October 19, 2021 • 42 mins
Ben Hess and his grocery store co-workers did not know they would be on the frontlines of a pandemic when they took their jobs. Not only did they have to worry daily about getting sick, they also had to manage customers frustrated at following safety protocols and deal with empty shelves. While Ben continued working hard, the pandemic took a big toll on his physical and mental health. Roundtable guests: Actress and activist Sophia Bush, and Jim Araby, the Director of Strategic Campaigns at United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 Union.
Learn more about United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 Union: https://ufcw5.org/
Learn more about Work in Progress, Sophia Bush’s podcast: apple.co/workinprogress
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone, and Wilmar Bolt Drama and I'm m r
Raquel and you're listening to essential voices. So what have
we got going on this week? Wilmer, I feel like
this week's episode it's all about going back to the beginning,
the beginning of the pandemic, the beginning of the show.
When we think back to March of I don't know
about you, but I pictured the grocery store. It was
the one place where everyone had to go right. It
(00:24):
was where we saw our neighbors and their reactions to
what was going on, raging from makeshift ppe all the
way to outrage to refusing to wear masks or treat
employees with dignity and respect. It was also where we
saw empty shells and had to make some hard choices
about what we really needed, with no idea how long
(00:45):
we were going to anchor down. Yeah, you're so right.
I mean I remember needing a few items to make
food for my mom when she actually came down with
a bad case of the shingles right at the beginning
of the pandemic, and the grocery stores around us were
total empty. But luckily we had our dog Maddie to
keep us company. While things felt so uncertain, and that
(01:06):
dog love made all the difference. You said it, I
was likely to have my family and my dog morocc
as well. And at the center of all that uncertainty
where the grocery store workers. When customers were able to
get in and out with their flowered and eggs as
fast as they could, grocery store employees have to stay
inside and bear the brunt of customer emotions. There were
(01:28):
the reason we had food in our pantries, but they
were also very vulnerable to COVID nineteen. So this week's
episode paste tribute to all the grocery store workers out
there who didn't ask to be in the front lines
but became synonymous with the emergent term essential workers during
the pandemic, and grocery store workers will continue being essential
(01:49):
long after the pandemic. So today we're going to hear
from essential worker Ben Hess, who's a grocery store worker
and who's been working in California throughout the pandemic. Ben
provides us with some much needed perspective on what it
was like to work in a place that many folks
take for granted. He also gets thrilled with us about
the toll that COVID nineteen took on his mental health,
which he couldn't have imagined when he took his job.
(02:11):
After that, we'll have a round table with actress, activists,
director and producer Sophia Bush, and Jim or Robbie, the
director of strategic campaigns for the United Food and Commercial
Workers Local five union. Well, let's get really band story
starts right now. Well, and thank you so much, man,
I really appreciate you chatting with me. You were one
(02:31):
of the reasons why I wanted to do this show
and developed this platform. So I'm going to start with
tell me a little bit how you got into this
line of work. I mean, when did you get into
how long ago you've been doing it, and what you do.
I've been working in grocery stores since the end of
two thousand nine. I started in Chicago. Uh, that's where
(02:52):
about some from. And at first it was just kind
of a needed a job, need to do something. But
at some point I realized that kind of kind of
enjoy it a little bit. There's there's definitely some neat
things about working in a grocery store. Are working with
so many people, are seeing so many people, You're in
(03:13):
the midst of it, and and things can get real weird.
And I'm a big fan of the real weird. That's awesome,
that's amazing. So you really found a passion for this, right,
So this is something you You appreciate the community, you
appreciate your colleagues, and then there's a level of familiarity
that comes with that, right Yeah, I mean it appens
and flows. There's definitely moments where I'm like, I've had enough.
(03:36):
It is time for a career change. I have got
to get out of here. This is no more. And
then there's times where it's like, yeah, this is this
is fine. One of those moments like no one you
goes this is fine. Usually it's when I have a
customer come up to me and you know, they see
(03:56):
something and they want to tell you a story. More
often than not, the best relationships they strike up are
with older folks. If you get younger folks, they already
got their headphones on their programmed, they're on their daily grind.
They're not here too to mess around. Yeah, and that's fine,
I get that's how I shot. But then you know,
to get to people that I don't get a lot
going on, come in like clockwork two or three times
(04:20):
a week. They know your name and you try to
remember their's and they'll they'll tell you about, you know,
anything I had. I had a guy who recognized a
band patch my hat on my my shirt from the
town that he used to live in. And he's like,
I know those guys. It's like I know those guys too.
It's and then something which we're talking about bands and
(04:42):
we're talking about instruments. This is how you know, you
break up the monotony, because what I do every day
is it stays pretty routine. To really break that up.
The customers and the real good ones are the ones
that already know that you're a human and treat you
like such. And we're humans, were social species. We're supposed
to talk to each other and share dumb little stories,
(05:06):
and I love stories. I'm grateful that you could, you know,
walk me a little bit to what your days like.
I think about all of a sudden, you get introduced
to this pandemic and then you know your work now
is all of a sudden is deem essential, you know,
and you're now have to really stay at work, you know,
and really do what you gotta do because it's bigger
than us. How is that like for you? We didn't
(05:27):
have much of a shift in hours, but we definitely
took on a lot more responsibilities in that same time
period that we had to work. It's one of the
nice things about being in a union is there's kind
of encouragements for keeping our hours within a reason. So
I'm lucky in that way. But I know that's not true.
A lot of grocery shorts throughout the nation. But in
(05:48):
the beginning, the first month or two, I got a
lot of people saying thank you for being here. And
you've got a lot of jobs that are deemed I
guess not I hate to say the word not essential,
but you know, people working from home, maybe office shops,
and you get these people come in and they say
thank you for being here, and it's I understand that
there is a sense of what they're trying to convey,
(06:12):
but it's this isn't a choice for me, you know,
it's not a choice for a lot of us. You
did some work with your union and organizing and advocating
for labor rights, all right, you got involving some of
that stuff. Well, I mean that's that's what the union does.
Pretty you know. Full time, I am a shop steward,
so I'm kind of a go between between my co
(06:33):
workers in the union. I'm kind of like the eyes
and ears for the union what's happening in the store,
or the you know, the dirty little ratum as. I
kind of introduce myself as and sometimes I can help
my my co workers and they have a question that
regards the union, but more often than not, I kind
of just help them contact direct with the union because
(06:53):
they've got the experience and they get paid. That's what
we pay them for to really help guide us through
challenges as we're seeing things kind of stuff that we
opened up and rules being dropped, you know, as as
things progressed. What effects have it had on you personally?
I mean, I know that you've probably had incidents with customers,
(07:14):
with someone snapped or something like that, and then do
you feel like there's been a ripple effect to that,
Like how are you feeling? How are you feeling today?
I am feeling pretty good today. But I'm feeling pretty
good today in part because of changes in my life
that I've had to make because of this ripple effect.
(07:35):
I now take medication for my brain, which was not
something I did before last summer, and it's been a
real help. It might have benefited me probably before the pandemic,
but it didn't become a necessity until you build up
all this stress. And this is true of everyone that's
(07:56):
still had to go and work in the retail because
there's just there's so much coming at you. You're you're
giving these rules from the government, you're getting rules from
your employer, You're getting opinions that you're forming yourself based
on the news, and you're trying to figure out how
to meld them together. And at the same time you're
(08:18):
getting people who are competitive about it, and you're trying
to just right, just trying to function, just trying to
make it together. So, yeah, there was a point last
year where I had a little bit of an outburst
that it wasn't great, and it was just me unloading
on somebody there was a misunderstanding and they got about
(08:40):
three or four months of of stress just smashed on them.
And I went home and I cried, not for the
first time that week, and it was just it was awful.
And so the silver lining is I have this tool
now that makes things a little bit easier to handle.
(09:02):
My solution isn't everyone's solution. But my problem is everyone's problem,
which is, you know, you don't want to get sick.
You don't want to get sick because you don't want
to spread it. You do want to spread it at home,
to your your loved ones, to your pets. And I
did get sick, and my my partner moved out of
the house and moved into a hotel for two weeks
and took the dogs with her, and I was just
(09:26):
staying in the attic. It's kind of waited it out.
And so there's I mean, I caught COVID. I I
have no idea how I got it. I probably got
it from a customer. You know, not not to be
hard on my customers, I love them. But we didn't
sign up for this job when we started working in
(09:46):
grocery stores. You know, many of us weren't thinking about
will be at the front lines when there's a pandemic
whenever that rolls around. Versus when you take a job
as a firefighter or a doctor, you understand there's risks,
and that's just any job. You understand what you're you're
going into. And so the difficult thing was when you
hear this, you know, thank you for being here, you
what you appreciate the sentiment, but it's also like, yeah,
(10:08):
but I still gotta pay my rent. No one said, hey, Ben,
do you do you want to work from home today?
On the other hand, it's it's really nice to feel
part of the community in this way. So I'm I'm really,
we are all stepping up for the community. Just we're
here and we are coming to work. We know you
need food. Well, Ben, thank you so much for sharing
all of this. We're we're stoked and we're proud of you.
(10:31):
And you know, I know that you heard it enough.
But um, you know, thanks man, thanks for and Dorian
what you did. Thank you for thanking me. Ben was
so open with us about the toll that his job
took on him the past year. I mean, he had
to face so many obstacles every day just to make
sure his community had what they needed. And he also
(10:52):
did this while taking care of his mental health on
top of getting COVID and having to be apart from
his loved ones while he convalesce. His story is a
great sample of what performative acts of things can't be
where we stop right when it comes to supporting the
people who work so hard to provide us with food
in the fields and the restaurants and our grocery stores.
(11:12):
On that note, after the break, we'll talk with Sophia
Bush and Jim A Rabbi. This week we're hearing conversation
with actors and activists Sophia Bush and Jim A Rabbi
from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local five Union.
(11:33):
Sophia Hi, Jim Hi Wilmer want to kick us off well,
Sophia Jim, I am so blessed to have you here,
So just kind of starting things off a little bit.
What were some of your reactions to Ben's story, and
let's start with you Sophia. Well, I, you know, I
had kind of home away from hometown pride when Ben
was talking about working in Chicago. I wanted to be
(11:56):
like was here at my local grocery store when I
lived there, But immediate nostalgia side the thing I thought
that was so beautiful where he said my solution isn't
everyone's solution, but my problem is everyone's problem. The universality
of so many people struggling to take care of themselves
and manage their stress in the world as it is,
(12:19):
and then those compounding stressors and difficulties and risks that
came from the pandemic. I just really felt that I
think so many of us realized in a very profound
way that we truly are connected in not just what
happens to the world happens to all of us, but
(12:40):
truly in every interaction I have with a person right
now could either risk or protect their life. I mean,
that's a big thing we all had to shoulder as
a community, and I was just really very touched by
that thank you. What about you Jim Men's stories, the
story of all of our members and what they went
through over the pandemic. I thought a lot about if
(13:01):
you guys remember that movie A Day Without a Mexican
when it was about, you know, what would happen if
all the service workers went away? What what a day
without ansential worker? Where we've been in the pandemic without
essential workers, And as we've come through this, I think
it was a good feeling for our members for the
first couple of months when everyone's like thank you, But
as you've heard Ben's story kind of changes. The pandemic
dragged on and these other lying issues became a huge issue,
(13:24):
including mental health, and you know, I think the mental
health issues that are members faced, that everyone faced during
this pandemic were exacerbated by the stresses that were put
on by people not knowing what's going on. Ben really
told the compelling story that it's representative of what every
single worker went through because they couldn't work from home,
they had to go to work, and they were worried
about what happened when they went to work. And you
know Ben's story again, the other thing was when his
(13:45):
partner moved out for two weeks with his dog, he
was sitting alone in his attic. I mean, that's a
very sad story that he had to go in the
next day and deal with customers every day and deal
with those stresses that those customers had. So very real story.
Thanks Jim, thanks for sharing that. I'm with you. That
part of Ben's story when he had to move out
because he got COVID, really drove home the significant burden
(14:07):
that was placed on essential workers like Ben. I mean,
he wasn't able to be with his loved ones while
he was sick, and he couldn't go into work, which
you know, as he said, it was probably the place
that got him sick in the first place. UM, pre pandemic,
grocery store employees weren't thought of as essential, but his
story shows just how essential Ben is, which I find
very inspiring. Um And speaking of being inspired, Sophia, I
(14:29):
want to turn it over to you because it seems
like you found Ben's story very inspiring and your podcast
work in progress. It's all about folks who inspire you.
So why do essential workers like Ben inspire you and
the work that you do. I think that the route
for me if I really zoom out and understand why
(14:50):
community advocacy matters to me, why authentic conversation matters to me,
it's because it has the capacity to do away with
the false snare aative of the US and them, this
idea that people are different from each other, that we're
supposed to yell at each other from these weird corners.
That there are pundits on the news who celebrate their
(15:11):
families coming to America story while denigrating immigrants and people
who are struggling today. All of that is frankly bullshit.
And again, it comes to narrative, it comes to story,
It comes to at times political propaganda, and I think
it can also come from ignorance or a lack of awareness,
(15:31):
when you haven't learned enough, seen enough, met enough people
who are different from you. And so for me, I
really do believe it is essential that we see each
other and that we can honor each other's humanity and
learn to identify the stories that attack that shared humanity
because in the attacking of it, some people who are
(15:53):
unscrupulous can make a lot of money. How can we
undo the damage of those things? And so for me
that in my own way as a storyteller, it feels
like an essential use of what my capability is in
my job. If I can welcome more people to the
table to witness each other, I feel like I'm living
(16:14):
with a real purpose. Wow, Sophia, that's just it's just
beautiful what you just shared. And I love what you
just said about sharing one another's humanity and thinking critically
about what your role is as a storyteller and with
your platform um the power of sharing stories so that
people feel seen and listen to It's just incredible and
it's endless. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. And
(16:37):
to turn over to you, Jim, what inspired you to
work as a union organizer? Sure? So you know, I
grew up in Boston, and even though I grew up
a working class Boston, I got my first job at
fourteen at a grocery store. And I was the first
one to go to college in my family. And during college,
I got really involved in student organizing. And there's a
moment when you know, a w t O protests in
(17:01):
Seattle and there was like this really big discussion related
to sort of world trade and global trade, and at
that moment, I was twenty years old and felt like
this was like a moment we could sort of reform
global capitalism. And so I got I jumped in. And
then I graduated college and I'm like, oh, crap, I
have to get a job. And I had a professor
who was like, you know, you can do what you
do and get paid for it, and I was like
(17:21):
what and so um. Ever since then, I've been working
for unions. I started with s c I U and
then worked for the teachers for a while, and I've
been at ufc W forms ten years now. And in
ufc W is really where I found my home and
my voice, because it's these workers are me. These workers
are my people. They're working class people, struggling to make
it every day, their young kids going to high school
(17:42):
and college, and they're four year old people just trying
to support a family. You know, there's six year old
people with the second income. And it's really interesting is
like when you go to a grocery store, you go
to a pharmacy, or you go wherever. Right, all these
workers we represent. How many times you just walked by
those people and don't even realize that they're And another
thing that Ben's story that was interesting is like who
interacts with him? You know, it's like the older folks
(18:04):
that come in and you know, they just want to
have a conversation with people, right, they just want to
talk to people. And the impact that you can have
in those people lives and vice versa when you're you know,
I remember sixteen seventeen years old stacking produce. You know,
just a great conversations with folks just about life. This
connectivity is something that you all talk about, you know,
how we can reset our priorities in the world. I
(18:24):
think part of that reset is we have to get
back to the basics of having conversations with people and
seeing people as human and not just someone that's there
to serve me right, And I think so much of
retail and service workers, never mind the workers that work
behind the scenes. You know, they don't even get to
interact with customers. As we dehumanize people, how do we
rehumanize each other and take this moment that we're in
(18:46):
to really assert that right. And it's not going to
be given up easy, you know. I think having a
conversation is one thing, But how do we take that
conversation we're having and turn it into action and get
those that don't want us to have these conversations that
want to separate us and divide us and alienate each
other look at each other as you know. That way
is how we reconnect and re empowered to really change
the world. And I think there's an opportunity here to
(19:07):
really reassert the true value of being people. We'll be
right back after this break, Welcome back to Essential Voices.
I think you're right. I mean, I feel like we
do have a window right now, and we all have
a little bit of responsibility to just show up right
and most of our perspectives and I guess I can
honestly speak for Sophia and I when I say that
(19:28):
when we first started our careers, we were told, you
don't give your opinion about religion, you don't give your
opinion about politics, and you certainly don't say anything that
you don't want to hear her back again, you know.
And thus was the first advice and how we were
programmed to be no comment on anything, because what you
did was just you were entertained. Slowly we started realizing
what we had in coming with our fans and our
(19:49):
audiences and all that, and realized that if we were
in a position to help them the way they have
helped our careers, then we should really show up. And
in speaking of showing up, and you're talking about the
unions and their role in is Sophia, you've recently advocated
for unions like International Alliance of the Artical Station Employees
on your social media feed. Why is it important to
(20:10):
you support labor rights? Our jobs don't exist without our cruise.
You know. It's interesting. Over the weekend, there's a really
great Instagram account at I A Stories, i A Underscore Stories,
and they've been posting anonymous stories from all of these
people who work on film crews. And I've been chatting
(20:32):
with my b camera operator from one show and a
steadicam guy from another show, and my girlfriend Karen, who
worked camera crew on a show I did, and we're
all just talking about all of this. And what's been
really interesting is getting into these discussions with people who
I love, who I consider my family in Wilm, where
(20:53):
we talk about each other in these ways, because you
do build a family when you're on set. And for
a really long time, everyone has loved that and said,
you know, we do it because we love the work.
We do it because we love each other. We spend
more time with our cruise and we ever spent with
our families, and everyone is in a moment where they're going,
but why why do we have to be at work
(21:15):
for seventeen hours a day? Why are people expected to
work a hundred hours a week. Why has it been
okay to say to people you can't go to your
sister's wedding, you can't go to your grandfather's funeral, you
won't see your nephew be born. Why? And so it's
crazy for me to think about the solidarity of experience
(21:38):
and to know that when I've advocated for my cruise,
I've had producers be like, what do you care I
sign your paychecks. I had a boss look at me.
I've talked a little bit about this, but I didn't
get into the particulars. I was working on a job
that the conditions were crazy. I mean outside in the
dead of winter and forty degrees below zero. And I
went to my boss is first season, and I said, guys,
(22:01):
this is nuts, Like we're working outside, people are killing themselves.
And I said, you know, but we've got these p as,
We've got these kids. They can't afford high tech everest
gear that the producers are wearing outside they're doing lockups
on corners. And I said, three of our pas have
walking pneumonia like this p A. I'm going to pick
a name that isn't his name because I'm not trying
(22:22):
to throw him under the bus in his union. But
I was like, you know, John, this is the third
time he's had pneumonia this winter. And you know what
my boss said to me, we can get another John.
What do you care? And I was like, I don't
know if this is for me, Like I don't know
if this environment is for me. And so for me,
(22:43):
to Jim's point, unions are the way we get anywhere.
If my union can stand with Iatzi. You know, people
assume that the actors have power. I've gone about for
my cruise and then people say, oh, she's a pay
in the ass, and I'm like, I just don't want
people to die. Actually, I also don't want to die.
You know, is making a TV show really worth it?
(23:04):
Somebody falling asleep with the wheel on their way home
after eighteen hours. And so I really do believe if
we can use whatever our leverage is to stand in solidarity,
if we can get not just you know, Ayasi to strike,
but if SAG can stand with them, if the w
g A can say yeah, we're in the writer's room,
we get to the home at seven o'clock. This is
(23:25):
insane that the crews stay it worked till four thirty
in the morning. We have to be able to do
something together. We have to be able to leverage our
collective power, because if any of us are suffering in
our workplace, especially because of unbearable hours like that, it
means it's happening to all of us. And I I
don't know how to stomach that. I don't want anybody
(23:47):
to go through that. I don't want anybody to go
five days without seeing their kids, or their spouse or
god forbid, get in an accident on the highway going home.
I just think we can do better. Thank you so
much for shutting that insight on the industry, Sophia. And
I mean what you're talking about, it's not just fairly
where practices, right, but it's also about the impact that
(24:09):
these unfair working conditions have on on folks mental health.
The fact that it has to be you and your colleagues,
you know, having to go to bat for folks working
on your crew raising money, and that those labor practices
weren't already established from the beginning isolates an intense structural issue,
which is is why, as you're saying, unions are are
just so essential. And this leads me to a question
(24:30):
for you, Jim, which is that you know, bringing things
back to Ben. He spoke to us about his own
mental health during the pandemic and about how he started
taking medication, and um, you know, Wilmer started this this
whole six ft apart series on Instagram where he was
talking to essential workers, which inspired this whole podcast after
going to a grocery store and witnessing mistreatment of grocery
(24:51):
store workers and from Ben's story and you know what
Wilmer experienced. I can only imagine what so many grocery
store employees endured just while literally working to keep customers
with food in their homes. So it's Ben's story of
you know, dealing with the impact of the pandemic on
its mental health, a very common one that you dealt
with with folks in your union during the pandemic. And
(25:13):
you know, as a follow up as a union, what
were the things and what are the things that you
do to support folks when they need mental health resources. Yeah,
I mean Ben's story, sadly was not an uncommon story.
It was a more common story than even people realize.
I mean, you know, I mean mental health on a whole.
And we're starting to have this larger conversation around mental
health and not being ashamed of having mental health issues.
(25:33):
We've seen a lot of athletes come out and stop,
you know, don't want to compete, right, you know, having
the conversation and given Ben and all those people courage
enough to say they have mental health issues, I think
that's another change that's happening here. I think people are
starting to realize there needs to be a better collective,
good for all of us. But just imagine a grocery
store for a second. And if you think about what
(25:54):
happened and what transpired over the pandemic and since then,
most of these workers and this isn't even non union workers, right,
less than half the industry is organized, and if you
think about it more broadly, only ten percent of private
sector workers in the country or the union. That means
nine out of every ten people that work in the
private sector don't have the ability to advocate for themselves,
you know, without any retribution. So that's just the thing
to think about. Not think about grocery stores when they
(26:15):
were told these most of these workers are minimum wage
workers with very little benefits, and they're told they have
to enforce a mandate of masks in their stores. And
so we've had kids, even in our own union, where
we had seventeen year old kids being put at the
front of the store and getting into arguments with forty
five year old adults about wearing a mask where they
(26:36):
got into a fight, fist fight, physically hurt, right, you know,
I mean, you don't pay them enough, you know, And
so imagine that, and then you go into the grocery
store and You're sitting here and in the beginning, when
we didn't have any idea how you contract these people
wearing gloves and masks and like full body suits and
you had no idea how this was contracted. You heard
about all these deaths and you're coming into work for
fifteen dollars an hour to deal with people young. You
(26:59):
just imagine the into health crisis you're facing. Right, But
if your choice was to read the work or you
don't eat, so it's like you had no other choice,
and then you had to go home and be worried
that you would infect your parents, right or affect your kids.
These are workers that a middle ways that couldn't afford childcare,
so their kids weren't in school, So how do they
(27:19):
how do they go to school? Like? How do they?
And Jim, you played the numbers, Jim, Like you know
I played the numbers when I went to the grocery
store and what Mr was reminding us of what inspired
the journey of the six ft apart and then went
to we got to this podcast, Dude, I went to
the grocery store and you know what my grocery store work.
And this is before they even say let's put a
plastic divider. Let's have hand sanitizers everywhere in the grocery store.
(27:42):
This is before all this they win a couple of
months before any grocery store get smart about how to
protect their own. So you're talking about then seeing four hundred,
six hundred customers and one day handling their credit cards,
handling their groceries, bagging their stuff, giving them the receipts
like and then you get a phone call from a
customer that says, do you have toilet paper? And when
they say, unfortunately, we'reright now for the day, We'll be
(28:04):
stucking back tomorrow, somebody said, well, fuck you, I hope
you get COVID and died. They truly on verbatim telling
you what they're getting on the phone. Yeah, insane. And
you know, and now imagine like when it all first
started where they were told they couldn't wear masks. So
then we get into sort of rhythm, we start to
understand a little bit more. What our union did is
we advocated, you know, at the state level, for expanded
sick pay. We advocated for the six foot separation. We
(28:26):
we fought with our employers to make sure that they
provide for all these ppe ppe became like the big word, right.
We advocated at the city level for hazard paid for
workers when grocery stores in the beginning were giving workers
and actually three dollars in our appreciation pay, and then
they realize, oh, look at this, our profits went way up.
We don't want to pay these workers any more money.
So the union went out and advocated for hazard pay.
(28:47):
We said, you know what, enough is enough. If you're
not gonna do it, we're gonna have cities make you
do it. And then we got that done. You know,
thousands of workers got five dollars an hour extra because
we have a kid at the city level. So that
the union became a place and workers felt like they
could go to to really advocate for themselves. But then,
you know, you get through this pandemic and then look
(29:07):
all the other things that grocery workers are paying with it.
Me how many times in the last six months we've
seen shootings at grocery stores. I mean, just just imagine challenges,
you know, And so the grocery store is really a
place where all the issues of society come to bear, right,
all of them, right, public health, lack of access and food,
low age jobs, you know, management beating you up, telling
you have to work or you don't work right, you know,
(29:29):
all these things, and then like people angry coming into
the store with whether it's fistfights or guns. I mean,
it's just it's incredible, you know. But you know that's
why I think these folks that do these service jobs,
not just grocery workers, I mean those are who we represent,
are really just trying to make it and to provide
in the central service to this time. It is just
incredible and I feel honored and it's a privilege for
me to do this work because I see myself in
(29:51):
that person, you know, years ago something that you said, Jim, really,
I would love to know what you think. Sorry to
hijack your show, guys were a number I could gladly
said back. I you talked about how all of these
issues of society converge at the grocery store, right, So
(30:11):
it's it's an incredible test case. It is a microcosm
look at the macro of what's happening in so many
industries simultaneously, and just like grocery store workers and the
IASI workers on our sets, what drives me Upple Wall
is that when we're talking about minimum wage jobs. We're
having this whole conversation about a living wage. You've got
(30:36):
to be your work as a living wage. I'm so
sick of the idea of a living wage. Why aren't
we paying workers a thriving wage, a safe wage, a
healthy family, supportive wage. When you talk about the work
you guys did, and thank you so much that you
went out and you forced it, and when the stores
wouldn't do it. By the way, stores that we all
(30:56):
know we're making record breaking profits. I mean, Whole Food's
got acquired for thirty billion dollars. Don't tell me you
don't have any money to pay your workers. Transparency exists
now and we have the receipts. But this idea that
you had to go out and get the city to
pass a law to get the hazard pay for the
five dollars extra an hour that's available. The money is available.
(31:23):
And this idea that we look at union workers, a
lot of blue collar workers, a lot of quote minimum
wage workers, and we say they'll deal with that, they'll
be just fine with that. I don't want people to
be fine. I want people to be supported and to
be healthy and to you know, be able to buy
books or go on ski trips or freaking you know,
(31:44):
collect weird things from Etsy, like whatever you want to
do in your life, it makes you happy. And I
want to know how those of us who care about
the people that we see every Thursday night at the
grocery store or you know the second is stint camera
got anybody in these unions we're talking about people who
(32:04):
we know are essential. How do we support the work
unions like yours are doing. How do we get the
word out? How do we add our voices? How do
we sign petitions? Who do we call? Where do we
send emails? Like I'm ready to go, so tell me
what to do so I can tell all my people
what to do. I mean, I think it's a multitude
(32:24):
of things. Number one is having these conversations and forms
and places where we don't typically have these conversations and
bringing these voices to the forefront, because again, I think
narrative is more powerful than any fact. Fred Ross Sr.
Is a longtime organizer. He you know, he recruited Caesar
job As and he said, facts don't move people's stories do.
That's a hugely important thing, and I think we undervalue that.
(32:46):
But it's more than that it's like using your platforms.
So when these campaigns come up to promote them, right,
because decision makers and policy makers why they tell you
all when you first get just be quiet and work,
is because they know your voice is a powerful voice
when it's used properly, and they don't want to disrupt
the status quo. Because those that own the movie studios,
on the grocery chains, on the you know, I mean,
(33:08):
look at me. Amazon is the biggest one, right, think
about Amazon. Amazon is exactly what the world is coming to. Right.
They own movie studios, their own grocery stores, they own
on everything, and they're just building everywhere. Right. So imagine
if we can take on a company like that and
change the way that they behave so that no longer
workers have to go on and strike to get a
face mask, no longer people have to fight for it.
(33:28):
I mean, in fifteen dollars an hour, I'm sorry to
your point, Sophia, fifteen dollars hour is not enough. And
that's not even the federal minimum wage. Just seven twenty
five an hour, forty hours at seven hour is about
three hundred bucks a week. That's fifteen thousand dollars a
year at full time, right, Just imagine that, like who
can live off of that? So we have to use
our platforms to advocate when campaigns come up, you know,
(33:49):
getting those voices out there. But they're not gonna give it.
We have to take it, you know, because right now
they're all going to space, right instead of actually paying
their workers and then banking their workers for going to
space on their backs, we have to say enough as
enough on that. We're getting to a point in the
conversation where one we're fired up for what now? What
(34:11):
is the next phase of the conversation? How do we
envision and and look, the philosophy that we always use
here on the show is what is Mount Neverest and
how do we start walking towards it? You know, what
is the next? And yes, there's many ways in which
you can you know, call your congressman, your senator, your
local officials, you know, make sure you have enough signatures,
making sure they are paying attention that in their municipal
(34:34):
area or sipcode they oversee. There is a great deal
of demand for these topical conversations, right, I mean, that's
one level of it. As a community. Besides the calling,
how can we be there for the force right one
is the most obtainable thing from a neighbor that can
happen for your local workers. We may not all have
(34:55):
the answers, but we we may have some type of resources.
And Jam and Sophia, I love for you to maybe
think a little creatively, like how can we be there immediately?
How can someone who's listening to this go, oh man,
I can do that right now, you know, And I
think that there's something hopeful about that as we start
wrapping up our conversation. Start Sophia first, I had that
(35:16):
thought this weekend. I was driving up towards Central California
and I was watching It's you know, harvest season for
whatever is growing, and I'm looking at all these people
out working the fields, and I'm thinking, what can we
do for these people? Could we talk about surprising folks
with food trucks on a Friday night? Could we like,
(35:37):
what is a gesture of just appreciation and love? And
usually mind revolves around food because my family's Italian, and
like that's just how we do things. So I started
the pandemic. You know, we couldn't leave our houses, and
I was obsessively making chicken soup at home. I have
like a twenty four hour recipe. It's a thing that
I really put a lot of love into. And I
(35:58):
was like going running through this. It was freezing giant jars,
you know, like the biggest sized Mason jars of soup.
And then I was chasing down JP, my ups guy,
who's literally my favorite person in my neighborhood. My neighbors
are great, but JP is the best. I was running
after people, just be like, how are you doing? Can
I put this here? I won't come near you. I'm
just I'm gonna put it here. You get another truck,
(36:19):
You come get the thing. Has anybody fed you today?
What do you need? And that became a thing, and
and now I keep bees. And once we started harvesting
our honey, I'm running after everybody giving people honey and
making sure just that they feel a little bit loved.
So I do think to your point, Wilmer, we can
do things as one of one in our own communities
(36:40):
with the people that we touch and that we talked to.
I make such a point of having long conversations, you know,
anytime I'm in a taxi or on an airplane with
whoever is working or at the airport or at the
grocery store. I really want people to feel seen and appreciated,
and I would love to do more. I would love
(37:01):
to do something for an entire farm staff. I would
love to do something for an entire union. That's where
I wonder if our groups, our communities could advocate support,
like what what can we do? Yes, it starts with us,
and then how do we make it bigger? And maybe
that's where Jim knows the answers pressure. Uh, you know,
(37:24):
I do think it starts small. I think sometimes we
want to get to this place where it's like, you know,
how do we do this magically transformative moment. If you
think back to history, it's like we were always taught
Rosa Parks. Once she stopped, you know, saying no, I'm
not going to go to the back of the bus,
the whole thing happened. If you peel the onion back
a little bit, you noticed Rosa Parks went to twenty
years of training to make that point. Right, So how
(37:46):
do we build into something It is doing these little things.
It is going to ups person and chasing down the
street to give him chicken super and it's going to
a grocery store and say hey, you know what I
mean if when you went to the grocery and say, hey,
look I just really appreciate what you do every day,
that alone is transformed. Right to see people. I think
it's important for all of us to see each other
in a in a big way. And then how do
(38:06):
we create events around seeing each other? And there's magic
that happens between people when we get together. There's just
the magic that happens that you don't even know what
could come of it. And then I think when these
other big events happen and mobilizations that obviously, yes, use
your voices and platforms to elevate those those places, but
don't be tied down to digging that's what has to happen,
(38:27):
because actually that's an important thing. But the more important
thing is how do we do little things every day
to acknowledge one another and to be human? I mean,
how do we grab our humanity back? Because if we
share poor fundamental values that we're human, we make decisions
based on that, and then we can move policy makers
and business leaders and others, and we can cultivate folks
(38:48):
to come into those spaces. So when you're in a
position of influence that you then don't make the same
decision right that we build commonality and humanity. I mean,
I know it's a sort of weird, but it's the
thing that I think we need to do because it's
too much we searched for the the sort of I
have a dream speech. You know, there's so much that
goes into it before you have that speech, right, like moments.
(39:08):
So I think that's what we have to really do,
and it make it worth it, right. So I'm thank
you both of you for bringing so much light to
this topic, to this conversation, for humanizing so many of
their stories, and and really paving the runway for you
know that running start at the big picture, right, And
what I take away from this is something that doesn't
get more real for me personally, which is reminding our
(39:31):
essential workers. They are in the people business. They literally
are in the of service industry, and when you think
about that and the emotional exchange of humanity that can
happen in between customer and essential worker, that's where we
gotta start to make it worth it. We have to
make it worth it for them to have a moment
(39:52):
in history when they get the cold is bigger than
ourselves that they understand the sacrifice is worth it, that
the stress is worth it, so they can fighting and
they can hang on so when the storm goes by,
they can wait for the sunrise and they can take
a deep breath and know that the big picture is underway.
But at the very least, the community is besides them
and buy them and making it worth it. And um,
(40:15):
I just want to say so much gratitude Sophia, Jim,
thank you for your vision on this and for your
expertise on this. Have more than the door opened the garage,
you know, windows, everything's open for you us to come
back and and continue to elaborate more on this and
any other subject that may be passionate. This is your show. Wow,
(40:36):
I'm so inspired after that conversation. I mean, both Sophia
and Jim really painted a picture about how Band's story
is about our coming humanity. Right. We just want the
best for our neighbors. And it's energizing to speak with
folks who are so committed to take an action to
do just that. Agreed, this work should not just be
(40:58):
some you know, like noble self sacrifice so to speak,
that essential workers are unaware that they're signing up for,
but that being said, I also so appreciated Sophia's approach
coming from a place of love. I just I can't
really get over that image of her chasing down folks
with chicken soup on her street. I just totally love it.
Would you say that it is quite literally chicken soup
(41:20):
for the soul? M R. Yes, Wilmer, Yes, I would,
of course, because we love dad jokes right, No, we
love them amazing. Well, next week we'll be in conversation
with Essential worker Ashton Pittman, a journalist for the Mississippi
Free Press who worked during the pandemic to provide responsible
and ethical reporting to his community. After a conversation with Ashton,
(41:42):
will have a round table discussion with Maria in Ajosa,
a longtime anchor of Latino USA on NPR and founder
of Tuto Media, responsible for the political podcast In the Thick,
which is co hosted by our second round table guest
Julio Ricardo Varela, the intram cold director for Futura Media
(42:02):
and founder of Latino Rebels Essential Voices with Wilmer. Val
Drama is produced by me m. R. Raquel, Alison Shano,
and Kevin Rotkowski, with production support from Associate producer Lillian Holman.
Executive producers Wilmer val Drama, Adam Reynolds, Leo Clem and
Aaron Hilliard. This episode was edited by m R. Riquel
(42:23):
and Sean Tracy and features original music by Will Risotti.
Special thanks to this week's Essential Voice, Ben Hess, and
to our thought leaders Sophia Bush and Jim Or Robbie.
Additional thanks to Mika Sangiacomo and to the United Food
and Commercial Workers Local five union. This is a Clamor
and w V Entertainment production in partnership with I Heart
(42:45):
Radio's Michael Dura podcast Network. For more podcasts from I Heart,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello everyone, and Wilmar Bolt Drama and I'm m r
Raquel and you're listening to essential voices. So what have
we got going on this week? Wilmer, I feel like
this week's episode it's all about going back to the beginning,
the beginning of the pandemic, the beginning of the show.
When we think back to March of I don't know
about you, but I pictured the grocery store. It was
the one place where everyone had to go right. It
(00:24):
was where we saw our neighbors and their reactions to
what was going on, raging from makeshift ppe all the
way to outrage to refusing to wear masks or treat
employees with dignity and respect. It was also where we
saw empty shells and had to make some hard choices
about what we really needed, with no idea how long
(00:45):
we were going to anchor down. Yeah, you're so right.
I mean I remember needing a few items to make
food for my mom when she actually came down with
a bad case of the shingles right at the beginning
of the pandemic, and the grocery stores around us were
total empty. But luckily we had our dog Maddie to
keep us company. While things felt so uncertain, and that
(01:06):
dog love made all the difference. You said it, I
was likely to have my family and my dog morocc
as well. And at the center of all that uncertainty
where the grocery store workers. When customers were able to
get in and out with their flowered and eggs as
fast as they could, grocery store employees have to stay
inside and bear the brunt of customer emotions. There were
(01:28):
the reason we had food in our pantries, but they
were also very vulnerable to COVID nineteen. So this week's
episode paste tribute to all the grocery store workers out
there who didn't ask to be in the front lines
but became synonymous with the emergent term essential workers during
the pandemic, and grocery store workers will continue being essential
(01:49):
long after the pandemic. So today we're going to hear
from essential worker Ben Hess, who's a grocery store worker
and who's been working in California throughout the pandemic. Ben
provides us with some much needed perspective on what it
was like to work in a place that many folks
take for granted. He also gets thrilled with us about
the toll that COVID nineteen took on his mental health,
which he couldn't have imagined when he took his job.
(02:11):
After that, we'll have a round table with actress, activists,
director and producer Sophia Bush, and Jim or Robbie, the
director of strategic campaigns for the United Food and Commercial
Workers Local five union. Well, let's get really band story
starts right now. Well, and thank you so much, man,
I really appreciate you chatting with me. You were one
(02:31):
of the reasons why I wanted to do this show
and developed this platform. So I'm going to start with
tell me a little bit how you got into this
line of work. I mean, when did you get into
how long ago you've been doing it, and what you do.
I've been working in grocery stores since the end of
two thousand nine. I started in Chicago. Uh, that's where
(02:52):
about some from. And at first it was just kind
of a needed a job, need to do something. But
at some point I realized that kind of kind of
enjoy it a little bit. There's there's definitely some neat
things about working in a grocery store. Are working with
so many people, are seeing so many people, You're in
(03:13):
the midst of it, and and things can get real weird.
And I'm a big fan of the real weird. That's awesome,
that's amazing. So you really found a passion for this, right,
So this is something you You appreciate the community, you
appreciate your colleagues, and then there's a level of familiarity
that comes with that, right Yeah, I mean it appens
and flows. There's definitely moments where I'm like, I've had enough.
(03:36):
It is time for a career change. I have got
to get out of here. This is no more. And
then there's times where it's like, yeah, this is this
is fine. One of those moments like no one you
goes this is fine. Usually it's when I have a
customer come up to me and you know, they see
(03:56):
something and they want to tell you a story. More
often than not, the best relationships they strike up are
with older folks. If you get younger folks, they already
got their headphones on their programmed, they're on their daily grind.
They're not here too to mess around. Yeah, and that's fine,
I get that's how I shot. But then you know,
to get to people that I don't get a lot
going on, come in like clockwork two or three times
(04:20):
a week. They know your name and you try to
remember their's and they'll they'll tell you about, you know,
anything I had. I had a guy who recognized a
band patch my hat on my my shirt from the
town that he used to live in. And he's like,
I know those guys. It's like I know those guys too.
It's and then something which we're talking about bands and
(04:42):
we're talking about instruments. This is how you know, you
break up the monotony, because what I do every day
is it stays pretty routine. To really break that up.
The customers and the real good ones are the ones
that already know that you're a human and treat you
like such. And we're humans, were social species. We're supposed
to talk to each other and share dumb little stories,
(05:06):
and I love stories. I'm grateful that you could, you know,
walk me a little bit to what your days like.
I think about all of a sudden, you get introduced
to this pandemic and then you know your work now
is all of a sudden is deem essential, you know,
and you're now have to really stay at work, you know,
and really do what you gotta do because it's bigger
than us. How is that like for you? We didn't
(05:27):
have much of a shift in hours, but we definitely
took on a lot more responsibilities in that same time
period that we had to work. It's one of the
nice things about being in a union is there's kind
of encouragements for keeping our hours within a reason. So
I'm lucky in that way. But I know that's not true.
A lot of grocery shorts throughout the nation. But in
(05:48):
the beginning, the first month or two, I got a
lot of people saying thank you for being here. And
you've got a lot of jobs that are deemed I
guess not I hate to say the word not essential,
but you know, people working from home, maybe office shops,
and you get these people come in and they say
thank you for being here, and it's I understand that
there is a sense of what they're trying to convey,
(06:12):
but it's this isn't a choice for me, you know,
it's not a choice for a lot of us. You
did some work with your union and organizing and advocating
for labor rights, all right, you got involving some of
that stuff. Well, I mean that's that's what the union does.
Pretty you know. Full time, I am a shop steward,
so I'm kind of a go between between my co
(06:33):
workers in the union. I'm kind of like the eyes
and ears for the union what's happening in the store,
or the you know, the dirty little ratum as. I
kind of introduce myself as and sometimes I can help
my my co workers and they have a question that
regards the union, but more often than not, I kind
of just help them contact direct with the union because
(06:53):
they've got the experience and they get paid. That's what
we pay them for to really help guide us through
challenges as we're seeing things kind of stuff that we
opened up and rules being dropped, you know, as as
things progressed. What effects have it had on you personally?
I mean, I know that you've probably had incidents with customers,
(07:14):
with someone snapped or something like that, and then do
you feel like there's been a ripple effect to that,
Like how are you feeling? How are you feeling today?
I am feeling pretty good today. But I'm feeling pretty
good today in part because of changes in my life
that I've had to make because of this ripple effect.
(07:35):
I now take medication for my brain, which was not
something I did before last summer, and it's been a
real help. It might have benefited me probably before the pandemic,
but it didn't become a necessity until you build up
all this stress. And this is true of everyone that's
(07:56):
still had to go and work in the retail because
there's just there's so much coming at you. You're you're
giving these rules from the government, you're getting rules from
your employer, You're getting opinions that you're forming yourself based
on the news, and you're trying to figure out how
to meld them together. And at the same time you're
(08:18):
getting people who are competitive about it, and you're trying
to just right, just trying to function, just trying to
make it together. So, yeah, there was a point last
year where I had a little bit of an outburst
that it wasn't great, and it was just me unloading
on somebody there was a misunderstanding and they got about
(08:40):
three or four months of of stress just smashed on them.
And I went home and I cried, not for the
first time that week, and it was just it was awful.
And so the silver lining is I have this tool
now that makes things a little bit easier to handle.
(09:02):
My solution isn't everyone's solution. But my problem is everyone's problem,
which is, you know, you don't want to get sick.
You don't want to get sick because you don't want
to spread it. You do want to spread it at home,
to your your loved ones, to your pets. And I
did get sick, and my my partner moved out of
the house and moved into a hotel for two weeks
and took the dogs with her, and I was just
(09:26):
staying in the attic. It's kind of waited it out.
And so there's I mean, I caught COVID. I I
have no idea how I got it. I probably got
it from a customer. You know, not not to be
hard on my customers, I love them. But we didn't
sign up for this job when we started working in
(09:46):
grocery stores. You know, many of us weren't thinking about
will be at the front lines when there's a pandemic
whenever that rolls around. Versus when you take a job
as a firefighter or a doctor, you understand there's risks,
and that's just any job. You understand what you're you're
going into. And so the difficult thing was when you
hear this, you know, thank you for being here, you
what you appreciate the sentiment, but it's also like, yeah,
(10:08):
but I still gotta pay my rent. No one said, hey, Ben,
do you do you want to work from home today?
On the other hand, it's it's really nice to feel
part of the community in this way. So I'm I'm really,
we are all stepping up for the community. Just we're
here and we are coming to work. We know you
need food. Well, Ben, thank you so much for sharing
all of this. We're we're stoked and we're proud of you.
(10:31):
And you know, I know that you heard it enough.
But um, you know, thanks man, thanks for and Dorian
what you did. Thank you for thanking me. Ben was
so open with us about the toll that his job
took on him the past year. I mean, he had
to face so many obstacles every day just to make
sure his community had what they needed. And he also
(10:52):
did this while taking care of his mental health on
top of getting COVID and having to be apart from
his loved ones while he convalesce. His story is a
great sample of what performative acts of things can't be
where we stop right when it comes to supporting the
people who work so hard to provide us with food
in the fields and the restaurants and our grocery stores.
(11:12):
On that note, after the break, we'll talk with Sophia
Bush and Jim A Rabbi. This week we're hearing conversation
with actors and activists Sophia Bush and Jim A Rabbi
from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local five Union.
(11:33):
Sophia Hi, Jim Hi Wilmer want to kick us off well,
Sophia Jim, I am so blessed to have you here,
So just kind of starting things off a little bit.
What were some of your reactions to Ben's story, and
let's start with you Sophia. Well, I, you know, I
had kind of home away from hometown pride when Ben
was talking about working in Chicago. I wanted to be
(11:56):
like was here at my local grocery store when I
lived there, But immediate nostalgia side the thing I thought
that was so beautiful where he said my solution isn't
everyone's solution, but my problem is everyone's problem. The universality
of so many people struggling to take care of themselves
and manage their stress in the world as it is,
(12:19):
and then those compounding stressors and difficulties and risks that
came from the pandemic. I just really felt that I
think so many of us realized in a very profound
way that we truly are connected in not just what
happens to the world happens to all of us, but
(12:40):
truly in every interaction I have with a person right
now could either risk or protect their life. I mean,
that's a big thing we all had to shoulder as
a community, and I was just really very touched by
that thank you. What about you Jim Men's stories, the
story of all of our members and what they went
through over the pandemic. I thought a lot about if
(13:01):
you guys remember that movie A Day Without a Mexican
when it was about, you know, what would happen if
all the service workers went away? What what a day
without ansential worker? Where we've been in the pandemic without
essential workers, And as we've come through this, I think
it was a good feeling for our members for the
first couple of months when everyone's like thank you, But
as you've heard Ben's story kind of changes. The pandemic
dragged on and these other lying issues became a huge issue,
(13:24):
including mental health, and you know, I think the mental
health issues that are members faced, that everyone faced during
this pandemic were exacerbated by the stresses that were put
on by people not knowing what's going on. Ben really
told the compelling story that it's representative of what every
single worker went through because they couldn't work from home,
they had to go to work, and they were worried
about what happened when they went to work. And you
know Ben's story again, the other thing was when his
(13:45):
partner moved out for two weeks with his dog, he
was sitting alone in his attic. I mean, that's a
very sad story that he had to go in the
next day and deal with customers every day and deal
with those stresses that those customers had. So very real story.
Thanks Jim, thanks for sharing that. I'm with you. That
part of Ben's story when he had to move out
because he got COVID, really drove home the significant burden
(14:07):
that was placed on essential workers like Ben. I mean,
he wasn't able to be with his loved ones while
he was sick, and he couldn't go into work, which
you know, as he said, it was probably the place
that got him sick in the first place. UM, pre pandemic,
grocery store employees weren't thought of as essential, but his
story shows just how essential Ben is, which I find
very inspiring. Um And speaking of being inspired, Sophia, I
(14:29):
want to turn it over to you because it seems
like you found Ben's story very inspiring and your podcast
work in progress. It's all about folks who inspire you.
So why do essential workers like Ben inspire you and
the work that you do. I think that the route
for me if I really zoom out and understand why
(14:50):
community advocacy matters to me, why authentic conversation matters to me,
it's because it has the capacity to do away with
the false snare aative of the US and them, this
idea that people are different from each other, that we're
supposed to yell at each other from these weird corners.
That there are pundits on the news who celebrate their
(15:11):
families coming to America story while denigrating immigrants and people
who are struggling today. All of that is frankly bullshit.
And again, it comes to narrative, it comes to story,
It comes to at times political propaganda, and I think
it can also come from ignorance or a lack of awareness,
(15:31):
when you haven't learned enough, seen enough, met enough people
who are different from you. And so for me, I
really do believe it is essential that we see each
other and that we can honor each other's humanity and
learn to identify the stories that attack that shared humanity
because in the attacking of it, some people who are
(15:53):
unscrupulous can make a lot of money. How can we
undo the damage of those things? And so for me
that in my own way as a storyteller, it feels
like an essential use of what my capability is in
my job. If I can welcome more people to the
table to witness each other, I feel like I'm living
(16:14):
with a real purpose. Wow, Sophia, that's just it's just
beautiful what you just shared. And I love what you
just said about sharing one another's humanity and thinking critically
about what your role is as a storyteller and with
your platform um the power of sharing stories so that
people feel seen and listen to It's just incredible and
it's endless. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. And
(16:37):
to turn over to you, Jim, what inspired you to
work as a union organizer? Sure? So you know, I
grew up in Boston, and even though I grew up
a working class Boston, I got my first job at
fourteen at a grocery store. And I was the first
one to go to college in my family. And during college,
I got really involved in student organizing. And there's a
moment when you know, a w t O protests in
(17:01):
Seattle and there was like this really big discussion related
to sort of world trade and global trade, and at
that moment, I was twenty years old and felt like
this was like a moment we could sort of reform
global capitalism. And so I got I jumped in. And
then I graduated college and I'm like, oh, crap, I
have to get a job. And I had a professor
who was like, you know, you can do what you
do and get paid for it, and I was like
(17:21):
what and so um. Ever since then, I've been working
for unions. I started with s c I U and
then worked for the teachers for a while, and I've
been at ufc W forms ten years now. And in
ufc W is really where I found my home and
my voice, because it's these workers are me. These workers
are my people. They're working class people, struggling to make
it every day, their young kids going to high school
(17:42):
and college, and they're four year old people just trying
to support a family. You know, there's six year old
people with the second income. And it's really interesting is
like when you go to a grocery store, you go
to a pharmacy, or you go wherever. Right, all these
workers we represent. How many times you just walked by
those people and don't even realize that they're And another
thing that Ben's story that was interesting is like who
interacts with him? You know, it's like the older folks
(18:04):
that come in and you know, they just want to
have a conversation with people, right, they just want to
talk to people. And the impact that you can have
in those people lives and vice versa when you're you know,
I remember sixteen seventeen years old stacking produce. You know,
just a great conversations with folks just about life. This
connectivity is something that you all talk about, you know,
how we can reset our priorities in the world. I
(18:24):
think part of that reset is we have to get
back to the basics of having conversations with people and
seeing people as human and not just someone that's there
to serve me right, And I think so much of
retail and service workers, never mind the workers that work
behind the scenes. You know, they don't even get to
interact with customers. As we dehumanize people, how do we
rehumanize each other and take this moment that we're in
(18:46):
to really assert that right. And it's not going to
be given up easy, you know. I think having a
conversation is one thing, But how do we take that
conversation we're having and turn it into action and get
those that don't want us to have these conversations that
want to separate us and divide us and alienate each
other look at each other as you know. That way
is how we reconnect and re empowered to really change
the world. And I think there's an opportunity here to
(19:07):
really reassert the true value of being people. We'll be
right back after this break, Welcome back to Essential Voices.
I think you're right. I mean, I feel like we
do have a window right now, and we all have
a little bit of responsibility to just show up right
and most of our perspectives and I guess I can
honestly speak for Sophia and I when I say that
(19:28):
when we first started our careers, we were told, you
don't give your opinion about religion, you don't give your
opinion about politics, and you certainly don't say anything that
you don't want to hear her back again, you know.
And thus was the first advice and how we were
programmed to be no comment on anything, because what you
did was just you were entertained. Slowly we started realizing
what we had in coming with our fans and our
(19:49):
audiences and all that, and realized that if we were
in a position to help them the way they have
helped our careers, then we should really show up. And
in speaking of showing up, and you're talking about the
unions and their role in is Sophia, you've recently advocated
for unions like International Alliance of the Artical Station Employees
on your social media feed. Why is it important to
(20:10):
you support labor rights? Our jobs don't exist without our cruise.
You know. It's interesting. Over the weekend, there's a really
great Instagram account at I A Stories, i A Underscore Stories,
and they've been posting anonymous stories from all of these
people who work on film crews. And I've been chatting
(20:32):
with my b camera operator from one show and a
steadicam guy from another show, and my girlfriend Karen, who
worked camera crew on a show I did, and we're
all just talking about all of this. And what's been
really interesting is getting into these discussions with people who
I love, who I consider my family in Wilm, where
(20:53):
we talk about each other in these ways, because you
do build a family when you're on set. And for
a really long time, everyone has loved that and said,
you know, we do it because we love the work.
We do it because we love each other. We spend
more time with our cruise and we ever spent with
our families, and everyone is in a moment where they're going,
but why why do we have to be at work
(21:15):
for seventeen hours a day? Why are people expected to
work a hundred hours a week. Why has it been
okay to say to people you can't go to your
sister's wedding, you can't go to your grandfather's funeral, you
won't see your nephew be born. Why? And so it's
crazy for me to think about the solidarity of experience
(21:38):
and to know that when I've advocated for my cruise,
I've had producers be like, what do you care I
sign your paychecks. I had a boss look at me.
I've talked a little bit about this, but I didn't
get into the particulars. I was working on a job
that the conditions were crazy. I mean outside in the
dead of winter and forty degrees below zero. And I
went to my boss is first season, and I said, guys,
(22:01):
this is nuts, Like we're working outside, people are killing themselves.
And I said, you know, but we've got these p as,
We've got these kids. They can't afford high tech everest
gear that the producers are wearing outside they're doing lockups
on corners. And I said, three of our pas have
walking pneumonia like this p A. I'm going to pick
a name that isn't his name because I'm not trying
(22:22):
to throw him under the bus in his union. But
I was like, you know, John, this is the third
time he's had pneumonia this winter. And you know what
my boss said to me, we can get another John.
What do you care? And I was like, I don't
know if this is for me, Like I don't know
if this environment is for me. And so for me,
(22:43):
to Jim's point, unions are the way we get anywhere.
If my union can stand with Iatzi. You know, people
assume that the actors have power. I've gone about for
my cruise and then people say, oh, she's a pay
in the ass, and I'm like, I just don't want
people to die. Actually, I also don't want to die.
You know, is making a TV show really worth it?
(23:04):
Somebody falling asleep with the wheel on their way home
after eighteen hours. And so I really do believe if
we can use whatever our leverage is to stand in solidarity,
if we can get not just you know, Ayasi to strike,
but if SAG can stand with them, if the w
g A can say yeah, we're in the writer's room,
we get to the home at seven o'clock. This is
(23:25):
insane that the crews stay it worked till four thirty
in the morning. We have to be able to do
something together. We have to be able to leverage our
collective power, because if any of us are suffering in
our workplace, especially because of unbearable hours like that, it
means it's happening to all of us. And I I
don't know how to stomach that. I don't want anybody
(23:47):
to go through that. I don't want anybody to go
five days without seeing their kids, or their spouse or
god forbid, get in an accident on the highway going home.
I just think we can do better. Thank you so
much for shutting that insight on the industry, Sophia. And
I mean what you're talking about, it's not just fairly
where practices, right, but it's also about the impact that
(24:09):
these unfair working conditions have on on folks mental health.
The fact that it has to be you and your colleagues,
you know, having to go to bat for folks working
on your crew raising money, and that those labor practices
weren't already established from the beginning isolates an intense structural issue,
which is is why, as you're saying, unions are are
just so essential. And this leads me to a question
(24:30):
for you, Jim, which is that you know, bringing things
back to Ben. He spoke to us about his own
mental health during the pandemic and about how he started
taking medication, and um, you know, Wilmer started this this
whole six ft apart series on Instagram where he was
talking to essential workers, which inspired this whole podcast after
going to a grocery store and witnessing mistreatment of grocery
(24:51):
store workers and from Ben's story and you know what
Wilmer experienced. I can only imagine what so many grocery
store employees endured just while literally working to keep customers
with food in their homes. So it's Ben's story of
you know, dealing with the impact of the pandemic on
its mental health, a very common one that you dealt
with with folks in your union during the pandemic. And
(25:13):
you know, as a follow up as a union, what
were the things and what are the things that you
do to support folks when they need mental health resources. Yeah,
I mean Ben's story, sadly was not an uncommon story.
It was a more common story than even people realize.
I mean, you know, I mean mental health on a whole.
And we're starting to have this larger conversation around mental
health and not being ashamed of having mental health issues.
(25:33):
We've seen a lot of athletes come out and stop,
you know, don't want to compete, right, you know, having
the conversation and given Ben and all those people courage
enough to say they have mental health issues, I think
that's another change that's happening here. I think people are
starting to realize there needs to be a better collective,
good for all of us. But just imagine a grocery
store for a second. And if you think about what
(25:54):
happened and what transpired over the pandemic and since then,
most of these workers and this isn't even non union workers, right,
less than half the industry is organized, and if you
think about it more broadly, only ten percent of private
sector workers in the country or the union. That means
nine out of every ten people that work in the
private sector don't have the ability to advocate for themselves,
you know, without any retribution. So that's just the thing
to think about. Not think about grocery stores when they
(26:15):
were told these most of these workers are minimum wage
workers with very little benefits, and they're told they have
to enforce a mandate of masks in their stores. And
so we've had kids, even in our own union, where
we had seventeen year old kids being put at the
front of the store and getting into arguments with forty
five year old adults about wearing a mask where they
(26:36):
got into a fight, fist fight, physically hurt, right, you know,
I mean, you don't pay them enough, you know, And
so imagine that, and then you go into the grocery
store and You're sitting here and in the beginning, when
we didn't have any idea how you contract these people
wearing gloves and masks and like full body suits and
you had no idea how this was contracted. You heard
about all these deaths and you're coming into work for
fifteen dollars an hour to deal with people young. You
(26:59):
just imagine the into health crisis you're facing. Right, But
if your choice was to read the work or you
don't eat, so it's like you had no other choice,
and then you had to go home and be worried
that you would infect your parents, right or affect your kids.
These are workers that a middle ways that couldn't afford childcare,
so their kids weren't in school, So how do they
(27:19):
how do they go to school? Like? How do they?
And Jim, you played the numbers, Jim, Like you know
I played the numbers when I went to the grocery
store and what Mr was reminding us of what inspired
the journey of the six ft apart and then went
to we got to this podcast, Dude, I went to
the grocery store and you know what my grocery store work.
And this is before they even say let's put a
plastic divider. Let's have hand sanitizers everywhere in the grocery store.
(27:42):
This is before all this they win a couple of
months before any grocery store get smart about how to
protect their own. So you're talking about then seeing four hundred,
six hundred customers and one day handling their credit cards,
handling their groceries, bagging their stuff, giving them the receipts
like and then you get a phone call from a
customer that says, do you have toilet paper? And when
they say, unfortunately, we'reright now for the day, We'll be
(28:04):
stucking back tomorrow, somebody said, well, fuck you, I hope
you get COVID and died. They truly on verbatim telling
you what they're getting on the phone. Yeah, insane. And
you know, and now imagine like when it all first
started where they were told they couldn't wear masks. So
then we get into sort of rhythm, we start to
understand a little bit more. What our union did is
we advocated, you know, at the state level, for expanded
sick pay. We advocated for the six foot separation. We
(28:26):
we fought with our employers to make sure that they
provide for all these ppe ppe became like the big word, right.
We advocated at the city level for hazard paid for
workers when grocery stores in the beginning were giving workers
and actually three dollars in our appreciation pay, and then
they realize, oh, look at this, our profits went way up.
We don't want to pay these workers any more money.
So the union went out and advocated for hazard pay.
(28:47):
We said, you know what, enough is enough. If you're
not gonna do it, we're gonna have cities make you
do it. And then we got that done. You know,
thousands of workers got five dollars an hour extra because
we have a kid at the city level. So that
the union became a place and workers felt like they
could go to to really advocate for themselves. But then,
you know, you get through this pandemic and then look
(29:07):
all the other things that grocery workers are paying with it.
Me how many times in the last six months we've
seen shootings at grocery stores. I mean, just just imagine challenges,
you know, And so the grocery store is really a
place where all the issues of society come to bear, right,
all of them, right, public health, lack of access and food,
low age jobs, you know, management beating you up, telling
you have to work or you don't work right, you know,
(29:29):
all these things, and then like people angry coming into
the store with whether it's fistfights or guns. I mean,
it's just it's incredible, you know. But you know that's
why I think these folks that do these service jobs,
not just grocery workers, I mean those are who we represent,
are really just trying to make it and to provide
in the central service to this time. It is just
incredible and I feel honored and it's a privilege for
me to do this work because I see myself in
(29:51):
that person, you know, years ago something that you said, Jim, really,
I would love to know what you think. Sorry to
hijack your show, guys were a number I could gladly
said back. I you talked about how all of these
issues of society converge at the grocery store, right, So
(30:11):
it's it's an incredible test case. It is a microcosm
look at the macro of what's happening in so many
industries simultaneously, and just like grocery store workers and the
IASI workers on our sets, what drives me Upple Wall
is that when we're talking about minimum wage jobs. We're
having this whole conversation about a living wage. You've got
(30:36):
to be your work as a living wage. I'm so
sick of the idea of a living wage. Why aren't
we paying workers a thriving wage, a safe wage, a
healthy family, supportive wage. When you talk about the work
you guys did, and thank you so much that you
went out and you forced it, and when the stores
wouldn't do it. By the way, stores that we all
(30:56):
know we're making record breaking profits. I mean, Whole Food's
got acquired for thirty billion dollars. Don't tell me you
don't have any money to pay your workers. Transparency exists
now and we have the receipts. But this idea that
you had to go out and get the city to
pass a law to get the hazard pay for the
five dollars extra an hour that's available. The money is available.
(31:23):
And this idea that we look at union workers, a
lot of blue collar workers, a lot of quote minimum
wage workers, and we say they'll deal with that, they'll
be just fine with that. I don't want people to
be fine. I want people to be supported and to
be healthy and to you know, be able to buy
books or go on ski trips or freaking you know,
(31:44):
collect weird things from Etsy, like whatever you want to
do in your life, it makes you happy. And I
want to know how those of us who care about
the people that we see every Thursday night at the
grocery store or you know the second is stint camera
got anybody in these unions we're talking about people who
(32:04):
we know are essential. How do we support the work
unions like yours are doing. How do we get the
word out? How do we add our voices? How do
we sign petitions? Who do we call? Where do we
send emails? Like I'm ready to go, so tell me
what to do so I can tell all my people
what to do. I mean, I think it's a multitude
(32:24):
of things. Number one is having these conversations and forms
and places where we don't typically have these conversations and
bringing these voices to the forefront, because again, I think
narrative is more powerful than any fact. Fred Ross Sr.
Is a longtime organizer. He you know, he recruited Caesar
job As and he said, facts don't move people's stories do.
That's a hugely important thing, and I think we undervalue that.
(32:46):
But it's more than that it's like using your platforms.
So when these campaigns come up to promote them, right,
because decision makers and policy makers why they tell you
all when you first get just be quiet and work,
is because they know your voice is a powerful voice
when it's used properly, and they don't want to disrupt
the status quo. Because those that own the movie studios,
on the grocery chains, on the you know, I mean,
(33:08):
look at me. Amazon is the biggest one, right, think
about Amazon. Amazon is exactly what the world is coming to. Right.
They own movie studios, their own grocery stores, they own
on everything, and they're just building everywhere. Right. So imagine
if we can take on a company like that and
change the way that they behave so that no longer
workers have to go on and strike to get a
face mask, no longer people have to fight for it.
(33:28):
I mean, in fifteen dollars an hour, I'm sorry to
your point, Sophia, fifteen dollars hour is not enough. And
that's not even the federal minimum wage. Just seven twenty
five an hour, forty hours at seven hour is about
three hundred bucks a week. That's fifteen thousand dollars a
year at full time, right, Just imagine that, like who
can live off of that? So we have to use
our platforms to advocate when campaigns come up, you know,
(33:49):
getting those voices out there. But they're not gonna give it.
We have to take it, you know, because right now
they're all going to space, right instead of actually paying
their workers and then banking their workers for going to
space on their backs, we have to say enough as
enough on that. We're getting to a point in the
conversation where one we're fired up for what now? What
(34:11):
is the next phase of the conversation? How do we
envision and and look, the philosophy that we always use
here on the show is what is Mount Neverest and
how do we start walking towards it? You know, what
is the next? And yes, there's many ways in which
you can you know, call your congressman, your senator, your
local officials, you know, make sure you have enough signatures,
making sure they are paying attention that in their municipal
(34:34):
area or sipcode they oversee. There is a great deal
of demand for these topical conversations, right, I mean, that's
one level of it. As a community. Besides the calling,
how can we be there for the force right one
is the most obtainable thing from a neighbor that can
happen for your local workers. We may not all have
(34:55):
the answers, but we we may have some type of resources.
And Jam and Sophia, I love for you to maybe
think a little creatively, like how can we be there immediately?
How can someone who's listening to this go, oh man,
I can do that right now, you know, And I
think that there's something hopeful about that as we start
wrapping up our conversation. Start Sophia first, I had that
(35:16):
thought this weekend. I was driving up towards Central California
and I was watching It's you know, harvest season for
whatever is growing, and I'm looking at all these people
out working the fields, and I'm thinking, what can we
do for these people? Could we talk about surprising folks
with food trucks on a Friday night? Could we like,
(35:37):
what is a gesture of just appreciation and love? And
usually mind revolves around food because my family's Italian, and
like that's just how we do things. So I started
the pandemic. You know, we couldn't leave our houses, and
I was obsessively making chicken soup at home. I have
like a twenty four hour recipe. It's a thing that
I really put a lot of love into. And I
(35:58):
was like going running through this. It was freezing giant jars,
you know, like the biggest sized Mason jars of soup.
And then I was chasing down JP, my ups guy,
who's literally my favorite person in my neighborhood. My neighbors
are great, but JP is the best. I was running
after people, just be like, how are you doing? Can
I put this here? I won't come near you. I'm
just I'm gonna put it here. You get another truck,
(36:19):
You come get the thing. Has anybody fed you today?
What do you need? And that became a thing, and
and now I keep bees. And once we started harvesting
our honey, I'm running after everybody giving people honey and
making sure just that they feel a little bit loved.
So I do think to your point, Wilmer, we can
do things as one of one in our own communities
(36:40):
with the people that we touch and that we talked to.
I make such a point of having long conversations, you know,
anytime I'm in a taxi or on an airplane with
whoever is working or at the airport or at the
grocery store. I really want people to feel seen and appreciated,
and I would love to do more. I would love
(37:01):
to do something for an entire farm staff. I would
love to do something for an entire union. That's where
I wonder if our groups, our communities could advocate support,
like what what can we do? Yes, it starts with us,
and then how do we make it bigger? And maybe
that's where Jim knows the answers pressure. Uh, you know,
(37:24):
I do think it starts small. I think sometimes we
want to get to this place where it's like, you know,
how do we do this magically transformative moment. If you
think back to history, it's like we were always taught
Rosa Parks. Once she stopped, you know, saying no, I'm
not going to go to the back of the bus,
the whole thing happened. If you peel the onion back
a little bit, you noticed Rosa Parks went to twenty
years of training to make that point. Right, So how
(37:46):
do we build into something It is doing these little things.
It is going to ups person and chasing down the
street to give him chicken super and it's going to
a grocery store and say hey, you know what I
mean if when you went to the grocery and say, hey,
look I just really appreciate what you do every day,
that alone is transformed. Right to see people. I think
it's important for all of us to see each other
in a in a big way. And then how do
(38:06):
we create events around seeing each other? And there's magic
that happens between people when we get together. There's just
the magic that happens that you don't even know what
could come of it. And then I think when these
other big events happen and mobilizations that obviously, yes, use
your voices and platforms to elevate those those places, but
don't be tied down to digging that's what has to happen,
(38:27):
because actually that's an important thing. But the more important
thing is how do we do little things every day
to acknowledge one another and to be human? I mean,
how do we grab our humanity back? Because if we
share poor fundamental values that we're human, we make decisions
based on that, and then we can move policy makers
and business leaders and others, and we can cultivate folks
(38:48):
to come into those spaces. So when you're in a
position of influence that you then don't make the same
decision right that we build commonality and humanity. I mean,
I know it's a sort of weird, but it's the
thing that I think we need to do because it's
too much we searched for the the sort of I
have a dream speech. You know, there's so much that
goes into it before you have that speech, right, like moments.
(39:08):
So I think that's what we have to really do,
and it make it worth it, right. So I'm thank
you both of you for bringing so much light to
this topic, to this conversation, for humanizing so many of
their stories, and and really paving the runway for you
know that running start at the big picture, right, And
what I take away from this is something that doesn't
get more real for me personally, which is reminding our
(39:31):
essential workers. They are in the people business. They literally
are in the of service industry, and when you think
about that and the emotional exchange of humanity that can
happen in between customer and essential worker, that's where we
gotta start to make it worth it. We have to
make it worth it for them to have a moment
(39:52):
in history when they get the cold is bigger than
ourselves that they understand the sacrifice is worth it, that
the stress is worth it, so they can fighting and
they can hang on so when the storm goes by,
they can wait for the sunrise and they can take
a deep breath and know that the big picture is underway.
But at the very least, the community is besides them
and buy them and making it worth it. And um,
(40:15):
I just want to say so much gratitude Sophia, Jim,
thank you for your vision on this and for your
expertise on this. Have more than the door opened the garage,
you know, windows, everything's open for you us to come
back and and continue to elaborate more on this and
any other subject that may be passionate. This is your show. Wow,
(40:36):
I'm so inspired after that conversation. I mean, both Sophia
and Jim really painted a picture about how Band's story
is about our coming humanity. Right. We just want the
best for our neighbors. And it's energizing to speak with
folks who are so committed to take an action to
do just that. Agreed, this work should not just be
(40:58):
some you know, like noble self sacrifice so to speak,
that essential workers are unaware that they're signing up for,
but that being said, I also so appreciated Sophia's approach
coming from a place of love. I just I can't
really get over that image of her chasing down folks
with chicken soup on her street. I just totally love it.
Would you say that it is quite literally chicken soup
(41:20):
for the soul? M R. Yes, Wilmer, Yes, I would,
of course, because we love dad jokes right, No, we
love them amazing. Well, next week we'll be in conversation
with Essential worker Ashton Pittman, a journalist for the Mississippi
Free Press who worked during the pandemic to provide responsible
and ethical reporting to his community. After a conversation with Ashton,
(41:42):
will have a round table discussion with Maria in Ajosa,
a longtime anchor of Latino USA on NPR and founder
of Tuto Media, responsible for the political podcast In the Thick,
which is co hosted by our second round table guest
Julio Ricardo Varela, the intram cold director for Futura Media
(42:02):
and founder of Latino Rebels Essential Voices with Wilmer. Val
Drama is produced by me m. R. Raquel, Alison Shano,
and Kevin Rotkowski, with production support from Associate producer Lillian Holman.
Executive producers Wilmer val Drama, Adam Reynolds, Leo Clem and
Aaron Hilliard. This episode was edited by m R. Riquel
(42:23):
and Sean Tracy and features original music by Will Risotti.
Special thanks to this week's Essential Voice, Ben Hess, and
to our thought leaders Sophia Bush and Jim Or Robbie.
Additional thanks to Mika Sangiacomo and to the United Food
and Commercial Workers Local five union. This is a Clamor
and w V Entertainment production in partnership with I Heart
(42:45):
Radio's Michael Dura podcast Network. For more podcasts from I Heart,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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