December 16, 2025 • 36 mins
Mia talks with two members of Blue Bottle Independent Union about their campaign of strikes and walkouts against management's contract negotiation delay tactics.
Website: bluebottleunion.org
Strike fund: tinyurl.com/bbiu-strike
Want to organize your store? Email us at bluebottleunion@gmail.com with the Subject Line: [Your city] Barista Interest
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Take it Up at here A Podcast boldly asked the
question what if a whole bunch of your life wasn't
controlled by the bizarre whims of random dictators.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
This is your host, Mia Wung And the last time.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We saw the Blue Bottle Union they had stage to
walk out treated eclipse. Now they are back again to
talk about union shit and Yeah with me is Alex Pine,
who's the president of Blue Bottle Union, and Abby Sadow,
the secretary treasurer.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Yeah, both of you two, welcome to the show. Hi,
thanks for having us both back on. Yes, thank you
so much.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, I'm really really I'm really excited to talk about
this because the last one, I gotta say that was
one of the absolute funniest you these I've ever heard.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Yeah, I still can't get over HOWDHS got called on
us when we tried to file for our election.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So what inge like, I feel like this is the
That's one of the things about doing the show is
like I'm like about to be five years into this, right,
It's like you think you've seen it all and then
just like no, just just the most unhinged bullshit you've
ever heard in your entire life. Because like, just like,
the capacity for cruelty and inventiveness of bosses is effectively infinite,
so they can always find some bullshit.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
The pull that you've ever seen before, and they love
to do it too.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
This is one of the reasons why we unionized to
begin with, is just because bosses can be petty tyrants. Yeah,
and sometimes it seems like the only reason that they
got into being a boss is because they want to
be a petty tyrant but don't have the soul for
politics anyways.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, we unionized last May. For anybody that's.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Unaware, Blue Bottle is a so called specialty coffee chain
that is owned entirely by Neslie. Yes, that one that
everyone regards as whyly being evil.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
See an extremely log episode that I did, for example,
about nice Lee chocolate and child labor is great. It's
child slave labor, good stuff.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
We love capitalism, and their coffee business is truly no better.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I mean this is going to get wildly off topic
before we even begin, but if anybody looks up the
NGO Coffee Watch, they do a lot of great reporting
and research on the supply chains of coffee, specifically Nestli's
and Starbucks' and it's all very ugly stuff, but Blue Bottle.
Blue Bottles, especially the coffee chain owned by Nesli. We
unionized all six of their Greater Boston locations in May
(02:31):
of twenty twenty four, and this year we added four
locations in the East Bay area to our.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Union in July. Hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
We also just concluded a multi day strike as an
independent union at the end of November, so Black Friday.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Hell yeah, hell yeah, yeah yeah. So let's talk about
that strike. Well, actually, I guess, okay, we should.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We should probably do the run up to what has
been happening until we go after that strike. I'm getting it.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I'm getting strike excited.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
This is how I've been in my mind since September.
It's just how do we make ustrike happen?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah? Hell yeah yeah. Let's talk about like what the
sort of lead up stuff to the action world.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Let's talk about like, yeah, what expanding was, Like, yeah, Abby,
do you want to talk about the lead up?
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Yeah? So since we unionized last May, we've had multiple
staged walkouts. In September of last year, one of our
union wraps at the Harvard Square location well unjustly fired.
We did a walk out over her termination. We did
a walkout in January of this past year after Blue
(03:39):
Bottle completely refused to negotiate with us over the renovation
of the Prudential Center and a lot of employees we're
going to be losing out on almost eight dollars in
tips an hour is just hundreds of dollars a month.
And the company was like, oh, well, we bargained to
an impasse, so we're just gonna do whatever we want.
We were like, okay, well that's not that's not a
most works no. Yeah, And then in May of this year,
(04:02):
we did another walk out when they made the same
argument that we bargained towards impass when they tried to
install security cameras.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
For anybody that's wondering, no, the cafes in Boston did
not have cameras in them for the entire time that
we were organizing or unionized until we began negotiating the
installation of cameras as part of our contract. When they
felt like they were done talking about cameras with us,
they declared impass, which they can't do because we were
negotiating it as part of the contract, so they would
(04:31):
have had to get to an impass on the entire
contract before doing it. Yeah, and their lawyer basically said, well,
we weren't getting anywhere with that, so we're going to
do it anyways.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
God, labor law is so fun because it's like like
every boss breaks like one hundred million labor laws a second,
and then kind of nothing happens unless you force it to.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Speaking of breaking weird labor laws, since we unionized, one
nice thing that has happened was until May of this year,
they were negotiating over serious discipline, so final written warnings
or terminations with us.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
In effect, what.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
This means is that they would sit down with us
and just talk about why they felt like terminating someone
was justified until they said we're not going to do
anything else aside from fire them. But because of an
NLRB ruling with Starbucks at the end of April, their
lawyer said that they were done with that and they
felt that they had no legal obligation to continue doing it.
(05:31):
Oh fun, Yeah, which a break from past practice. And
we have been writing them committing to negotiating over serious
discipline with us. So less than a week after they
say we're not going to bargain over discipline with you anymore.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
They fire one.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Coworker of ours, and our store immediately walked out over it.
Hell yeah, which yeah, I continue to be proud of
that walkout, specifically because it wasn't planned and because it
was over something that is pretty technical labor law wise.
Just the fact that they didn't negotiate over the termination
that find that rock. Yes, that's like a girl who's
read a bunch of weird labor history. This thing feels
(06:07):
like a thing for a fucking weird labor history.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
The thing it reminds me of is that there was
this thing in I think it was sibber Gora in Spain.
She like the twenties and thirties where it was like
this hyperbilitant labor like union like labor town, but they
had a whole thing where they refused to strike over
like improving economic conditions because they were like this is
Burgeoise reformism, and they would only strike over political stuff. Yeah,
(06:29):
but if you arrested like one person, like the whole
fucking city would go out.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
It's like this a lot. Yeah, No, we could just
call it.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
We could just fucking instantly get get a fucking walk
out to happen over just like over like them fucking
with like kind of technical labor stuff like this rocks.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
We love to see it.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Like, yeah, I was on the floor that day that
our coworker was fired, and I remember I went on
my ten minute break after she was fired, and there's
like a pond behind our store and I was literally
throwing rocks in the pond and I was like, this
sucks so bad and I'm so angry. And then I
was like, wait, we're a unionized. I was like, wait
a minute, we have a union. And I go back
(07:09):
into the store and I was like, hey, guys, if
we don't walk out right now, then what is the point.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (07:13):
And everyone was like yeah, actually, if we don't walk
out right now, what is the point?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah? Hell yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
And then we all walked out and it was it
was really beautiful.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Actually, that's so sick. That's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
I don't know there's some kind of metaphor for like
you walking in being like the first rip the rock
hitting the pod in, the first ripples going out and
the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Oh, absolutely, that's I don't know, it's gorgeous. I love it.
That fucking rules.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
Congratulations tell yeah, One of my favorite things to say
is that union is friendship, and friendship is unions, and
when your friend gets fired, you should be able to
walk out. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, it fuck that, like seriously.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Yeah, And on the whole, we've had a I think
pretty successful year, especially because I want to stress this,
we're independent. So for all the walkouts that we've done,
we've been able to replace the wages of baristas.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Oh that's really sick.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
If anybody listening to this wants to help us be
able to do more walkouts, you can go yes TinyURL
dot com forward slash bbu dash strike will be in
the description.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Hell yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Because at this point the company is realized that they
can't break our solidarity in any meaningful way by resorting
to scare tactics or delaying, and so now they've just
resorted to straight up firing people because yeah, like it's
kind of like a break glass here in case of
emergency thing where.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
They're like, we're all out of ideas. What do we do. Yeah,
it's just start trying to fire everyone.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
And that's what they've done.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Most recently, all the stores in both Boston and the
East Bay area went on a four day strike this
November because the company illegally fired Abbey, executive board member
named Nora and an organizer of ours in the East
Bay named Ashley for all incredibly petty reasons. I don't
know if you want to speak more to why you
(09:01):
were fire Abby.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Yeah, so on the record, I was fired because I
wore green pants. What I wore green pants like three
weeks prior to me being fired. And let me tell you,
there's nothing worse than waking up at four point thirty
to go to your opening shift at your stupid cafe job,
(09:25):
to then clock in and be immediately hit with separation
forms because you wore green pants three weeks ago.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
What you must understand what a serious infraction it is
to wear green pants.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
Of course, I mean clearly the green pants that I've
been wearing for the better part of two years.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Yeah, firing Abby was generous.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Actually she should have been put to death for the
crime of wearing green pants.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Of course.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Most likely.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
This is some like fucking medieval like, yeah, you pissed
off the monarch by like you wore a color of
pants that was like unfavorable to the eye of the king,
and now he's drawn quarter Like what is this bullshit.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
Like, yep, I wore green pants in front of my manager,
therefore I should not be able to make my rent.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, it's absolute gibberish that that might be the all
time dubbest fiery reason I've ever heard.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Like what, oh yeah, it's just so egregious because the
managers know that I have a great rapport with all
my coworkers. I'm fronts with all of my coworkers, and
they were like, hm, how can we, you know, make
one of our long standing employees who is good at
their job, you know, get fired? So green pants was
(10:35):
the reasoning.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Which and just like the idea of your employer being
able to control what color of pants you wear is
like is a thing that just on a fundamental level
would not be accepted with any other kind of authority.
That's everyone immediately recognizes, Wait, what the fuck? That's completely unhinged.
Why should someone have the ability to tell you like, no,
(10:56):
you have to wear this color pants, or you can't
pay your rents and you can't eat Oh yeah no.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And this is kind of the despotism of management that
we were just talking about, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, And this is the thing that in.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Bargaining sessions for a contract their site is very interested
in maintaining We've said multiple times that we want a
better dress code policy, or at the very least, we
don't want to wave our right to be able to
wear a union memorabilia on the floor.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
And because he doesn't have any better ideas, their lawyer
can only think to shoot that down by talking about
how he doesn't, you know, wear his sexuality on his
shirt or what.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, well, because he was like, why don't you want
to be able to wave your right to wear a
union memorabilia on the floor, and we said, we want
to be able to show pride that we are unionized,
and we want to be able to have more freedom
for expression. Uh huh, because it's despotic to be able
to have that level of control over.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
What somebody does.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Yeah, and then he said, you know, well, I uh
don't wear my sexuality. I'm my shirt and then realized
that it was maybe inappropriate to say that, So then
he talked about how he doesn't wear his daughters on
his shirt.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Which it's a more convoluted point.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Yeah, well, because he's proud of his kids.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I guess what are we doing here. Just come on,
we gotta have better arguments than this, Like.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
No, this guy is really full of bad arguments.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
If you yeah, if you want to hear bad arguments,
you should sit on the bargaining session where their lawyer
goes on kind of incomprehensible tie rades about how the
free market in the aggregate will make sure that the
best person will get promoted over time, or that the
company will become more profitable or run with the most
efficiency as an enterprise, because anything else would be illogical
(12:42):
because they wouldn't produce more profit.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But what does that have to do with labor? Yes,
because actually this is okay. So when I know who's
a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Once told me that, like the this is this is
not like a leftist, this is just like she's just
like a corporate lawyer. Once told me that this is
like the actual secret basis that doesn't exist of all
corporate laws, that there is actually nothing in the law
that says a company has to make more money or
they even have the right to make money. Like that's
that that doesn't exist, Like that's not that's not a thing,
(13:12):
Like there's no, you don't actually have a legal right
to make more money, like you simply don't. That's just
that's not how this works. The thing that reminds me
of is the other call is David Graeber wrote about
(13:33):
I think you might have been quoting someone else, but
I can't remember who was quoting. But he writes about
how the relationship between sort of eloquence and violence where
the less you have and this isn't somewhere in the
utopia of rules. He writes about how you know people
who have access to violence to compel people to do something,
you don't even have to speak the same language as someone. Right,
you can just point a gun at them and you
(13:55):
know they have to obey you because you know they
have force, right, But the less ability you have to
actually use force to get someone to do something. Right, So,
if you're a village chief in there's actually a lot
of condigenous tribes that were like this, but you know
you're you're in like sort of the northeast, and you
(14:16):
don't actually have the ability to compel people to do things.
So if you want people to go work in the morning,
you have to like get up and make a giant
show of like, oh, I'm getting up to work in
the morning.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Everyone follow me. Wow, look at how hard I working.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And you have to like convince them through oratory and
you know this, this is like why all these people
when when Europeans run into them, everyone is like, holy shit,
these are like the these are the best orders of
every encountered because they have to be right. But the
more power you have, the less eloquence you have to have,
which I think is like, you know, this is like
a Donald Trump thing, right, It's like, yeah, you've once
you've reached this point in the process, you know, you
(14:50):
can just compel people do things through violence. You can
just like talk like a fourth grader and it's fine
and it doesn't matter because you just have violence. And
that's what this reminds me of a like, oh, we're
the company like we have like we're fucking owned by
nasty We have all this money. We don't have to
make compelling arguments. We just have to like have power.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, I mean pretty much personally, it reads to me
it's like a way to delay actually talking about any
of our demands at the table, because if you just
eat up all the time, then there's no time to talk.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Yeah, but that's also really beautiful to think about from
a more abstract sense.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, well, also, just companies love fucking with negotiations. It's awful.
I how okay, I should just start asking everyone who
does negotiations about this. But on average, how late are
manages to show up to meetings? I would say that
actually both sides are equally late well to the negotiations,
at least just because getting around the city is so difficult.
(15:50):
Oh oh, so that's it's like a transit thing, not
like a no.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
No, we're not deliberately showing up ly as far as
I know, we just can't get Yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
There should they already just be there?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Oh yeah, Well, because this is something that's actually been
a delay tactic for them, is they insist that we
need to split the cost equally of a bargaining space.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
What what?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
And again we're independent, so they know that we can't
on a regular basis commit to that. So if you
want to donate to our unions that way, we can
hate to sit down in front of these people.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
That's completely on it.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, having to have the union pave I've never heard
of that before.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
That's completely deranged, that's what.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
And we we've even waived our right to meet in
a neutral space.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
So we've asked if they would be willing to meet
in the office of their legal representation or if they'd
be willing to meet in the office of our legal representation,
and they've said no to both because supposedly, despite being
the second largest union avoidance firm in the world, they've
said that their office doesn't have adequate space to hold us.
But then space in the city is so fucking expensive
(17:02):
that there's no feasible way to rent a space for
eight hours for two days.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
You know, once a month.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Yeah, which which is meant that we've ended up in
some strange places, so college conference rooms, city hall. H
we work what yeah, really know.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
This is the most deeply unseerious company I have ever encountered.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Like there's all kinds of things like that that they've
employed in the past year to attempt us making significant
progress with negotiating. And it wasn't until November this year
that they finally gave us a counter on economics after
we told them we would file a bad faith bargaining
charge if they didn't. Hell, yeah, do you want to
(17:49):
guess what they're counter So for reference, our union's requesting
thirty dollars an hour for brestas because that's a living
wage according to the MIT Living Wage calculator. Do you
want to get what Bluebottle said they would.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Give us eighteen? No?
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Well, actually, strangely yes, they said, right now we make
eighteen an hour, but they said they'll keep it the
same and they want to retain the rate to change
it whenever they want. They're they're making a floor. They're
they're committing to a floor that I then tried to
ask if they've ever in their history decreased wages. H
huh and they're like no, I don't see why we
(18:26):
would ever do that, and like, oh, so then this
floor is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Actually, their baseline for negotiations is our starting position is nothing.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Yeah, and this is a year after negotiating with them
so far.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, like a year and it's like okay, like I'm
at that that point. It's like, yeah, I don't know,
like fucking are our starting position is we should have
your house? Like this is like this is like equally
like come on, like you having their house is a
more reasonable demand than our basic negotiating position.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Is nothing, like what are we doing here?
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
No, idea just God, yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Insert obligatory line here about how after you've went in
an election, the most common way for unied to fail
is bargaining the first contract. And companies know this, they
will just do bullshit for several years to attempt to
not have you get a contract.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It sucks. Yeah, yeah, fuck them.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
It's their whole strategy. I mean, the whole like union
avoidance of it all is they're just trying to like
wait us out and then fire people who are involved
and just like in their words like let turnover do
its natural work. But it's like, isn't this specialty coffee?
Don't you want people who are good at their jobs.
I've watched some of my new coworkers pull a shot
that I wouldn't feed to a dog, like.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
The same.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Oh absolutely, why Look, you can't expect managers to know
how to do things that's not their job.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
My manager, let me tell you. I used to have
to open with her like three times a week, and
she has this very beautiful habit of as she's dialing
espresso and also she does this while she's counting cash.
She will have her phone open on TikTok and then
scroll through. I have this one horrific memory. It was
six am and she was going through an entire TikTok
(20:13):
storytime series for forty five minutes. And the whole story
time was going on, and every time it was an
introduction of like, I don't even remember what it was about.
I think it was like She's like, oh, this is
my story of being like a mob boss's wife. And
I had to listen to that for forty five minutes while.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Opening Oh, yeah, I think you should you should legally
be allowed to have her card. I think I should.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Have her house probably, yeah too.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yes, it's like our starting our starting demand is every
time you pissed offs off, we get another one of
your houses.
Speaker 5 (20:44):
Look for every TikTok watched on the clock, that's a
dollar towards me per hour.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah, what are we doing here? They're owned Binesli.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
But I don't think that there's enough money in the
world that would be able to give you that, Abby.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
No, I don't think I'll ever receive fair compensation.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
You didn't really piss off the modern monetary theory people,
because they'd.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Be like, no, even we can't account.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
For this, No one can account for the emotional damage.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
We ran out of data in our Federal Reserve data
god to recap.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
So in the past year, we've done multiple walkouts, unionized
four locations in the East Bay area, and then after
Abbey was fired for bullshit reasons, along with two other organizers,
we went on a four day strike which included both cities.
And we've done this entirely as an independent union against
a company that is owned by Nesle. Yeah, and interestingly,
(21:41):
just because I'd be remiss to not mention this, the
day that we ended our strike, there was an article
published in Writers which was the most vibe based reporting
that I've ever seen, where it said Nesley explores sale
of Blue Bottle coffee sources say, where there's three unnamed sources.
Incredible that all say that Neslie is considering or looking
(22:02):
into selling Blue Bottle coffee. But interestingly says here quote
once or said Neslie could decide to sell the cafes,
but retain the brand's intellectual property to continue selling the
products end.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Quote what are we doing here?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Like yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting as a tell
because personally, I think it's just a scare tactic. Yeah yeah,
Like I could consider walking into traffic. I could be
looking into my options for how fast a car would
hit me, but that doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
You didn't considering appropriating the mansions, like we're an exploratory committee.
Sources say, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Think they'd publish that in writers, But uh, it's interesting
that they would even say that, because like the entire
value that Blue Bottle offers Neslie is to be able
to put the brand onto you know, espressopods or whatever.
And also just very weird timing with the strike ending
the same day comes out.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
They are so scared, they are scared shitless and they
don't know what to do about it, and they're breaking
last left and right trying to maintain power. But it's,
like Alex said earlier, like the solidarity that we have
between our coworkers, it just cannot be broken by management.
And even after they fired me and two of our
(23:22):
other organizers, people still went out on the picket line.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
We kept telling.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
Five out of the six cafes closed in Boston, and
the only reason one of them could stay open is
because all of the managers banded together to keep the
Credential Center open.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I would hate to go.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
Say I don't think a single latte went out correctly
that day, but hey, you know, at least at least
they can still collect their nine dollars per latte.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
So if you got food poisoning the strike.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Getting coffee, if you had a bad experience stirring the
strike at the Podential Center, just know that that was
not union made coffee, and we would never do that
to you.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I think it's really beautiful that, yeah, y'all have just
kept fucking doing this, even though they're just doing this
bullshit constantly, and it's like, no, we're just going to
keep fighting them, and they're going to get so scared
that they're leaking to the press that we're thinking about
selling the things.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
We're a lot further along than I thought we would
ever get.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
I thought they were going to fire us the day
after we did the first walk out last year, which
is you know, I thought all the more reason to
try then. Yeah, but really, it's not tough for people
that we work with to realize that they're getting a
bad deal and that the reason that the job sucks
is because they don't get paid enough to live in
the city. Like I think most baristas at Blue Bottle
(25:00):
see something like sixty percent of their income going towards
rent because jesus, Yeah, we did a survey on this.
Let me double check to make sure that I have
the facts right. But yeah, this this is from you know, March,
so it's a little bit old data. We'll do another
survey soon. But most Blue Bottle Briste was a rent burden,
spending more than thirty percent of their income on rent,
(25:22):
the median rent paid by Blue Bottle employees being one thousand,
forty five dollars, which is the equivalent of one hundred
and fifty Nora Lean style iced coffees. That it's one
of the best selling drinks they have. Yeah, no, I know,
for one hundred and fifty Nola. So you two can
pay the median rent by paid by Barista and then
on average it's sorry forty six percent of their income
(25:44):
going towards rent, with roughly a third of Briste is
paying over sixty percent.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
We told all these facts to their lawyer at a
bargaining session and he just said that maybe the reason
that we were all struggling to make ends me was
because we were paying for too many streaming services.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Yeah, I know, Like it's entirely.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
He knows this bush did they just get like a
right wing ship poster.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
To their lawyer? Like, is this just like? Is this
like fucking like? Is this is like the fail sun
clone of Rudy Giuliani? Like this's gonna start melting off?
What are we doing here? Come on? I wish I
could tell you.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
I don't know what their strategy with saying obviously false
things is, but they love to do it.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It's so great, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Okay, fuck it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read
this quote. I was gonna use this for a diffid
episode and I didn't, so all right, fuck it, this
is I'm I'm gonna read this line from Dan Olson's
documentary In Search of Flat Earth, which is like probably
the best thing that's ever been done about flat Earth.
Because they believe that power belongs to those with the
greatest will to take it, And what greater sign of
(26:54):
will than the ability to overwrite the truth. Their will
is a hammer they are using to beat reality into
a shape of their choosing a simple world where reality
is exactly what it looks like through their eyes, devoid
of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right, and
their enemies are silent. They are trying to build a
flat earth.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
That's just this shit. They're just like, no, fuck you,
we can say whatever the fuck we want because we
take the week, because.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
This is an expression of just power, even though we
know that we're lying and you know that you're lying.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Is I mean, if you want to talk about expression
of power, you should read their management's rights clause. Sorry,
they're so called management's rights clause. Oh god, let me
see if I can pull that up. So just to clarify, so,
management's rates is a clause that can be found in
some union contracts because of collaborationists within unions in the
(27:49):
fifties deciding that they actually didn't want to go for
complete work or control of the means of production. They
just wanted to collaborate with management in order to get
a better deal for wages. I'm not going to comment
on the history of that, but that and that's why
they feel like they can include this in negotiations. Right now,
we haven't agreed to any management rates, but quote, it
is agreed that the management of the company's business and
the direction of its working forces are vested exclusively in
(28:11):
the company and that the company retains all rights that
had before the execution of this agreement unless a rate
is clearly contracted away in this agreement by language that
is specific and unambiguous. These retained company rates include, but
are not limited to, the following examples. The right to
direct and supervise the work of its employees. The right
to hire, promote, demote, transfer, and to discipline or discharge employees.
The right to create or eliminate jobs, and to determine
(28:32):
wage rates for newly created or materially modify jobs. The
right to determine training requirements and provide training to employees.
The right to uniform and hire standards. The right to plan, direct,
and control operations. The right to determine products to be sold,
services and products to be procured, used, and or distributed.
The right to determine the type and quantity of machines, equipment,
location of cafes. The right to determine the amount and
(28:53):
quality of work needed. The right to determine schedules of
cafe operations. The right to determine the number of employees needed,
the right to determine the work schedule of employees. The
right to lay off employees or relieve employees from work
because of lack of work. The right to discontinue or
introduce new or improved methods, operating practices and cafes. The
right to change the content of jobs and the qualification
for such jobs. And the right to establish, modify, and
(29:15):
enforce work rules of conduct or policies, and discipline employees
who violate such rules or policies. The right to establish, modify,
Oh Jesus Christ, and force.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
And I forgot how bad it is.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Wow, Because basically what they're saying is we want to
be able to control everything that you do, and this
is our They never say where they believe this right
comes from. They on make like an argument from naturalism,
where like we are vested by the universal power of
management to be able to do this. They don't make
any historical argument for it where oh this is you know,
because of the contracts that have been negotiated since the fifties,
(29:53):
something that's fairly standard. And we think that we have
the right too because of like long standing president. They
just think that they should be able to control fucking everything. Yeah,
which is not unsurprising for Nesley. Yeah, yeah, Well, and
I think there's.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
There's a lot of very very abstract theoretical debate you
run into if you're like, instead of doing shit, you're
like in theory circles about like oh, is like is
capital its own autonomous entity or is it like a
thing that's like costantly in like relation to like the
actions and workers And it's like, okay, read something like
this and it's like, oh no, they are so worried
(30:30):
that they're going to have to react to what their
workers are doing that they and they are already doing
this right like this is you know you mean, this
is this goes back to the whole like we're leaking
to the media, we're going to sell the company thing
that they're doing where it's like no, actually, like these
people are so not like easily, but if if you
are organized at all, it becomes so clear to them
(30:53):
that they actually, oh no, wait, hold on, they're responding
to us like they're not just purely the only thing
they guess so like drive history forward and decide literally
everything about your life the moment you like try to
claw it away from them.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
They see how fragile.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
It is and they're like no, no, no, no, actually, we
got to spell out the fact that we get to
fucking dress you and whatever clothes we want you to wear.
And it's like, Okay, this is like a thing that
only exists if you do not resist them at all, but.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Like, no, if you fucking fight them.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
They have to fucking write all this shit down that
they think they've always been able to do, and it's ridiculous.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
And to hear it all in a bullet form, like
in literally just a bullet list, like every single aspect
of my life and everything that I've ever loved or
thought was important to me in a list of what
they think they can control. It's just crazy. And then
we have to go back and say, Okay, well do
you see how off base you are? Yeah, And then
they make us sound like the crazy ones for wanting
(31:48):
to live a good life and be able to, like
you know, make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Pay less than sixty eight percent ever, and come towards rent.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
Yeah. Yeah, take a vacation maybe.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
One other thing that I think is a great point
about how it's actually capital responding to the organization of
Barista's people workers whatever is. They haven't done it recently,
but last summer they sent a very long winded and
angry email about all the bargaining updates and pressed that
the union was getting.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
They're so mad at me that I'm good at my job.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
And then this past summer, after we did two walkouts
in fairly quick succession and response to two different things,
they attempted to accuse us of an intermittent striking just
because they were so scared they didn't know what else
to do, to try and be like, you didn't own me,
I'm not mad, please some pot in the news that
I met. Their lawyer even said in a bargaining session
(32:46):
later on that he had a less than seventy five
percent chance of ever winning that argument at the board.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
But they were just so mad that we walked out
twice in May that they tried to claim that it
was unprotected but that they're being benevolent by not disciplining
anyone for it.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
God, And they.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Haven't really given much of a response to our multi
day strike yet, aside from their lawyer emailing us earlier
this week to ask us for our entire legal justification
for why the terminations of Abbey, Nora, and Ashley were
illegal and what legal justification we have to say that
(33:26):
they're negotiating a contract in bad faith, which is like
the NLRA.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, yeah, Like what are we doing here? God? Yeah?
So what's comed up next for y'all? What's the next stage?
Speaker 4 (33:41):
If you or anybody that you know either works at
a Blue Bottle or wants to apply to a Blue
Bottle to help organize it, please reach out to us
by email at Blue Bottle Union at gmail dot com.
If you want to support our independent unionism and help
us remain independent and be able to go on multiple
day strikes which clearly piss off our nestlie overlords, you
(34:01):
can donate to us at TinyURL dot com forward slash
bbu dash strike unless we're until we have a contract
or they reinstate, Abby, Nora, Ashley and fingers crossed, hopefully
not myself. We're calling on a boycott of all Blue
Bottle coffee products. Helly, I have no idea what the
overlap between it could happen here listeners and customer.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
You'd be surprised, But I'm sure there's a lot of
about there.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Look, judging by the shit I have heard from our listeners,
I love you all. Some of you are on some
wild shit. If some of you are not the people
you would expect to be so.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah, So don't buy Blue Bottle.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
If some of the things that we've said about the
bargaining sessions sounds too absurd to be true to you,
then you can go to Bluebottle union dot org and
under the tab for Buristas you can read every bargaining update,
where we publish all of the proposals that the company
has given us so far. You can read the shit
that they make us read in the bargaining sessions. Yeah,
(35:05):
so that's what's next in like the next month or so.
There's other things that we're working on that we can't
talk about yet.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Hell yeah, hell yeah. Love this.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
I'm trying so hard not to just read half the
end or speech. Authority is the massive tyrany is brittle.
Speaker 5 (35:24):
If there ever were a time to read it, there's
no time like the present is.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
You know what, fuck it, We're just we're doing it.
We're doing it. The imperial need for control is so
desperate because it is so unnatural. Terity requires constant effort.
It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the
mask of fear. Remember that and know this. The day
will come when all these skirmishes in battles.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
These moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of
the empire's authority, and then there will be one too many,
one single thing will break the siege. Remember this, try,
and that's my message to you all. You can fight
your own bosses too, and you can beat them, and
you can watch them running around in terror like fucking
chickens with their head cut off, and you can get
(36:09):
shit from them that they never would have wanted to
give you in the first place.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Take it Up at here A Podcast boldly asked the
question what if a whole bunch of your life wasn't
controlled by the bizarre whims of random dictators.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
This is your host, Mia Wung And the last time.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We saw the Blue Bottle Union they had stage to
walk out treated eclipse. Now they are back again to
talk about union shit and Yeah with me is Alex Pine,
who's the president of Blue Bottle Union, and Abby Sadow,
the secretary treasurer.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Yeah, both of you two, welcome to the show. Hi,
thanks for having us both back on. Yes, thank you
so much.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, I'm really really I'm really excited to talk about
this because the last one, I gotta say that was
one of the absolute funniest you these I've ever heard.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Yeah, I still can't get over HOWDHS got called on
us when we tried to file for our election.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So what inge like, I feel like this is the
That's one of the things about doing the show is
like I'm like about to be five years into this, right,
It's like you think you've seen it all and then
just like no, just just the most unhinged bullshit you've
ever heard in your entire life. Because like, just like,
the capacity for cruelty and inventiveness of bosses is effectively infinite,
so they can always find some bullshit.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
The pull that you've ever seen before, and they love
to do it too.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
This is one of the reasons why we unionized to
begin with, is just because bosses can be petty tyrants. Yeah,
and sometimes it seems like the only reason that they
got into being a boss is because they want to
be a petty tyrant but don't have the soul for
politics anyways.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, we unionized last May. For anybody that's.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Unaware, Blue Bottle is a so called specialty coffee chain
that is owned entirely by Neslie. Yes, that one that
everyone regards as whyly being evil.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
See an extremely log episode that I did, for example,
about nice Lee chocolate and child labor is great. It's
child slave labor, good stuff.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
We love capitalism, and their coffee business is truly no better.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I mean this is going to get wildly off topic
before we even begin, but if anybody looks up the
NGO Coffee Watch, they do a lot of great reporting
and research on the supply chains of coffee, specifically Nestli's
and Starbucks' and it's all very ugly stuff, but Blue Bottle.
Blue Bottles, especially the coffee chain owned by Nesli. We
unionized all six of their Greater Boston locations in May
(02:31):
of twenty twenty four, and this year we added four
locations in the East Bay area to our.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Union in July. Hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
We also just concluded a multi day strike as an
independent union at the end of November, so Black Friday.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Hell yeah, hell yeah, yeah yeah. So let's talk about
that strike. Well, actually, I guess, okay, we should.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We should probably do the run up to what has
been happening until we go after that strike. I'm getting it.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I'm getting strike excited.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
This is how I've been in my mind since September.
It's just how do we make ustrike happen?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah? Hell yeah yeah. Let's talk about like what the
sort of lead up stuff to the action world.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Let's talk about like, yeah, what expanding was, Like, yeah, Abby,
do you want to talk about the lead up?
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Yeah? So since we unionized last May, we've had multiple
staged walkouts. In September of last year, one of our
union wraps at the Harvard Square location well unjustly fired.
We did a walk out over her termination. We did
a walkout in January of this past year after Blue
(03:39):
Bottle completely refused to negotiate with us over the renovation
of the Prudential Center and a lot of employees we're
going to be losing out on almost eight dollars in
tips an hour is just hundreds of dollars a month.
And the company was like, oh, well, we bargained to
an impasse, so we're just gonna do whatever we want.
We were like, okay, well that's not that's not a
most works no. Yeah, And then in May of this year,
(04:02):
we did another walk out when they made the same
argument that we bargained towards impass when they tried to
install security cameras.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
For anybody that's wondering, no, the cafes in Boston did
not have cameras in them for the entire time that
we were organizing or unionized until we began negotiating the
installation of cameras as part of our contract. When they
felt like they were done talking about cameras with us,
they declared impass, which they can't do because we were
negotiating it as part of the contract, so they would
(04:31):
have had to get to an impass on the entire
contract before doing it. Yeah, and their lawyer basically said, well,
we weren't getting anywhere with that, so we're going to
do it anyways.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
God, labor law is so fun because it's like like
every boss breaks like one hundred million labor laws a second,
and then kind of nothing happens unless you force it to.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Speaking of breaking weird labor laws, since we unionized, one
nice thing that has happened was until May of this year,
they were negotiating over serious discipline, so final written warnings
or terminations with us.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
In effect, what.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
This means is that they would sit down with us
and just talk about why they felt like terminating someone
was justified until they said we're not going to do
anything else aside from fire them. But because of an
NLRB ruling with Starbucks at the end of April, their
lawyer said that they were done with that and they
felt that they had no legal obligation to continue doing it.
(05:31):
Oh fun, Yeah, which a break from past practice. And
we have been writing them committing to negotiating over serious
discipline with us. So less than a week after they
say we're not going to bargain over discipline with you anymore.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
They fire one.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Coworker of ours, and our store immediately walked out over it.
Hell yeah, which yeah, I continue to be proud of
that walkout, specifically because it wasn't planned and because it
was over something that is pretty technical labor law wise.
Just the fact that they didn't negotiate over the termination
that find that rock. Yes, that's like a girl who's
read a bunch of weird labor history. This thing feels
(06:07):
like a thing for a fucking weird labor history.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
The thing it reminds me of is that there was
this thing in I think it was sibber Gora in Spain.
She like the twenties and thirties where it was like
this hyperbilitant labor like union like labor town, but they
had a whole thing where they refused to strike over
like improving economic conditions because they were like this is
Burgeoise reformism, and they would only strike over political stuff. Yeah,
(06:29):
but if you arrested like one person, like the whole
fucking city would go out.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
It's like this a lot. Yeah, No, we could just
call it.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
We could just fucking instantly get get a fucking walk
out to happen over just like over like them fucking
with like kind of technical labor stuff like this rocks.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
We love to see it.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Like, yeah, I was on the floor that day that
our coworker was fired, and I remember I went on
my ten minute break after she was fired, and there's
like a pond behind our store and I was literally
throwing rocks in the pond and I was like, this
sucks so bad and I'm so angry. And then I
was like, wait, we're a unionized. I was like, wait
a minute, we have a union. And I go back
(07:09):
into the store and I was like, hey, guys, if
we don't walk out right now, then what is the point.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (07:13):
And everyone was like yeah, actually, if we don't walk
out right now, what is the point?
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah? Hell yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
And then we all walked out and it was it
was really beautiful.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Actually, that's so sick. That's so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
I don't know there's some kind of metaphor for like
you walking in being like the first rip the rock
hitting the pod in, the first ripples going out and
the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Oh, absolutely, that's I don't know, it's gorgeous. I love it.
That fucking rules.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
Congratulations tell yeah, One of my favorite things to say
is that union is friendship, and friendship is unions, and
when your friend gets fired, you should be able to
walk out. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Yeah, it fuck that, like seriously.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Yeah, And on the whole, we've had a I think
pretty successful year, especially because I want to stress this,
we're independent. So for all the walkouts that we've done,
we've been able to replace the wages of baristas.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Oh that's really sick.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
If anybody listening to this wants to help us be
able to do more walkouts, you can go yes TinyURL
dot com forward slash bbu dash strike will be in
the description.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Hell yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Because at this point the company is realized that they
can't break our solidarity in any meaningful way by resorting
to scare tactics or delaying, and so now they've just
resorted to straight up firing people because yeah, like it's
kind of like a break glass here in case of
emergency thing where.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
They're like, we're all out of ideas. What do we do. Yeah,
it's just start trying to fire everyone.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
And that's what they've done.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Most recently, all the stores in both Boston and the
East Bay area went on a four day strike this
November because the company illegally fired Abbey, executive board member
named Nora and an organizer of ours in the East
Bay named Ashley for all incredibly petty reasons. I don't
know if you want to speak more to why you
(09:01):
were fire Abby.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Yeah, so on the record, I was fired because I
wore green pants. What I wore green pants like three
weeks prior to me being fired. And let me tell you,
there's nothing worse than waking up at four point thirty
to go to your opening shift at your stupid cafe job,
(09:25):
to then clock in and be immediately hit with separation
forms because you wore green pants three weeks ago.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
What you must understand what a serious infraction it is
to wear green pants.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
Of course, I mean clearly the green pants that I've
been wearing for the better part of two years.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Yeah, firing Abby was generous.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
Actually she should have been put to death for the
crime of wearing green pants.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Of course.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Most likely.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
This is some like fucking medieval like, yeah, you pissed
off the monarch by like you wore a color of
pants that was like unfavorable to the eye of the king,
and now he's drawn quarter Like what is this bullshit.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
Like, yep, I wore green pants in front of my manager,
therefore I should not be able to make my rent.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, it's absolute gibberish that that might be the all
time dubbest fiery reason I've ever heard.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Like what, oh yeah, it's just so egregious because the
managers know that I have a great rapport with all
my coworkers. I'm fronts with all of my coworkers, and
they were like, hm, how can we, you know, make
one of our long standing employees who is good at
their job, you know, get fired? So green pants was
(10:35):
the reasoning.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Which and just like the idea of your employer being
able to control what color of pants you wear is
like is a thing that just on a fundamental level
would not be accepted with any other kind of authority.
That's everyone immediately recognizes, Wait, what the fuck? That's completely unhinged.
Why should someone have the ability to tell you like, no,
(10:56):
you have to wear this color pants, or you can't
pay your rents and you can't eat Oh yeah no.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And this is kind of the despotism of management that
we were just talking about, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, And this is the thing that in.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
Bargaining sessions for a contract their site is very interested
in maintaining We've said multiple times that we want a
better dress code policy, or at the very least, we
don't want to wave our right to be able to
wear a union memorabilia on the floor.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
And because he doesn't have any better ideas, their lawyer
can only think to shoot that down by talking about
how he doesn't, you know, wear his sexuality on his
shirt or what.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, well, because he was like, why don't you want
to be able to wave your right to wear a
union memorabilia on the floor, and we said, we want
to be able to show pride that we are unionized,
and we want to be able to have more freedom
for expression. Uh huh, because it's despotic to be able
to have that level of control over.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
What somebody does.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Yeah, and then he said, you know, well, I uh
don't wear my sexuality. I'm my shirt and then realized
that it was maybe inappropriate to say that, So then
he talked about how he doesn't wear his daughters on
his shirt.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Which it's a more convoluted point.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Yeah, well, because he's proud of his kids.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I guess what are we doing here. Just come on,
we gotta have better arguments than this, Like.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
No, this guy is really full of bad arguments.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
If you yeah, if you want to hear bad arguments,
you should sit on the bargaining session where their lawyer
goes on kind of incomprehensible tie rades about how the
free market in the aggregate will make sure that the
best person will get promoted over time, or that the
company will become more profitable or run with the most
efficiency as an enterprise, because anything else would be illogical
(12:42):
because they wouldn't produce more profit.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
But what does that have to do with labor? Yes,
because actually this is okay. So when I know who's
a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Once told me that, like the this is this is
not like a leftist, this is just like she's just
like a corporate lawyer. Once told me that this is
like the actual secret basis that doesn't exist of all
corporate laws, that there is actually nothing in the law
that says a company has to make more money or
they even have the right to make money. Like that's
that that doesn't exist, Like that's not that's not a thing,
(13:12):
Like there's no, you don't actually have a legal right
to make more money, like you simply don't. That's just
that's not how this works. The thing that reminds me
of is the other call is David Graeber wrote about
(13:33):
I think you might have been quoting someone else, but
I can't remember who was quoting. But he writes about
how the relationship between sort of eloquence and violence where
the less you have and this isn't somewhere in the
utopia of rules. He writes about how you know people
who have access to violence to compel people to do something,
you don't even have to speak the same language as someone. Right,
you can just point a gun at them and you
(13:55):
know they have to obey you because you know they
have force, right, But the less ability you have to
actually use force to get someone to do something. Right, So,
if you're a village chief in there's actually a lot
of condigenous tribes that were like this, but you know
you're you're in like sort of the northeast, and you
(14:16):
don't actually have the ability to compel people to do things.
So if you want people to go work in the morning,
you have to like get up and make a giant
show of like, oh, I'm getting up to work in
the morning.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Everyone follow me. Wow, look at how hard I working.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And you have to like convince them through oratory and
you know this, this is like why all these people
when when Europeans run into them, everyone is like, holy shit,
these are like the these are the best orders of
every encountered because they have to be right. But the
more power you have, the less eloquence you have to have,
which I think is like, you know, this is like
a Donald Trump thing, right, It's like, yeah, you've once
you've reached this point in the process, you know, you
(14:50):
can just compel people do things through violence. You can
just like talk like a fourth grader and it's fine
and it doesn't matter because you just have violence. And
that's what this reminds me of a like, oh, we're
the company like we have like we're fucking owned by
nasty We have all this money. We don't have to
make compelling arguments. We just have to like have power.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Yeah, I mean pretty much personally, it reads to me
it's like a way to delay actually talking about any
of our demands at the table, because if you just
eat up all the time, then there's no time to talk.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Yeah, but that's also really beautiful to think about from
a more abstract sense.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, well, also, just companies love fucking with negotiations. It's awful.
I how okay, I should just start asking everyone who
does negotiations about this. But on average, how late are
manages to show up to meetings? I would say that
actually both sides are equally late well to the negotiations,
at least just because getting around the city is so difficult.
(15:50):
Oh oh, so that's it's like a transit thing, not
like a no.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
No, we're not deliberately showing up ly as far as
I know, we just can't get Yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
There should they already just be there?
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Oh yeah, Well, because this is something that's actually been
a delay tactic for them, is they insist that we
need to split the cost equally of a bargaining space.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
What what?
Speaker 4 (16:14):
And again we're independent, so they know that we can't
on a regular basis commit to that. So if you
want to donate to our unions that way, we can
hate to sit down in front of these people.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
That's completely on it.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, having to have the union pave I've never heard
of that before.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
That's completely deranged, that's what.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
And we we've even waived our right to meet in
a neutral space.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
So we've asked if they would be willing to meet
in the office of their legal representation or if they'd
be willing to meet in the office of our legal representation,
and they've said no to both because supposedly, despite being
the second largest union avoidance firm in the world, they've
said that their office doesn't have adequate space to hold us.
But then space in the city is so fucking expensive
(17:02):
that there's no feasible way to rent a space for
eight hours for two days.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
You know, once a month.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Yeah, which which is meant that we've ended up in
some strange places, so college conference rooms, city hall. H
we work what yeah, really know.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
This is the most deeply unseerious company I have ever encountered.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Like there's all kinds of things like that that they've
employed in the past year to attempt us making significant
progress with negotiating. And it wasn't until November this year
that they finally gave us a counter on economics after
we told them we would file a bad faith bargaining
charge if they didn't. Hell, yeah, do you want to
(17:49):
guess what they're counter So for reference, our union's requesting
thirty dollars an hour for brestas because that's a living
wage according to the MIT Living Wage calculator. Do you
want to get what Bluebottle said they would.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Give us eighteen? No?
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Well, actually, strangely yes, they said, right now we make
eighteen an hour, but they said they'll keep it the
same and they want to retain the rate to change
it whenever they want. They're they're making a floor. They're
they're committing to a floor that I then tried to
ask if they've ever in their history decreased wages. H
huh and they're like no, I don't see why we
(18:26):
would ever do that, and like, oh, so then this
floor is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Actually, their baseline for negotiations is our starting position is nothing.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Yeah, and this is a year after negotiating with them
so far.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, like a year and it's like okay, like I'm
at that that point. It's like, yeah, I don't know,
like fucking are our starting position is we should have
your house? Like this is like this is like equally
like come on, like you having their house is a
more reasonable demand than our basic negotiating position.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Is nothing, like what are we doing here?
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
No, idea just God, yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Insert obligatory line here about how after you've went in
an election, the most common way for unied to fail
is bargaining the first contract. And companies know this, they
will just do bullshit for several years to attempt to
not have you get a contract.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It sucks. Yeah, yeah, fuck them.
Speaker 5 (19:18):
It's their whole strategy. I mean, the whole like union
avoidance of it all is they're just trying to like
wait us out and then fire people who are involved
and just like in their words like let turnover do
its natural work. But it's like, isn't this specialty coffee?
Don't you want people who are good at their jobs.
I've watched some of my new coworkers pull a shot
that I wouldn't feed to a dog, like.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
The same.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Oh absolutely, why Look, you can't expect managers to know
how to do things that's not their job.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
My manager, let me tell you. I used to have
to open with her like three times a week, and
she has this very beautiful habit of as she's dialing
espresso and also she does this while she's counting cash.
She will have her phone open on TikTok and then
scroll through. I have this one horrific memory. It was
six am and she was going through an entire TikTok
(20:13):
storytime series for forty five minutes. And the whole story
time was going on, and every time it was an
introduction of like, I don't even remember what it was about.
I think it was like She's like, oh, this is
my story of being like a mob boss's wife. And
I had to listen to that for forty five minutes while.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Opening Oh, yeah, I think you should you should legally
be allowed to have her card. I think I should.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Have her house probably, yeah too.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yes, it's like our starting our starting demand is every
time you pissed offs off, we get another one of
your houses.
Speaker 5 (20:44):
Look for every TikTok watched on the clock, that's a
dollar towards me per hour.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah, what are we doing here? They're owned Binesli.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
But I don't think that there's enough money in the
world that would be able to give you that, Abby.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
No, I don't think I'll ever receive fair compensation.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
You didn't really piss off the modern monetary theory people,
because they'd.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Be like, no, even we can't account.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
For this, No one can account for the emotional damage.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
We ran out of data in our Federal Reserve data
god to recap.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
So in the past year, we've done multiple walkouts, unionized
four locations in the East Bay area, and then after
Abbey was fired for bullshit reasons, along with two other organizers,
we went on a four day strike which included both cities.
And we've done this entirely as an independent union against
a company that is owned by Nesle. Yeah, and interestingly,
(21:41):
just because I'd be remiss to not mention this, the
day that we ended our strike, there was an article
published in Writers which was the most vibe based reporting
that I've ever seen, where it said Nesley explores sale
of Blue Bottle coffee sources say, where there's three unnamed sources.
Incredible that all say that Neslie is considering or looking
(22:02):
into selling Blue Bottle coffee. But interestingly says here quote
once or said Neslie could decide to sell the cafes,
but retain the brand's intellectual property to continue selling the
products end.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Quote what are we doing here?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Like yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting as a tell
because personally, I think it's just a scare tactic. Yeah yeah,
Like I could consider walking into traffic. I could be
looking into my options for how fast a car would
hit me, but that doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
You didn't considering appropriating the mansions, like we're an exploratory committee.
Sources say, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Think they'd publish that in writers, But uh, it's interesting
that they would even say that, because like the entire
value that Blue Bottle offers Neslie is to be able
to put the brand onto you know, espressopods or whatever.
And also just very weird timing with the strike ending
the same day comes out.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
They are so scared, they are scared shitless and they
don't know what to do about it, and they're breaking
last left and right trying to maintain power. But it's,
like Alex said earlier, like the solidarity that we have
between our coworkers, it just cannot be broken by management.
And even after they fired me and two of our
(23:22):
other organizers, people still went out on the picket line.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
We kept telling.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
Five out of the six cafes closed in Boston, and
the only reason one of them could stay open is
because all of the managers banded together to keep the
Credential Center open.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
I would hate to go.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
Say I don't think a single latte went out correctly
that day, but hey, you know, at least at least
they can still collect their nine dollars per latte.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
So if you got food poisoning the strike.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Getting coffee, if you had a bad experience stirring the
strike at the Podential Center, just know that that was
not union made coffee, and we would never do that
to you.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I think it's really beautiful that, yeah, y'all have just
kept fucking doing this, even though they're just doing this
bullshit constantly, and it's like, no, we're just going to
keep fighting them, and they're going to get so scared
that they're leaking to the press that we're thinking about
selling the things.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
We're a lot further along than I thought we would
ever get.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
I thought they were going to fire us the day
after we did the first walk out last year, which
is you know, I thought all the more reason to
try then. Yeah, but really, it's not tough for people
that we work with to realize that they're getting a
bad deal and that the reason that the job sucks
is because they don't get paid enough to live in
the city. Like I think most baristas at Blue Bottle
(25:00):
see something like sixty percent of their income going towards
rent because jesus, Yeah, we did a survey on this.
Let me double check to make sure that I have
the facts right. But yeah, this this is from you know, March,
so it's a little bit old data. We'll do another
survey soon. But most Blue Bottle Briste was a rent burden,
spending more than thirty percent of their income on rent,
(25:22):
the median rent paid by Blue Bottle employees being one thousand,
forty five dollars, which is the equivalent of one hundred
and fifty Nora Lean style iced coffees. That it's one
of the best selling drinks they have. Yeah, no, I know,
for one hundred and fifty Nola. So you two can
pay the median rent by paid by Barista and then
on average it's sorry forty six percent of their income
(25:44):
going towards rent, with roughly a third of Briste is
paying over sixty percent.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
We told all these facts to their lawyer at a
bargaining session and he just said that maybe the reason
that we were all struggling to make ends me was
because we were paying for too many streaming services.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Yeah, I know, Like it's entirely.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
He knows this bush did they just get like a
right wing ship poster.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
To their lawyer? Like, is this just like? Is this
like fucking like? Is this is like the fail sun
clone of Rudy Giuliani? Like this's gonna start melting off?
What are we doing here? Come on? I wish I
could tell you.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
I don't know what their strategy with saying obviously false
things is, but they love to do it.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It's so great, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Okay, fuck it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read
this quote. I was gonna use this for a diffid
episode and I didn't, so all right, fuck it, this
is I'm I'm gonna read this line from Dan Olson's
documentary In Search of Flat Earth, which is like probably
the best thing that's ever been done about flat Earth.
Because they believe that power belongs to those with the
greatest will to take it, And what greater sign of
(26:54):
will than the ability to overwrite the truth. Their will
is a hammer they are using to beat reality into
a shape of their choosing a simple world where reality
is exactly what it looks like through their eyes, devoid
of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right, and
their enemies are silent. They are trying to build a
flat earth.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
That's just this shit. They're just like, no, fuck you,
we can say whatever the fuck we want because we
take the week, because.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
This is an expression of just power, even though we
know that we're lying and you know that you're lying.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Is I mean, if you want to talk about expression
of power, you should read their management's rights clause. Sorry,
they're so called management's rights clause. Oh god, let me
see if I can pull that up. So just to clarify, so,
management's rates is a clause that can be found in
some union contracts because of collaborationists within unions in the
(27:49):
fifties deciding that they actually didn't want to go for
complete work or control of the means of production. They
just wanted to collaborate with management in order to get
a better deal for wages. I'm not going to comment
on the history of that, but that and that's why
they feel like they can include this in negotiations. Right now,
we haven't agreed to any management rates, but quote, it
is agreed that the management of the company's business and
the direction of its working forces are vested exclusively in
(28:11):
the company and that the company retains all rights that
had before the execution of this agreement unless a rate
is clearly contracted away in this agreement by language that
is specific and unambiguous. These retained company rates include, but
are not limited to, the following examples. The right to
direct and supervise the work of its employees. The right
to hire, promote, demote, transfer, and to discipline or discharge employees.
The right to create or eliminate jobs, and to determine
(28:32):
wage rates for newly created or materially modify jobs. The
right to determine training requirements and provide training to employees.
The right to uniform and hire standards. The right to plan, direct,
and control operations. The right to determine products to be sold,
services and products to be procured, used, and or distributed.
The right to determine the type and quantity of machines, equipment,
location of cafes. The right to determine the amount and
(28:53):
quality of work needed. The right to determine schedules of
cafe operations. The right to determine the number of employees needed,
the right to determine the work schedule of employees. The
right to lay off employees or relieve employees from work
because of lack of work. The right to discontinue or
introduce new or improved methods, operating practices and cafes. The
right to change the content of jobs and the qualification
for such jobs. And the right to establish, modify, and
(29:15):
enforce work rules of conduct or policies, and discipline employees
who violate such rules or policies. The right to establish, modify,
Oh Jesus Christ, and force.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
And I forgot how bad it is.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Wow, Because basically what they're saying is we want to
be able to control everything that you do, and this
is our They never say where they believe this right
comes from. They on make like an argument from naturalism,
where like we are vested by the universal power of
management to be able to do this. They don't make
any historical argument for it where oh this is you know,
because of the contracts that have been negotiated since the fifties,
(29:53):
something that's fairly standard. And we think that we have
the right too because of like long standing president. They
just think that they should be able to control fucking everything. Yeah,
which is not unsurprising for Nesley. Yeah, yeah, Well, and
I think there's.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
There's a lot of very very abstract theoretical debate you
run into if you're like, instead of doing shit, you're
like in theory circles about like oh, is like is
capital its own autonomous entity or is it like a
thing that's like costantly in like relation to like the
actions and workers And it's like, okay, read something like
this and it's like, oh no, they are so worried
(30:30):
that they're going to have to react to what their
workers are doing that they and they are already doing
this right like this is you know you mean, this
is this goes back to the whole like we're leaking
to the media, we're going to sell the company thing
that they're doing where it's like no, actually, like these
people are so not like easily, but if if you
are organized at all, it becomes so clear to them
(30:53):
that they actually, oh no, wait, hold on, they're responding
to us like they're not just purely the only thing
they guess so like drive history forward and decide literally
everything about your life the moment you like try to
claw it away from them.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
They see how fragile.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
It is and they're like no, no, no, no, actually, we
got to spell out the fact that we get to
fucking dress you and whatever clothes we want you to wear.
And it's like, Okay, this is like a thing that
only exists if you do not resist them at all, but.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Like, no, if you fucking fight them.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
They have to fucking write all this shit down that
they think they've always been able to do, and it's ridiculous.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
And to hear it all in a bullet form, like
in literally just a bullet list, like every single aspect
of my life and everything that I've ever loved or
thought was important to me in a list of what
they think they can control. It's just crazy. And then
we have to go back and say, Okay, well do
you see how off base you are? Yeah, And then
they make us sound like the crazy ones for wanting
(31:48):
to live a good life and be able to, like
you know, make ends meet.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Pay less than sixty eight percent ever, and come towards rent.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
Yeah. Yeah, take a vacation maybe.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
One other thing that I think is a great point
about how it's actually capital responding to the organization of
Barista's people workers whatever is. They haven't done it recently,
but last summer they sent a very long winded and
angry email about all the bargaining updates and pressed that
the union was getting.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
They're so mad at me that I'm good at my job.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
And then this past summer, after we did two walkouts
in fairly quick succession and response to two different things,
they attempted to accuse us of an intermittent striking just
because they were so scared they didn't know what else
to do, to try and be like, you didn't own me,
I'm not mad, please some pot in the news that
I met. Their lawyer even said in a bargaining session
(32:46):
later on that he had a less than seventy five
percent chance of ever winning that argument at the board.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
But they were just so mad that we walked out
twice in May that they tried to claim that it
was unprotected but that they're being benevolent by not disciplining
anyone for it.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
God, And they.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Haven't really given much of a response to our multi
day strike yet, aside from their lawyer emailing us earlier
this week to ask us for our entire legal justification
for why the terminations of Abbey, Nora, and Ashley were
illegal and what legal justification we have to say that
(33:26):
they're negotiating a contract in bad faith, which is like
the NLRA.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, yeah, Like what are we doing here? God? Yeah?
So what's comed up next for y'all? What's the next stage?
Speaker 4 (33:41):
If you or anybody that you know either works at
a Blue Bottle or wants to apply to a Blue
Bottle to help organize it, please reach out to us
by email at Blue Bottle Union at gmail dot com.
If you want to support our independent unionism and help
us remain independent and be able to go on multiple
day strikes which clearly piss off our nestlie overlords, you
(34:01):
can donate to us at TinyURL dot com forward slash
bbu dash strike unless we're until we have a contract
or they reinstate, Abby, Nora, Ashley and fingers crossed, hopefully
not myself. We're calling on a boycott of all Blue
Bottle coffee products. Helly, I have no idea what the
overlap between it could happen here listeners and customer.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
You'd be surprised, But I'm sure there's a lot of
about there.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Look, judging by the shit I have heard from our listeners,
I love you all. Some of you are on some
wild shit. If some of you are not the people
you would expect to be so.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah, So don't buy Blue Bottle.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
If some of the things that we've said about the
bargaining sessions sounds too absurd to be true to you,
then you can go to Bluebottle union dot org and
under the tab for Buristas you can read every bargaining update,
where we publish all of the proposals that the company
has given us so far. You can read the shit
that they make us read in the bargaining sessions. Yeah,
(35:05):
so that's what's next in like the next month or so.
There's other things that we're working on that we can't
talk about yet.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Hell yeah, hell yeah. Love this.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
I'm trying so hard not to just read half the
end or speech. Authority is the massive tyrany is brittle.
Speaker 5 (35:24):
If there ever were a time to read it, there's
no time like the present is.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
You know what, fuck it, We're just we're doing it.
We're doing it. The imperial need for control is so
desperate because it is so unnatural. Terity requires constant effort.
It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the
mask of fear. Remember that and know this. The day
will come when all these skirmishes in battles.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
These moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of
the empire's authority, and then there will be one too many,
one single thing will break the siege. Remember this, try,
and that's my message to you all. You can fight
your own bosses too, and you can beat them, and
you can watch them running around in terror like fucking
chickens with their head cut off, and you can get
(36:09):
shit from them that they never would have wanted to
give you in the first place.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
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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The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!