers too?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Right?
Speaker 4 (43:19):
But they like yeah, they it highlights that like sort
of divide in like what you think of it as like
community and responsibility your community because like these people also
love urbanor come here all the time, but they recognize
that like it's the workers that urban or that create
it every day, you know. Yeah, And it is a
(43:41):
company that was like founded by the individual. The individual
still owns it. He did found it with his with
his labor and all that he did. The labor you know,
back when it was you know, only a few people
and stuff like that. But ultimately a business, like any
sort of social phenomenon, has to be constantly recreated in
order to exist.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah, yeah, and like the people.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
Who do the work that makes it more than just
like a room full of garbage r us And yeah,
a lot of a lot of the like regulars recognize that,
and a lot of them, you know, flip me off
as they cross the thick line whatever.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
And I think this is a good place to sort
of start coming to a close on this is a
fundamental question about what the nature of our society is
going to be, right, Like, is the fundament mental nature
of our society that a community is a bunch of
people who buy things and a bunch of people who
make money from you buying things, and you make money
from the labor that you do, right, and then take
(44:43):
credit for the labor, and take credit with financially for
the labor and in public for the labor. Right is
that going? Is our society going to just be a
bunch of pure commercial relations where a bunch of people
get very very rich off the labor of everyone else
in the society and get to rule the mess sort
of like these petty tyrant kings. Or is it going
to be a society where the people who produce the
(45:04):
society control it, right, and that society is a democratic society,
is an egalitarian society, is a society where people are
free to do the things that they need to do,
and people are free to you know, have a life
where they can fucking pay for their groceries right where
like you know, where where they're where they're not forced
to go to the market for all of the things
(45:24):
that they need to live. Where you can survive in
a way that doesn't involve like subjecting yourself to just
a tyrant for like a third of your life.
Speaker 4 (45:34):
Yeah, where like the place that you spend like a
third of your life is a place where you actually
have like dignity.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Dignity and freedom and where you know, where you don't
have to go home at the end of a day
of making your boss money worrying about whether you're going
to be able to eat or not. And it's and
that's also a society that does not involve again at
the very highest level, like you're getting thrown into prison
camps because God hates you, and we can do this.
(46:04):
We could live with that society.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yeah, the demands are not that crazy. And that's like
the thing that we've encountered over and over again, is
this this constant push and pull of people saying that,
like the expectation of bettering our conditions, whether it be
like us on the picket line just trying to get
like a stable wage and just cause employment and stuff
(46:27):
like that, or whether it be you know, those larger
societal changes that like you're talking about use butt up
against these people who who have such like a paucity
of imagination about what's possible. Yeah, And like about the
legitimacy of trying to make something better, the legitimacy of saying, sure,
I can subsist on this, but you know, there's.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
So much more as possible.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Yeah, So I'm maintained that there's something more as possible.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I think it's possible too. And that's the thing about
this world, right, is that our enemies I figured out
that it actually can change.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
That's why they have to fight so hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
But the thing is the fact that they can change
for the worse also means that they can change for
the better.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
All beautiful stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Okay, where where can people find your strike fund? We'll
also put it in the in the description.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Oh yeah, great, So it's on gofund me. I'll send
you the link and it'll be down there. But also
people can hit up our union Instagram it's Urban or
workers with underscores between the words Urban, underscore or underscore
worker that we've got the link to like strike fund.
(47:35):
And also, hey, if you're in Berkeley, you can sign
up for a picket shift and you get to enjoy
listening to me discourse for nine hours instead of one.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
It's great, it's fun. Pickets are cool and good. If
you have a bit on one, you should go on one.
They're great, they're great. Yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
folsomedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
You can now find sources for It could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Day It Happened Here, a podcast increasingly well
named as as the Days go On. I'm your host,
Bio Wong, and it occurs to me over the course
of the many, many, many, many many union episodes we've
done in this podcast, we haven't really done much coverage
of just straight up how do you do a strike?
(00:27):
So today we are going to be covering a pretty
long running strike. We're gonna say how many days has
been going. It's unclear when this episode is gonna come out,
so who fucking knows how long it'll be when when
you hear it. But yeah, with me to talk about
this strike is Spencer Jordan, who is a rank and
file member of the Urban or Workers Union. Spencer, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Hey, thank you so much for having me Miah.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about this. So
this is what day is today. I should know this
April fifteenth, and as of April fifteenth, you've been outright
for twenty five days.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Yeah, that's just about right. Yeah, it started on the
twenty second of March. We held our strike vote like
a solid twelve days before.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Before we actually went out on the picket line.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
And one that strike vote with fourteen yes is a
single no, and I think four extensions pretty good.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yeah, so ninety of those voting voted yes. Yeah, which
good of good ratios. Good ratios.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I think like typically you want at least like mid
seventies if we're going to do this kind of thing.
But you know, as listener to the show hopefully understand
by now you can't just like call a strike and
have it happen. You know, you have to do a
whole bunch of organizing. So I want to kind of
start at the dynamics of the organizing of how this
(01:49):
shop got going, because this is a pretty small shop
from the sounds of it. And yeah, yeah, so do
you want to talk a bit about what the basic
process of getting this organizing started was like and what
the sort of like social mapping look like and stuff
like that.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Yeah, So the organization process started around like a year
and a half before we actually had our unionization vote,
which was actually we had the vote in March and
we got our win on April seventh, two years ago,
so we actually just had our union two year birthday birthday.
(02:28):
But yeah, so preceding that was, like, like I said,
about a year and a half organizing that involved, you know,
the typical thing of like one on one conversations with
like all the staff, making the you know, color coded
spreadsheet and everything, which all of this was not my
my purview. I'm a lot more involved now than I
(02:48):
was at the start of the process. And I was
approached by like one of our lead organizers really shortly
after being hired just to kind of you know, read
the dipstick as too, like my sentiments about it and whatnot.
I was pretty on board right away. I mean, you know, like,
(03:09):
I'm from the Bay Area, so it's not.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
There are there are only two types of people from
the Bay Area. You wouldn't be having one of the one.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Of the ship, Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I'm of the
ladder type.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
So you know, it being pro union is isn't a
isn't like a foreign thing to my background. You know,
you don't look like a techwork Yeah, yeah, especially like
my family's from the Midwest and everything, so there's yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
My my aunt actually just learned that she was like
a clerk working.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
For the railroads back in the day when my railroad
jobs were still like a big thing.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
You could have anyways.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
But yeah, so I had had my like own sort
of like just observations of like whoah, like what's what's
going on in the workplace aside from like my own
just like prediliction to thinking, you know, more.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Worker power is better.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Yeah, also kind of seeing like some of the factors
that precipitated it, Like, for instance, like when I was
hired here, I was hired in my interview, it was
the one of the owners and the manager of my department,
my department being salvage and recycling department of the urban
or which is kind of like not super public facing.
(04:23):
We like go to the dump and like root around
through the garbage, like you know, is or whatever, get
to get stuff for the store. But that manager, you know,
he was there in the interview, and we got to
the portion where the owner explained what at will employment is,
(04:43):
oh and she and she went, so we're at will here.
So Sam, well, Sam was my manager. Swell, how long
have you been here? Twenty one years? He's there, hands
folded on the table. Yes, what at will means is, uh,
it could be tomorrow. I could say, you know, Samuel,
it's been a great twenty one years.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
I really appreciate all the work you've done. Today's your
last day. And he has to sit there and go.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
And then she says, of course, likewise, tomorrow Samuel could
come to me and say, hey, Mary Lou, it's been
twenty one years, I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I'm quitting.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So you know, the sort of sword over his neck
is being cast is somehow equal to him not being
like indentured.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yes, it's also just I mean, like you know, yeah,
on the basic level. Yeah, it's like, Okay, your opponent,
I guess they argue, put it your boss. Your boss
can just instantly fire you for any reason whatsoever, for
any bout of time. And then also you could quit
the job. And then I really just as a plane,
(05:57):
just like as a management tactic, like are you like
trying to piss off your support? And it's like, what,
I have never had a boss like just do that
in a hiring meeting.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
What, Yeah, I mean have you have you worked at
like a like a like I saw a small like
mom and pop quote unquote business.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I mean that's that's probably That's probably why because
I've usually had like larger my shitty jobs have either
been like government jobs or like like larger companies, so
there was less of the like I heard a line
recently that I wish I remember where it was from.
It might be a line from Star Trek. It's like
one of the Ferengi rules is just like treat your
(06:42):
employees like family, exploit them ruthlessly, which I like, you.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Know, that's a that's a traditional line in business, especially
in small business, and it's it's no stranger here. Yeah,
that question of like wanting to piss off your supports
or whatever, it's a I don't know if pissing off
is necessarily like the concern, but the ownership here definitely.
(07:10):
I've gotten the impression that they enjoy showing their power,
and I've gotten the impression that the sort of like
uncertainty and like my mom would call it jockeying for
position that you have to do is a dynamic that
they I can't say, I really can't say they honestly
because the other owner, he hasn't been very active in
(07:33):
the business since since my hiring, but at least Mary
Lou Yeah, tends to lean on.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
That's kind of like the uh, the special quality that.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
You get with like a small business and organizing in
a small workplace is that like you know, you can
see sort of in their public communications the way.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That like the Zucks and the Bezoses and.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
The rest of them feel about their employees, and you know,
you can get a sense of perhaps how they might
act towards their employees if they like interacted with them
on a daily basis. But in a small business setting,
you really get a keen.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
View into how like.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
The power of the employer mixes very readily with a
person's like predilection towards discipline, pred election towards like personal
what did you call it personal battling?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Almost yeah, well, and it's and it's also like it's
inescapable in a way that it isn't with like you know,
if you're dealing with people who are you know, you're
at a larger company, you're not dealing with the person.
Like there's an old Chinese expression that is like heaven
is high and the emperor is far away. So you know,
it's like you know, like a lot of times you're
dealing with Okay, yeah, there is like you know, your
(08:54):
Zuckerberg is there, but he's like he never interacts with you.
But with this it's like no, like the small business
tyrant is right there in your face all the time,
and all of the weird petty shit that they want
to do, and all of this sort of like you know,
and I would say, this isn't just just like a
unique thing of like small business owners. Like people in
all positions, like in all portions of of like the
class society have in them kind of like the capacity
(09:18):
for cruelty. And there's just people like that, but they
don't normally have the ability to just do it to
you directly in your face. And that's yeah, and that's
like that's you know, this is what you've been talking about,
is like, yeah, you have like these small business tyrants
like every Suddenly in the same way that's like I
don't know, you're dealing with like like one of the
random King Louis and you're like in the court and
(09:39):
suddenly just like the fact that this guy doesn't like
people going to the bathroom means that everyone around him
doesn't get it, doesn't get she doesn't get a shit, right,
Like it's just like, yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
It's like it's actually an argument that she's deployed in
her Reddit correspondence, which has been simmingly a pretty active
of part of her spare.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Time that she's not spending at the bargaining table with us.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
You know, made this comparison of like, this isn't a
question about.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Oligarchs or whatever.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
And it's true, like the small businessman is not an oligarch,
but the small business is a microcosm of like the
larger capitalist social order. And while the small business man
might not have the scope of power of the oligarch,
(10:31):
or like the actual capital resources of an oligarch, the
behavior certainly rhymes yea yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And again it's like it's a lot of it is about.
It's just how much power you have access to, right, Like,
lots of people can be like this, but only the few,
the proud of the small business type get to do it.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And you know, ultimately the employer or wherever they are,
they're in this privileged position of being a to Yeah.
You spend most people more than like a third of
your life at work. Yeah, the employer has this unique
power to dictate what that third of your life looks like.
You know, yeah, we talk about I mean, shit, we don't.
(11:14):
People are not so much talking about democracy writ large
in the US in the same way now that they
used to. But you know, you talk about this idea
of like living in a democracy, but democracy ends at
the shop door.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah yeah, And like the kind of power that these
people have is something that like these people get to
control when you can go to the bathroom, like what
clothes you where, like literally what you can do, what
you can say at any given time. If you employed
the exact level of control that your boss has over
(11:53):
you on a state, it would be a totalitarian state.
And yet everyone seems to think that this is sort
of like you know, and this is an nugument I've
been making about like Trump is that like yeah, this
is this is this is what sort of Trump and
Elon and like that whole Caudra and and you know,
and Beck if you want to go into the sort
of idealogues behind it too. This is what people like
Peter Thiel want when when they say run the government
(12:16):
like a business, what they mean is that they want
to like to import the sort of like just the
pure tyranny of the workplace and expand it into the
entire political system so that they're they're like sort of
just pure like totalitarian corporate rule can't be challenged.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, wasn't it Miscellani who coined the
term the corporate state?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Probably, although it would not surprise me if it was
like some other fascist theorists and Wessolini just started saying
it because yeah, but yeah, like that's you know, that's
a substantive thing here. And what this also means is
that like, even in ways that are sort of hard
to see, like a fight over democracy in the workplace, right,
(12:58):
is a is a part of the larger struggle against
all of all the things that's happening. Because if you know,
if we're going to survive this, and if we're going
to make sure that we don't all live in a
world where you like, if you say the wrong thing,
you can be sent to a prison camp. Democracy, if
you want this to survive, is going to have to
march into like into the layer of the beast. It
(13:18):
is going to have to go into the source of
this tyranny itself, which is the workplace, and it's going
to have to crush it there.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you said it very very aptly there,
Like the corporate structure maras the totalitarian structure. And you know,
not only does like fighting the corporate structure at the
level of labor makes sense in that right, labor is
what enables the flow of capital that sustains the totalitarian state.
(13:51):
But also, like you said, you're you're you're addressing the
structure in its I don't know, I almost think of
it as like the you know, like Grendel's mother in
the then or whatever, and like, like, you know, the
the authoritarian thing is like it's like Grendel maybe, and
(14:12):
like Grendel's mother is like this capitalist, hierarchical structure. Yeah,
you know, you take it on with an insistence on
workplace democracy as kind of libby as that's that sounds.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Okay, speaking speaking speaking of capitalist will tellitariotism. Here are
the ads that we are required to run by our.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Let's hear them, and we are back.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
So let's get back a little bit towards the more
concrete parts of the union, though, I do you have
more to say eventually at some point about the way
that sort of labor liberalism co opted democracy in the
workplace from like you know, the idea the old sort
of like anarchist idea of workers control right. But Okay,
(15:13):
So one thing I wanted to talk about before we
sort of get into the more formal stuff about about
the strike is I was I'm really interested to hear
you talk about what the process of kind of onboarding
you to get more involved in the union is, because
this is something that like, Okay, every functional union wants
to do this, Like if your union is not trying
(15:34):
to bring people like its members like more to get
more involved in the union and become more of the
people becoming like core organizers and becoming you know, like
they're the people who are doing your bargaining people are
doing anything like your union is, there's weird shit about it,
and you should probably like be looking into that, but
it's pretty hard. So yeah, can can you talk a
bit about the process of like how you were brought
(15:55):
in and what sort of worked and what didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Well.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
I think ultimately, like the easiest thing is a sort
of ramping up degree of like responsibility within the organization. Right, So,
like at the start.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I would come to some of the meetings, I would
miss some of them.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
I would be like, Oh, I'm fucking so busy with
whatever is going on in my life, and you know,
I was supportive and sort of involved, but you know,
I wasn't like, I mean, I stain wasn't doing things
like this. And you know, eventually one we like kind
(16:36):
of persisted as a union over a longer period of time,
the necessity of involvement became more like obvious to me, right,
And that's that's a hard ask, you know, Like you're organizing,
you want momentum and you want yeah, you want to
(16:56):
be able to change your conditions for the better as
soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, And with.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
URBANIR, you know, lots of workplaces that need unionization have
high turnover, right, and urbanor is no different. And so
I saw, you know, like some of the more committed
elements of the bargaining unit.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Be fired or quit or whatever.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
And you know they'd be replaced with other people and
you have to begin to work organizing over again. And
with some of them you succeed with something that you don't,
you know, you have different dynamics. I feel like the
hiring procedures may have changed a little bit afteryone our election,
but you know, I can't say that for certain. So
the sort of like necessity of like keeping that like
(17:45):
flame going, especially after we had won the election, we
were in contract bargain for a long period of time.
Made me feel like a sort of sense of like
I need to be more active in this because like
this is an important struggle, and like I see our
like main organizers taking on like a fuckload of work
and like needing more voices at the table, needing more
(18:10):
more uh, needing more people to be more involved. And
so like I, you know, volunteered to run for treasure.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
That was the only candidate. Yeah, but theoretically I could
have been voted down.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
They could have been like I don't know about thatszer,
and you know, like ended up having like a little
bit more direct responsibilities, Like I was like receiving some
of the donations to our strike fund once we started
fund raising for the strike, and to keep track of
those and you know, put the special bank account and
then eventually take that money, get it to like the
(18:46):
the IWW branch, uh hand it hand a big check
to Dino, that kind of stuff, and just like having
like little things to be doing, like yeah, spurs involved
other people, you know, became responsible for like parts of
social media outreach, make graphics stuff like that, and also
(19:10):
like sort of I guess, giving people the opportunity to
leverage their individual connections within the work because every workplace
is like clicks and groups and subgroups and all that,
to leverage those connections in like service of bettering everyone's conditions.
So like to a certain degree, I've I've been like
(19:32):
important as like an envoid to my particular department because
it's our job takes us away from the job site
or like from like the main the main work site
often and stuff like that, so there's less of a
direct avenue for communication there. So I can say that's
my experience. Yeah, as far as organizing goes, like, I'm easy.
You know, I was already I was already believing in it,
(19:54):
and like there are others that it have that it's
been harder. I will say though, that the strike itself
is I mean, a strike is a conflict, and when
you're in conflict together, it's an extremely cohering force. Which
(20:16):
isn't to say that like necessarily you want your unionization
to come to a strike, but perhaps like raising a
sort of consciousness of like the fact that like you
are ultimately like in conflict with the boss. The boss
doesn't want you to unionize. The boss doesn't want you
to force concessions out of them, and that like, as
a union, we are taking on this like responsibility to
(20:41):
look after each other's interests and to support each other
like tangibly in terms like what we do, and also
intangibly in terms of like the kind of conversations we
have around like morale planning and stuff like that, you know,
to succeed together. I think those are like really potent
cohering forces. And you know, it helps to have a
(21:02):
good a good opponent. You know, the boss is the
best organizer. And at urban or it's you don't go
along without coming head to head with like the with
with conflict with ownership or with like ownership through the
mediator of management. Like although like support for the union
(21:29):
might be divided a bit at the workplace, one thing
that's pretty universal is like a frustration with ownership.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, so okay, speaking of speaking of a frustration with ownership,
it is time for us to go to ads one
last time.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
That beautiful but then ever.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Come back, strike strike, strike.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Strike, strikes, strike.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
Just after this message, okay, we are back from a
bunch of people who almost assuredly do not want you
to go on strike.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
But yeah, so let's let's let's let's get into the
process of how you actually organize a strike. Yeah, let's
start from just like the very beginning, one of the
kinds of things that were happening that you know, made
people think that you needed to do this in the
first place.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
So the strike itself is a result specifically, like, this
is a ULP strike, So it's in response to something
that falls under the category of unfairly or practice according
to the National Labor Relations Act, And it's you know,
backed up by charges filed with the board, as opposed
(22:46):
to like what's called an economic strike, which is a
strike that is specifically about economic issues at the workplace.
So the specific ULP that's being cited for our strike
is bad faith bargaining. And for us, what that's looked
like is two years of completely stalled negotiations where we
(23:09):
are basically being faced with a take it or leave
it offer of the status quo in the vast majority
of our proposals. Bargaining is very, very slow, and ownership
has held tightly to the to the offense at us
(23:29):
having unionized it all, which to my understanding is pretty
typical of small workplaces. Ownership takes it very personally, and
that personal feeling of the trail or whatever becomes like
a stumbling block in the negotiation process. I know that
was the case with mos Another's bookshop in Berkeley that
(23:50):
also unionized with the AWW. So, you know, we've had
our whole proposal on ownership's table for a.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Year and a half now.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
We had started with a bargaining proposal by proposal. They said, well,
how can we possibly agree to any of this without
understanding the full context, especially the economic context, And so
we gave them a full proposal and they said, oh
my god, how do you expect us to read all
of this in time to bargain? This is way too much.
(24:20):
How we're going to.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Evaluate this all? We got to do a proposal by proposal.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
So it's been really unclear to us if ownership has
even actually like read the entirety of our collective bargaining
agreement that we put on their desk. I know that
in the past the lawyers have the lawyers have said
things like, oh, my, my eyes glazed over when I
read your email, so I missed such and such part
(24:46):
of it.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
It's literally your job contract. You have one job.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Yeah, you would think like a lawyer would have like
a little bit more like Jesus beyond like a tweet
tweet sized reading capacity.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
But well they give any one law degrees.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yeah, or like ownership saying like well, I just thought
it was so ridiculous. I didn't feel they need to
read all of it stuff like that. Oh my god,
does these readers bad faith bargaining?
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, that's bad by like the standards of like normal,
it takes two years to do a fucking contract because
they're just not doing shit, and like, good lord, usually.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
In those long contract negotiations, by two years at least
there's like been some progress.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Yeah, yeah, well that they've read the proposals, Like yes, okay,
will will will your boss show up to your meeting
an hour and a half late because they didn't bother
to look through the proposals until literally right at the
time the meeting was going to start. Yes, but will
they have done it?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Usually yes, mm hmm yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
And in fact, in the sort of company propaganda where
they're claiming that this like bad faith bargaining charge has
no grounds, they're like ownership has come to like twenty
five to thirty bargaining sessions neglecting to mention they're been
somewhere in the range of like fifty to sixty.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
And of course half maybe they've shown up to more
than half. I don't want to be.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Libelous, but yeah, but still, like it's at the point
of which you are failing to show up for any
bargaining session, I think you can like, look, I have
always advocated that if that advantagement doesn't show up to
a bargaining session, you should just be allowed to take
the company, because clearly they're not serious about it.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
But hey, you know, they've been talking about a worker
cup for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Not performost reforms.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
But yeah, so those kind of things.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
And then like finally, like one of the bigger precipitating
factors is, like we've been trying to bargain over economics,
ownership has implied a lot of times that they cannot
afford to pay what we're asking. They say it'll ruin
the company, they say a company will go bankrupt, or
they say it's unsustained, they say this and that, and
(27:01):
then when they get to the table they say, we
have never and we'll never argue inability to pay. Because
the thing is is that to say inability to pay right,
it obligates you to furnish information to prove that, and they,
for whatever reason do not want.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Wow, I wonder why British financial information.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
So these have been some of the sticking points, and
that's why we've been out on the picky line for
about three weeks now, still waiting for them to come
to the table.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
God damn it.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
So okay, let's let's talk about like the just sort
of the process of like how the discussions went for
doing this, What did those sort of look like, and
how did how did you sort of you know, just
like plant plan this thing out?
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Well, I guess the process towards like deciding that I
needed to come to a strike was like you know
that that is a sort of thing that builds over
a long period of time. You know, you see the
ownership doing bad faith pargning. You go, what more conciliatory
approaches can we take first? You know, can we try this,
Can we try offering this to make you know, can
we try this display of good faith? Can we offer
(28:05):
this compromise? One of the things that was a big
part was of some of the not exactly contract related discussions,
but like has been talking for a long time about
a co op transition that it's never happened. It's been
twenty years, and you know, now that we've unionized, they're
like our people who we were talking to about doing
(28:26):
the co op thing. They don't work with unions and
so the only way that they were going to be
a co op is if the union goes away. And
so in response to that, we said, well, we're totally
opened to a transition to a co op that involves
the union, and here is such and such organization.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
It was our lead negotiator who actually provide the information.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Some er the name of the organization, but you know,
here's such and such organization that actually specifically deals with
union co op workplace transitions. Was not received with interest.
So it's like massive catalogue of bad faith bargaining and
you end up in your strategy discussions with the whole
(29:06):
unit testing the wires of like when is too much?
What's our red line that we need to take more
direct action? And what that began with for us was first, well,
if we're going to have if we're gonna have a strike,
we need funds for it. The IWW is an organization
(29:27):
that affords its unions a lot of freedom and a
lot of mutual support and solidarity. Is not an organization
with a huge amount of money. And so we did
start with trying to get like a sense of like
what we could get from, you know, the branches reserve,
(29:49):
and we moved on from that to how we were
going to fundraise and stuff like that. So we held
informational pickets that had donations, we sold sure posters, stuff
like that. We held like a big strike fundraiser, I
think something around like a month in advance of our
or it was maybe like a month and a half
(30:10):
in advance of our of our strike. We also gave
management like a courtesy notice about this so they could
pass it on to ownership, saying, hey, we've started fundraising
for a strike in the hopes that like being aware
that we're taking active preparations to go on strike would
facilitate bargaining.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Sometimes it works, I've seen I've seen it before. I've
seen it before.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Sometimes it works, yeah, and sometimes you know, sometimes you
end up on a podcast talking about how.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It didn't know.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
You never know until you try it.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah, you never know. But we did.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Yeah, we did give them that sort of early warning
and our readiness to strike kind of like depended then
on like where we were at in the fundraisings. So
we continue to sort of listening donations, reaching out to
various organizations in the area that are, you know, pro labor.
You know, we talked to like DSA whenever because you know,
(31:12):
they have their like a workplace organizing committee, yeah you walk, yeah,
and various other you know, yeah organizations that are pro labor.
And once we got to a point where you felt
like we were reasonably like prepared to sustain, they open
(31:32):
end to strike because that's what we're doing. This is
a strike with no set end date. Then we announced
our intention to hold a strike vote. We held our
strike vote. Strike vote passes. The ownership was made aware
at the Barney session before the strike vote, so it
was like the Monday before the strike vote, which is
on I think like a Saturday. So in total, it
(31:54):
was like around maybe like two weeks in change that
they knew like death it possibility past the strike vote.
Twelve days later, the strike begins with unfortunately no bargaining
in between.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Good lord, yeah, the whole way. You hope that they'll
come to the table. You hope that they.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Will come to their senses.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yeah, take it, take the risks seriously, take the risk seriously,
and unfortunately this is not what's happened here. Yeah, and
I think part of that is maybe an age thing here.
Ownership is is in their eighties, and they've pretty consistently
held the view that, like the union is like a
(32:36):
bunch of young people who don't know what the hell
they're talking about, you know, even though like the age
range of our union spans the age range of the workplace.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
We've got people in their.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Fifties and forties and thirties and twenties, you know, which
is a which is of course the problematic group. But yeah,
the young radicals. Yeah, so there's there's bad this sort
of patronizing attitude that I think has resulted in like
a real strategic failure on their part to seriously prepare
(33:09):
for the strike.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Or you know, bargain to avoid it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
One more fundraising things that I just I just want
to mention this for people if if you're trying to
fundraise for your own thing. Something that's actually we've had
a lot of success with up in Portland is getting
bands to do benefit shows. So like because it's Portland, right, Like,
the local hardcore scene has a lot of bands that
you know, are just supportive of stuff. And we've we've
do done this for a whole bunch of different causes,
and this is this this this can also be a
(33:36):
good way to just sort of do fundraising things that
are fun and also raise morale because yeah, you're doing
the show.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Yeah I was. I was hoping to have that be
more of a thing with our fundraiser.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
But yeah, it can be hard to organize sometimes.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Yeah, the people I knew were didn't get quite their response.
I was hoping from the community.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
If you are a hardcore band, if you are abandoned,
click there's still time.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
I believe that is that is totally a good option.
What we did, we ended up doing that.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
There wasn't music, But it's also like, why have our
organizers is really cooking? You like, did like a barbecue thing, Yeah,
sold food stuff like that and had a raffle.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
A raffle is a great way to fundraise for us.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
We like raffled off like stuff we have, But honestly,
you can even do like a straight monetary raffle is
still a great fundraising tool.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
You know, where everyone puts in money.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
The winner, the top three winners or whatever get like
a certain percentage like the total pool, and the rest
of the pool is is a to the cause. It's
really simple, really effective.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Yeah, there's a reason it's not good, but there is
a reason why a whole bunch of state education budgets
are footed are flooded by the lattery. It does work,
and where.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Where people love to gamble much better.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Yeah, he says, having turned off her lunch her path
of exile to lunch break to come to this interview
such cases. Okay, so let's speaking of I guess this
is something that has been tied in to sort of
volve over and saying here, but yeah, let's talk about,
you know, sort of maintaining the strike when it starts
(35:21):
to sort of Yeah, what have been the processes of
like keeping morale up and keeping people engaged?
Speaker 4 (35:25):
And yeah, yeah, I mean definitely, when you go into
a strike, you want to go in with a militant
core group. You want to basically be sure that everyone
is committed to holding the line until a collective decision
is made. Otherwise you don't want people like peeling off.
That's really bad pr for your strike. Yeah, yeah, and
(35:48):
like the bosses will grab on that. So like, for instance,
like you know, we have some people who are respecting
our picket line but chose not to picket with us,
which is fine as far as I'm concerned. But the
issue with that pr wise is that now the bosses
are saying and they're like tallying up of who's working
and who's not working. They're counting them as working. You know,
(36:11):
they're like, oh, it's only whatever they've been saying eight people.
I think it's more nine or ten. We're on the
picket line, but the rest is the rest of the
employees are working. They count themselves as employees in that count,
of course, and they count these these people who are
not crossing the picket line but not on it also
(36:33):
as among that count of the rest of the employees
that are working. What And they've had the opportunity to
really inflate that count because in a sort of you
know classic move, really all the moves are classic. You know,
you read your organizing books and you're like, can it
happen here?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
It does?
Speaker 4 (36:53):
So like we got a lot of new assistant managers
after we want our election, so right now, like the
composition of the workplace, right, got thirty four people fifteen managers.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I really wonder when we're going to see the day
where you have companies that have six like non managers
and fifty five managers. Like I feel like we're not
that far out.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Well, we're leading the charge here. We have a department
that's two people a manager and assistant managers.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Manager.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
God, So yeah, you know they're they're they've had these
particular angles to you know, sort of do their propaganda from.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
And I mean, honestly, I think.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
A big part of again the boss is the best organizer,
and like a thing that keeps you committed on the
line is like reading all this bullshit they say about
you and knowing otherwise and being.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Able to talk to each other and be like have
you seen this? Isn't this crazy? Like what the hell? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:54):
Also, you know, is this is where the sort of
like see of organizing all the way that you start
all the way back at the beginning of your union
campaign become you know, you show themselves is like really
important again because like the start, right anyone will tell
you is it's like getting to know people, like being
like you know, being on like a hey, how's it
(38:16):
going kind of level, you know, and having like a
personal rapport with the people you're on the line with
is vital just in the sense that you know, obviously
like you know each other, you're sort of friends, You're
going to be more.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Likely to stick up for each other.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
But also like you're out there nine hours walking in
a circle with these people, Yeah, you know, you got
to you gotta have positive, strong relationships with them. You
want to be able to have the kind of rapport
where like you can talk to people about like what
they're feeling anxious about, you know, like where they're worried
and like the strike strategy. Like you know, you need
(38:51):
to have that like trust between each other that you
can have like an open dialogue about how it feels
to be on the picket line, because you're not going
to maintain if ever, if like everyone feels.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Like they've got things they got a hold in about it.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Like yeah, there's a room to be like shit, like
are they going to close the business?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Like and what are we going to do?
Speaker 4 (39:11):
And like sort of like talk through that from a
from a place beyond like you know, like what you're not.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Letting in speaking to a crowd of a million people
or whatever.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
You're just like two people, yeah, going through a stressful
experience together.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah. Yeah, and you have to actually grapple with that
in a way. That's not the sort of like weird
corporate like we had to improve morale things, like that's
not what that means. It means, like you know, it
means actually grappling and engaging with people's feelings and how
and what they need in a moment and yeah, and
their fears and their concerns and yeah, you can't just
(39:47):
sort of brush them aside. You have to actually grapple
with it, because that's that's that's what.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Doing this stuff means, Yeah, exactly, having like these authentic
conversations with people because like like yeah, that's like a
totally great point you bring up there, Like the HR
speak that's the boss's tool, and it's the bosses tool
to divide and create disunity. So you can't lean on
that model for morale within your union. It just creates distrust.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, And I mean I've seen that happen with unions
where it's like you guys did not do a good
job of like talking to people about this, and like yeah,
and it can be really disruptive to attempts to do this.
But on the other hand, if if you do it well,
it's like it's the most powerful single thing that you
can like possibly do, like forging relationships that are based
(40:36):
on like the actual experience of having gone through struggle
together and having had to like literally had to face
your fields out of the picket line.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Yeah, Like ideally, you know, the union is a is
a community, and it's a community of interest, right, It's
a community of work interest, but it is ideally a community.
It's not a family, right, And it's certainly not not
not a family in the way that the bosses will
tell you the workplace is. But it is a community,
and it's a community in the way that that an employer's.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Idea of a community is fundamentally like incompatible with.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, there's this this Piki Ostro wallet line that I
think about a lot from her book and defensive fluting,
where she talks about how I feel like it was
Ferguson that this is about like the police chiefs talking
about the damage of the community, and they keep saying
our Walmart. It's like going into a Walmart and buying
something is not a community, right, like you know, they
(41:39):
like that, like those those kind of relations are not
actual community relations. But when the boss talk about community,
that's what they mean. They mean like like our collective
community Walmart. They mean preserving the relation of extraction that
they have. Yeah, and we are, you know, using the
same word and reading something literally so radically different than.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
That, and you have to make sure and you're in
the way that you're acting that that radically different meaning
is clear. Yeah, and yeah, it's funny you bring that up,
because that's just bringing to mind, like you see the
difference in those attitudes, like when you're out there on
the picket line like interact because you know, our picket
line a really pivotal part of it because there are
(42:22):
so many managers in there that they're able to maintain
this like Skeleton Crew is. The community outreach part is
like talking to every single person who's coming up and
being like, Hey, how's it going that I've been on
strike such and such long, this is what's up. Please
don't cass our picket line.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
And you know, I've.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Noticed you get this real funny situation where there are
the people who are like I've shopped.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Here for twenty years. You don't know what the hell
you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
I don't know you and have to be like, well
I normally at the dump, get in the merchandise you're buying.
But and who attribute the entire attribute everything that they
like about the business to the bosses. And then there's
the other part of the community that is coming by
frequently and like hanging out with us on on on
(43:08):
the picket line, you know, I pet the dog and
we chat about what's going on.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
They're like, how's the strike going.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
They're like, you know, I know it's been rough on
you guys for such and such, and like these people
are are are our shoppers too?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Right?
Speaker 4 (43:19):
But they like yeah, they it highlights that like sort
of divide in like what you think of it as like
community and responsibility your community because like these people also
love urbanor come here all the time, but they recognize
that like it's the workers that urban or that create
it every day, you know. Yeah, And it is a
(43:41):
company that was like founded by the individual. The individual
still owns it. He did found it with his with
his labor and all that he did. The labor you know,
back when it was you know, only a few people
and stuff like that. But ultimately a business, like any
sort of social phenomenon, has to be constantly recreated in
order to exist.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Yeah, yeah, and like the people.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
Who do the work that makes it more than just
like a room full of garbage r us And yeah,
a lot of a lot of the like regulars recognize that,
and a lot of them, you know, flip me off
as they cross the thick line whatever.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
And I think this is a good place to sort
of start coming to a close on this is a
fundamental question about what the nature of our society is
going to be, right, Like, is the fundament mental nature
of our society that a community is a bunch of
people who buy things and a bunch of people who
make money from you buying things, and you make money
from the labor that you do, right, and then take
(44:43):
credit for the labor, and take credit with financially for
the labor and in public for the labor. Right is
that going? Is our society going to just be a
bunch of pure commercial relations where a bunch of people
get very very rich off the labor of everyone else
in the society and get to rule the mess sort
of like these petty tyrant kings. Or is it going
to be a society where the people who produce the
(45:04):
society control it, right, and that society is a democratic society,
is an egalitarian society, is a society where people are
free to do the things that they need to do,
and people are free to you know, have a life
where they can fucking pay for their groceries right where
like you know, where where they're where they're not forced
to go to the market for all of the things
(45:24):
that they need to live. Where you can survive in
a way that doesn't involve like subjecting yourself to just
a tyrant for like a third of your life.
Speaker 4 (45:34):
Yeah, where like the place that you spend like a
third of your life is a place where you actually
have like dignity.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Dignity and freedom and where you know, where you don't
have to go home at the end of a day
of making your boss money worrying about whether you're going
to be able to eat or not. And it's and
that's also a society that does not involve again at
the very highest level, like you're getting thrown into prison
camps because God hates you, and we can do this.
(46:04):
We could live with that society.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yeah, the demands are not that crazy. And that's like
the thing that we've encountered over and over again, is
this this constant push and pull of people saying that,
like the expectation of bettering our conditions, whether it be
like us on the picket line just trying to get
like a stable wage and just cause employment and stuff
(46:27):
like that, or whether it be you know, those larger
societal changes that like you're talking about use butt up
against these people who who have such like a paucity
of imagination about what's possible. Yeah, And like about the
legitimacy of trying to make something better, the legitimacy of saying, sure,
I can subsist on this, but you know, there's.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
So much more as possible.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Yeah, So I'm maintained that there's something more as possible.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I think it's possible too. And that's the thing about
this world, right, is that our enemies I figured out
that it actually can change.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
That's why they have to fight so hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
But the thing is the fact that they can change
for the worse also means that they can change for
the better.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
All beautiful stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Okay, where where can people find your strike fund? We'll
also put it in the in the description.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Oh yeah, great, So it's on gofund me. I'll send
you the link and it'll be down there. But also
people can hit up our union Instagram it's Urban or
workers with underscores between the words Urban, underscore or underscore
worker that we've got the link to like strike fund.
(47:35):
And also, hey, if you're in Berkeley, you can sign
up for a picket shift and you get to enjoy
listening to me discourse for nine hours instead of one.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
It's great, it's fun. Pickets are cool and good. If
you have a bit on one, you should go on one.
They're great, they're great. Yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
folsomedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
You can now find sources for It could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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