Starbucks Union Busting

Mia Wong talks with Tori Tambellini, an illegally fired Starbucks union organizer about Starbucks' anti-union crusade, organizing Starbucks workers, and her personal experience with their crimes and depredations.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome Today, could happen here a podcast about fighting your bosses? Uh?
This is this is your host Christopher Wong and with
me today to talk about fighting bosses and bosses doing
incredibly illegal stuff, bosses doing incredibly shady stuff, and why
you should fight them more is Tori Tampolini, who was
a partner organizer from Pittsburgh Starbucks Workers United and was

(00:26):
fired from Starbucks like very illegally, under very sketchy circumstances. Tory,
Welcome to the show. Thanks so much. I'm excited to
be here. Yeah, I'm really really happy to have you here. Um, Okay,
So I guess I guess we should start with the
whole you were denied you were you were, you were

(00:47):
denied your legal rights and then fired presumably for union
organizing thing. Yes, absolutely, so starting from the beginning. And
there was like I was so a month ago my
store manager set me down and I like, he asked
me to come downstairs for a conversation. So I brought
a witness with me and we went downstairs, and I
found out that I was being investigated because there was

(01:10):
one day that I had written down my weekday start
time instead of my weekend to start time. They just
recently changed things at my store so that we opened
at we start opening shifts at five thirty on the
weekends and five on the weekdays. And this is a
recent change up. I had been there for three years,
so I out of habit. One day I had written

(01:32):
five in the book instead of five thirty. Um. A
couple of months later, it seems like everything has blown over.
They accepted the fact that it was just an innocent mistake.
I really wasn't trying to steal thirty minutes of time,
which comes out to like what six dollars after Like, yeah,
I was really desperate for that six dollars. So I
figured they just they knew it was an innocent mistake

(01:53):
and it wasn't going to be a further issue until
I saw two managers in my store. One of them
was my store manager, the other one was Her name
is Brittany. And what Starbucks has done recently is that
they've created this new position in the company. From my understanding,
it's called support manager, and they're basically like an assistant
district manager, and they go around two stores where there's

(02:14):
any sort of union activity, and they try to talk
about strategies to squash it. So it's like, basically the
store manager that did the most harsh union busting if
their own store gets promoted to this position. So in
my district, the person's name is Brittany, and I saw
her in my store, which is always a bad sign.
And um, at one point they asked me to have

(02:35):
a seat for a conversation. So I sit down, and uh, well,
before I sit down, I say, is this a disciplinary conversation?
And the manager said the one manager said to me, yes,
this is solely a disciplinary conversation. And I said, I
would like to invoke my wine button rights. I'm going
to go out to the floor and bring somebody back
as a witness. And they said, you can't do that today.
And basically what they did is they like held up

(02:57):
a piece of paper like with a wall of text
on it like this are from my face, and they're
like it says right here that we can't. We don't
have to do that for you. And I was like
that's really illegal and I'm not comfortable having this conversation
right now at all. And they said, well, we're going
to hand this to you anyway, and handed me a
notice of termination. Um. Yeah, so I walked out and

(03:21):
walk back to the front of house, and I said
a little bit loudly, definitely not like shouting, but kind
of loudly. I said, I just got fired, and is
it okay if I swear to quote my friend? Okay? Cool.
So my best friend Kim was working at the time,
and she loudly said, right in front of our new
store manager, what the fuck? And I just kept walking

(03:42):
because I was so upset and I didn't want the
managers to see me cry. So I walked to the
front of house, or walk outside, and Kim follows me,
and she was like, we're gonna fix this. I'm gonna
go ask Pulieve Early and I'll drive you home and
we'll talk about this. Kim goes back inside, looks at
my assistant manager and says, I'm a question mission to
be leieve Early. And the assistant manager literally couldn't even

(04:03):
look her in the eye and told her Kim go
have a seat in the back, and they fired Kim
as well. Jesus, yeah, yeah. And I think when everything
about the story that I think is worth talking about
is that like when when it comes to union busting,
it literally does not matter how good of an employee,

(04:23):
you are unblessed, like you not being there will literally
cause everything to collapse. But yeah, I don't talk about
like you were really good at this, and they were
still just like no, fuck you. Yeah. So I was
voted by everybody at my store. I was voted Partner
of the Quarter in spring of I was also promoted

(04:44):
a shift supervisor within that same week. And later that year,
I participated in a Barista competition for my store and
I won Barista Champion for my store level, and I
also tied at the district level for Barisa Champion for
the district. So um. And then in addition to that,
I had dealt with a situation where somebody like leaning

(05:05):
against the front of my store had overdosed on heroin
and I gave him an arcan and basically saved the
guy's life. And then like a month or two later
they fired me. So yeah, which I like, I'm trying
to think of if like any other way you can
possibly go like above and beyond what anyone could reasonably

(05:26):
require you, that is more than I saved a dude's life.
It's like, okay, like you're welcome, guys, someone would have
died inside your store if I wasn't there, but um, okay,
by I guess yeah, And I wanted to talk a
little bit about about that, specifically, in about sort of
the conditions at the store, because one of the things

(05:48):
that seems really clear from from listening to you talk
about it and from reading stuff about it is that
it's not just I mean, even if you were just
like you know, doing kind of regular issue like service
workers stuff, this would be unccessible. But it's also like
there's there's this way in which you and your co

(06:08):
workers have sort of been turned into social workers and
are being sort of are being forced to like deal
with just all of the people who sort of capitalism
to say, I just like spat out absolutely yeah, and
sort of like fill in the gaps of just the
collapse of American social services. And yeah, I wanted, Yeah,
I wondered if you could talk a little bit about

(06:29):
the stuff that you've been having to do and what
that's like. Yeah. Absolutely, So. Something I've noticed in Market
Square is that it feels like there were some sort
of resources for the unhoused community that existed before the
pandemic that's straight up just don't exist anymore. So A
lot of that that work to be done, like falls
on the Starbucks employees. Most of us are completely unqualified

(06:53):
for that, Like I have a degree in psychology, but
sometimes that's just not really enough. Most of us are
film students at Point Park, so none of us are
at all equipped to deal with any situations where somebody
is under the influence of something and maybe becoming aggressive,
or somebody is having a mental health crisis, or there
are people that are sleeping in the cafe and we're

(07:15):
asked to pick them out if they're sleeping, but that
feels really really bad because there's not a ton of
other resources, especially during the day, I know, the shelters closed,
so when it's like winter or it's like ninety degrees
outside and someone is just trying to get like a
tiny little bit of sleep, it feels really bad to
kick them out. Um, So we dealt with a lot
of situations that we are just completely on equipped to handle.

(07:37):
And Starbucks would send us de escalation training, but most
of the de escalation training revolved around if a customer
isn't happy with their drink and they're shouting at you,
So it doesn't even begin to cover like any of
the stuff that we deal with that Market Square we
had like we've we've seen a lot of customers having
mental health crises in the cafe, Like what do you do?

(07:57):
Like I don't want to call the police. That's definitely
not going to help. UM. In the situation where I
had to narcan somebody the we had called for an
ambulance and twenty minutes later, the ambulance still wasn't there,
And there were even managers at the surrounding businesses calling
and calling and calling trying to get an ambulance to
Market Square and it ended up like being me that

(08:17):
had to give them a narcan. UM overall, like something
that we were pushing for with Union. The main thing
that we were pushing for was better training, Like we
want Narcan to keep in the stores and we want
all the ships to be trained on how to use that.
And that doesn't have to be through Starbucks. There are
I know of a lot of organizations throughout Picksburg that
would be happy to train our staff on that. UM
we need like better resources. I know at one point

(08:40):
we were falsely promised a social worker that would sit
in our cafe for at least one day every two weeks.
UM never got that, And yeah, I feel like my
staff just deserves better, the community deserves better, and it
shouldn't be Starbucks's job. But until we have something better,
I think that we should be a little bit more
equipped to handle situation that, frankly, we do have to

(09:02):
deal with at some point, just by the nature of
our work and our location. I also think something really
funny to mention here is that we got a new
store manager at the UM. I want to say, at
the beginning, or like mid June, we got this new
store manager. Her name was Sarah, and she has already
transferred to a different store because she felt so unsafe

(09:23):
working up Market Square. She got her first Market Square
a death threat and was like, I'm out. So even
the store manager can't deny that our working positions are bad.
So the fact that they're still fighting against the union
even though management is well aware of how terrible our
conditions are. Just like baffles. Yeah, okay, I want to
I want to take a second and go back to
something that you said, which is your first Market Square

(09:45):
death threat? How common is this? UM? I think I
received a total of four to five and UM, then
I received my very last one. The day that my
store went on strike and I was standing at the
picket line and I was like, wow, it's just like
the good old days before. But yeah, market squares a
lotless land. Yeah, And I like, I don't know, like

(10:07):
I feel like this is like every time I do
this is like a recurring thing. Every time I do
a labor story, it's like, oh, this is a labor storce,
Like no, but it's also the story of a bunch
of like a bunch of people whose job this like
isn't who just wind up having to deal with all
of the ship that the state doesn't want to do,
that corporations don't want to do. And it's like the

(10:29):
the fact that Starbucks employees have to be the like
the Starbucks union has to be the group in like
in this place that is trying to get people to
get in dark hand training is nuts. Like just just
like just any like sort of just Macro taking a
step back level, like what on earth is going on
in the society. CAN have been thinking a lot about lately,

(10:50):
Like I think a lot of journalists and reporters have
asked me, like, why do you think that the younger
generation is the one like leading this like why are
unions making it back now? And why is his younger
generations like so ready to lead this? And I think
it's because we've spent our entire lives watching politicians on
TV make all these promises and continuing to do absolutely nothing,

(11:13):
and we're all sick and tired of it. We are
all ready to take it into our own hands and
fix it in any way that we see that we had. Yeah, yeah,
it makes a lot of sense. I mean, like I
my you know, my my first ball Okay, so my
first political member was the Rock War, but like I
was like a little baby child, but like like you know,
like I remember, like the thing I grew up on
was like yeah it was Obama, it was it was Hope.

(11:35):
It was changed, and then it was like you look
at the world now and it's like it's like, oh
it's it's even bleaker than it was in two tho eight,
which is like, yeah, absolutely crazy. Yeah. I think that
makes a lot of sense. And I think also just
like the last two years have been so prudal. Yeah, absolutely,

(11:59):
And I was wondering, Yeah, I wonder thing did you
can talk about like what affects the um, what effect
the pandemic had on Yellows workers and what effect that
had on union organizing. Yeah, absolutely so. Um, I think
that it really pulled the mask off the company, which ironically,
well everyone was putting the mask on. The mask off

(12:20):
was coming on for Starbucks because they always really pretended
to be this really awesome progressive company, and it really
revealed how performative the company is because they gave us
all these COVID benefits for like two three months and
then took them right away from us like before. Obviously
the pandemic isn't even over now, it definitely wasn't over
back and I think it was October they took away

(12:42):
like our chees spikes too, exactly. And right around that time,
we were also watching our CEO are now former CEO
Kevin Johnson, get like a forty million dollar raised, while
they had just taken away our hazard pay and there
are free food benefits even though we were all still struggling.
So then I think that us seeing those benefits being

(13:04):
taken away and realizing that the company doesn't care about
us in that sense made us start looking harder at everything,
Like the company doesn't want to increase our pay, they
don't want to give us credit card tipping, they don't
want to make our stores safer, um, and every other
reason that any store could see to unionize. Like it
really highlighted all of those reasons and all the ways

(13:24):
the company doesn't care about us as much as they should,
and how they really do just see us as a number.
So I think that's what really really pushed us all
towards unionizing. It's like, if the company doesn't care about
us and the people in our stores, then we're going
to rely on each other to care about us, and
UM push for reunions so that we can take matters
into our own hands. And yeah, and I think there's

(13:46):
there's a lot of the stuff that you've been talking
about that highlights how important that is, which is that, like,
you know, you have this combination of management either like
do the management immediately above you understanding what's happening and
being like we'll just throw you guys at it, will
just literally bail and run away from how bad it is.
And then you have them the layer management like above you,
which is it's a bunch of bureaucrats who like couldn't

(14:07):
find their ask if you drew the map and you know,
or like oh, hey, here, here's your d escalation training.
It's about person mad about drink and it's like I
am getting multiple death threats. It's like it's I don't know.
We literally had a like someone from I think you're
either regional management or maybe a level higher than that,
like area management hume into our store the other day,
like as a customer and there was something going on.

(14:29):
I'm not sure if it was like somebody shouting in
the cafe or like two customers were fighting, but this
like upper level manager who should know about our store
said one of my briefs, does um, so is this
like a high incident store? And we were like, I
don't know, isn't it your job? Like really like wow, yikes, Yeah,

(14:53):
that's something that like, you know, it's not like I learned,
Like it's something like you learned intellectually, and then you
just see like and then yeah, so it's not you
learn intellectually, and then you just sort of viscerally begin
to understand when you know you're doing work and you're
watching what your managers do, it is it's that like, yeah,
like the people who actually knows how the production process

(15:15):
works and how the stuff actually goes and what's happening
on the shop floor, Like are the people? Are the
workers there? And it's like every one above them is
just doing some other ship to just making everyone's lives
worse and it's just literally curating. It starts that nobody
the reason we need a union. And I tell people
this all the time whenever I'm going into new stores.
Nobody knows your store better than you. Nobody knows like

(15:36):
the inner workings of it, how busy you are with
the needs of the store, are better than the people
that are there forty hours a week. And another thing
we talked about a lot in like our our citywide meetings,
is like what do the managers even do on it?
Like what is their job? What are they working on?
Like what your manager do all day and her bushy

(15:57):
little corporate up. But I guess you just union busting now,
even that they're delicated to another manager below them, So yeah,
apparently yeah. Did you ever see the fake tweets the
fake Workers United tweets that Starbucks published? Emil you a

(16:17):
copy of them, but they literally made this hand out
with a list of fake tweets from Workers United, and
like the company's responses, to them. But if you look
up the company's Twitter account, um, it just doesn't exist.
And the tweets from Workers United that they printed out
on these hand outs also don't exist. And I think

(16:38):
maybe three copies of that got handed out to my
store where we all made so much fun of my
boss that keep so, um, I guess that's my boss's job.
I will I can show these to you and keep
them on hand. This is this is like it's the
biggest energy of Like, oh, I thought of the perfect

(16:58):
argument seven hours later but didn't even the argument is
not even real, like they're they're just making up a
guy to argue with. Yeah, and he didn't even try
that hard because these were handed to me back in April.
It says that these all of these tweets were posted
on June one, so the data they claimed that this
was tweeted hadn't even happen. Whenever I received the end out,

(17:19):
I mean, hey, if you if you'll have access to
a time machine, I I have some work I need
to do. Yeah. Yeah. They say things like, in collective bargaining,
you start with everything you have and negotiate for more
from there. From Starbucks Workers United right there and then
the company's responses literally um and then though we are

(17:41):
one Starbucks account said in collective bargaining, everything is up
for negotiations if you have more, the same or less,
and once you negotiate a contract, you locked in, which
which is also funny because it's like like, Okay, you
are looking at that like you think that that is
actually like a thing that makes you look good and
not like a super villain. It's like, no, no, no,
if you try to negotiate with us, we will make

(18:03):
everything worse for you. It's like, really, it looks good.
You know. They try so hard union busts and they
just kind of stuck at it. Yeah, it's been it's
been comical to watch. It's very funny, which is really
funny because like I remember, like I didn't know it's
super boll but like I remember, I knew some people

(18:25):
who were doing Starbic union organizing like way about like
like two thousand, like six or something, and they were like,
you know, and it was like they were kind of
better at it, like they were willing to just like
throw resources at it in a way that like they
don't seem to be able to know. I think maybe
just because like the there's so many organizations, so many

(18:45):
organizing efforts happen happening at once, that it's harder to
sort of just like throw all of their stuff at
one store. But yeah, it's just it's like incredibly funny
watching them just sort of like flail and like you
know what I mean, I guess like like all all
corporations that you need bust eventually resort to break the
law because you know the law. And yeah, had my

(19:08):
my district manager um came into my store screwdriver in
hand to personally make repairs at my store, it would
the funniest thing I have ever seen. It's probably my
favorite union busting story. But she was like, yeah, I'm
here to cover up the electrical outlets in your bathroom.
And we were like cool, why and she was like,

(19:28):
so that the homeless people can't like plug in their
electric shavers and shaven there. We were like, wow, we've
seen we've seen people do a lot of weird things
in the bathroom, and that's like not even one of them.
You are so out of touch. Oh my gosh, it's
been hilarious to watch, Like, wow, that was really some effort,
but really, you know, absolutely not immediately now, there's nothing

(20:03):
I wanted to talk about that Starbucks is you talked
a bit about earlier about Starbucks sort of like having
this image as like like progressive organization and okay, like
one of the things they've been big on sort of
recently is like portraying themselves as this like pro l
G B t q I A plus like thing. And

(20:23):
I think, like, okay, so there's something that like traditional
media has finally discovered because they haven't covered labor organizing
in forty years and they suddenly started doing it again,
and they were like, oh my god, all of the
union organizers are queer. And it was like anyone who's
ever organized a union or anyone who knows anyone who's
ever been in the union could have told you this
like thirty years incredible stuff. Is like wow, congratulations, you've

(20:44):
discovered this. But yeah, I wanted to ask about sort
of I don't know that this kind of bind that
like I feel like we're people doing organizing are in
right now, which is that Like Okay, So on the
one hand, you have like in you know, the last
sort of year or so, this like incredible increase in

(21:05):
rampant homophobia but then simultaneously, like so you know, you
have to fight that fight. And then simultaneously you have
these corporations who are trying to you know, like, yeah,
they're like nominally on our side, and that they're not well,
I mean they are, they are, they are funding the
rampant homophobus, but like publicly they don't you know, publicly
their supportive, but also you know that like their supporter
because they're trying to sell our identity as a brand.

(21:26):
And then you know when queer people are like, hey,
can we like have stuff that lets us live there?
Like no, And I was wondering how you've been sort
of navigating that. Yeah, so that's been really tough because, um,
a lot of our queer partners in Pittsburgh get get
their health insurance through Starbucks. You get gender care through Starbucks.
And one of the biggest union busting tactics is our cuts.

(21:48):
And if you cut someone's hours, then they're not eligible
for healthcare. So they're really just like dangling the carrot
on the stick in front of our faces like, oh,
if you unionize, then we're going to cut your hours
and then you can't get your gender affirming health care.
So that's like, that's really really sucked. UM. In addition
to that, UM, there have been now four people about

(22:10):
to be five. Um, we think one of one person
is going to be fired one of these back from vacations.
But out of all of us that are fired or
about to be fired, we are all queer people. So UM,
I think that really shows how much store books peer partners.
And since I've started organizing, in addition to like homophobia

(22:30):
and like discrimination against the rare community, I've also heard
just rampant stories about microaggressions and racism. UM. I've actually
met a UM a partner that was fired from a
store in Virginia. I want to say she was I
believe for my understanding, she was the only black woman
that worked at her store, and she was fired for

(22:53):
aggressive behavior. And when I heard that, I was like
bidding me so just like and also that support manager
that I was talking about, I've heard rumors that like
she was transferred from one store to another because she
was like caught being racist at the first store. Instead
of being fired, she was transferred and now she got
she was promoted to store manager and then she fired

(23:15):
a trans partner at her store, and now she's our
support manager and fired me. So like it's it's the homophobia. Yeah, yeah,
it's like it's it's the Catholic Church for racist homophobes.
Well okay, the Catholic Church for racist homophobes, but corporate
and well okay, I I I am not going to
make a claim on the air that they're not also

(23:37):
doing this with sexual assault, because I they had like
there's no way that they're not. But yeah, that is Yeah,
that that that's incredibly bleak. And I would go back
a second to sort of the gender affirm and care
stuff because like, yeah, that stuff, it's like like, Okay,

(24:00):
the thing that they are doing is just like we
we are holding the genocide button over you. It's like, yeah,
if if you if you don't comply with us and
you don't like accept the like absolute ship and scraps
that we give you, we are going to try to
kill you. And that is just indescribably horrific. Absolutely. Yeah. Um,
I know it's something that partners up. There's at least

(24:22):
one partner at my store that's dealing with that right now.
She's twenty five about and she is trans, and I
know that, Um, she's on her parents insurance at the moment,
but in less than a year she'll have the fun
insurance elsewhere, most likely through Starbucks. And it's something that
really got her into organizing. I know that for sure.
Um yeah, it's it's been a really scary moment for her.

(24:43):
Definitely something she's worried about. Yeah. Yeah, just the risk
of being fired, the risk of having your hours cut
and stop being eligible for benefits. It's awful, and like
she doesn't feel like she can get a job like
anywhere else just because Starbucks is one of the like
Starbucks offers like decent health insurance, so it's like I'm
kind of trapped here until I can get out, until

(25:04):
I can get another job with insurance benefits. Yeah, and
you know, that's incredibly it's incredibly hard, especially right now.
I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's i mean, it's
not really surprising that they're doing this, but it's yeah,
it's it's really depressing and it sucks. And the fact

(25:26):
that they're you know, like sending sending racist to do
homophobias like h it's yeah, it's like dystopian like this
happened and been like is this real life? Like this
is crazy and um, they just fired another black Clear
organizer and fits were just yesterday and they're trying to

(25:47):
make it look like he resigned, um, but really they
gave him like a couple like options like you need
to have at least one weekend day available, or you
need to demote yourself, or you need to transfer to
a different store. And they were like, I can't really
do any of those options, like none of those work
for me. And then the company said like, oh, yeah,

(26:10):
Jimmy resigned, like we totally didn't fire them, but they
just resigned and sorry, you get to peel it because
you resigned by yeah, it's a real we didn't fire you.
We simply forced you out by making utterly impossible demands. Yep.
It's like it really reminds me of like it's the
kind of stuff a country does when they want to

(26:32):
go to war, where it's like, yeah, we're gonna we're
gonna give you a bunch of demands that it is
literally physically impossible for you to comply with, and that
because you don't comply with him, we're getting invade. M hmm, yeah,
exactly exactly, Like oh, um, although I did just find
out some good news today. So there's this one bar
where most of the union organizers hang out all the time,

(26:55):
and they message us on Twitter today and they want
to throw a queer dance party fundraiser for like our
solid and strike fund. It was like literally the most
us thing I can mostly think of, like a queer
dance party fundraiser at our favorite bar. Like the bathroom
attendant from the bar like showed up to our strike

(27:15):
at my store and friends of the bartender there. It
was like the best Twitter DM ever. I was like,
that's so funny. I'm literally going there with the other
person that got fired from my store like tonight. So
we're very excited for that. Yeah, and I guess that
means that something else I wanted to talk about, which is, um, Yeah,

(27:36):
do you want to talk a little bit about like
what happened after you got fired and the support you've
been getting in the like the backing from other unions
that you've been getting. Totally. Yeah. So my store is
actually just like a block away from the United steel
Workers headquarters, which is incredible because anytime we have any

(27:56):
sort of direct action, we get like forty steel Workers' star. Yeah.
The day after I was fired, I I have this
very funny picture that's on my Twitter UM of me
just standing like with like forty steal workers sitting behind me.
They found like the two biggest foods sting on each
side of me where I started up stay and in

(28:17):
the protest. This is my new favorite picture of myself.
So that was day one. We had a rally. We
had really good turn out with all the steel workers
and a bunch of other community allies are Symphony UM.
Symphony musicians have a have a labor union to the
library workers. UM. They all came out for the first
day of the rally at Market Square and my citywide

(28:40):
organizing committee was actually able to pull together a total
of four strikes. What happened within the course of two days.
The planning happened in like basically under twenty four hours. Insane.
So yeah, I got fired. Wednesday, Thursday was the rally
at my store with all the steal workers. Friday, the

(29:02):
East Carson Store in the South Side of Pittsburgh went
on strike. The East Side store in the Bloomfield store
all went on strike for the full day UM. The
south Side store continued the strike into Saturday and then
UM Sunday, my store went on strike finally, so, um,
it was incredible. We had we have a labor choir

(29:24):
in Pittsburgh, which is in It's just like a dude
with a guitar. He's my favorite person ever. Um. So
we had the labor choir out at all of our events.
And um we had, like I said, the library workers,
the steel workers, the Symphony Union. Um, we have UE.
We have d s A, which is Democratic Socialists of America.

(29:46):
We have the Party for Socialism and Liberation or really
strong allies to us. And we had like a lot
of the regular my my favorite customers showed up at
my store of course, which made cry. One of my customers,
one of my favorite customers who comes in multiple times
a day, said you shouldn't be standing out here on
the on the sidewalk, you should be back there behind
the counter making coffee. And I was like, I know,

(30:07):
thank you. Um. We had a couple of our regulars
change their mobile order name to Tori and Kim, so
that every time he orders a drink to my store,
they have to call out the name Tory and Kim.
That's great. And we set up a go fund me
and we received way more donations than we thought that

(30:28):
we would get so um for all the workers at
my store that went on strike. In addition to the
seventy pay that we received from the union for the day, UM,
we were able to pledge twenty dollars to each of
them to try to make their paychecks pole and cover
some of their last tips. That was incredible and really
just a demonstration of how much support we have in

(30:49):
our area. You know, they say Pittsburgh as a union town. Yeah,
really is? It turns out, yeah, And it's really cool
to see. I don't know, I there like one of
one of the things that I keep seeing is this
sort of like like one of one of the sort
of right wing tactics that have been like just inundated
within the last like a couple of years, has been

(31:11):
like trying to separate out like oh, here are these
people who are workers, but like, oh, they're not workers
because they're like oh, they're like doing cultural stuff for
They're like, oh, they just like serve drinks and like,
you know, you look at actual labor. It's like that's no,
like none of this, none of this, none of these
division things are real like people showing from each other.
It's always get worried that people will be like judgmental

(31:34):
about that. Like I'm always kind of like surprised when
the steel workers show up. I'm like, I know, I'm
not a steel worker. I don't make steel, I don't
work in a factory or anything. Just make coffee. But um,
everyone is so supportive and they are always so willing
to stand in solidarity, which is really cool. But it's
something I'm always like worried about, Like I know, it
doesn't feel like I'm a real worker, but like union,

(31:55):
I mean, I'm in a podcast union, so like talking
about yeah, I have I have like arguably like if
if if if if you're going to use the really
silly like like I don't know, sort of like cultural
analysis of what a worker is. Like a podcast union

(32:15):
is like the silliest union every and it's great, no
it rules. It turns out where workers we go fight
for other people to other people fight for like the
the when when when we when we were trying to
get union recognition, like the NFL Players Association was like, hey,
you guys need to recognize this, and we were like yeah, yeah,

(32:38):
just um, We've been going to a lot of rallies
for the Planned Parenthood Union and yeah, which I didn't
I didn't actually know that they existed. That yeah, I actually,
well it wasn't Pittsburgh, but I was just talking. Actually
probably I don't know what these are gonna err in,
but like, yeah, that I just talked to people from
the union. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they were cool. To
the labor choir there again, I would tell you solidarity

(33:01):
all around. I love to see it. Oh yeah, that's
that's really cool. Mm hmm. Yeah, lots of unions in Pittsburgh.
A good time. I met a lot of really cool people.
I feel like all the people I've met since I've
been involved with union stuff, I have been like really cool.
The first time I talked anywhere, it was at the

(33:22):
Pennsylvania a f l C i OH convention and um whatever.
I was told that when of our I talk, my
speech was supposed to end with brothers and sisters, can
I count on your support? Because they were passing a
resolution for us. But one of my brieftas told me
it would be funnier if I said, can I get
a hell? Yeah? So I said some very serious words
to this room full of serious look at people, and

(33:44):
then I said on behalf of all of our partners
at the market Square Starbucks. Can I get a hell yeah?
And they all so happy and I was like, cool,
I found my people. That was like the first time
I talked anywhere. That was funny. That's awesome. Yeah, this

(34:04):
is and and and another reason to unionize. You get
to beat a bunch of really cool people and then
they show up for you and it's just incredible experience. Yeah.
On my last kid vassing trip, we went out in
Games of two when when we reconvened at the end
of the night for dinner, and we were like, oh,
we should stop at our one store that we visited again,
like all four of us, and I was like, yeah,
we should like go in and be like, look, guys,

(34:26):
I joined the union and I made three whole friends. Yeah.
Also just talking at the UM, I was on a
panel at Women's Labor School, which was really awesome. It
was at Penn State University and that was a really
really cool experience. I met all the all the female
union leaders. It's a really great event overall. It's really

(34:49):
cool people involvedaltore. Hell yeah, I love unions. Good stuff. Absolutely.
I got a cool pin that says labor women get
in good trouble and I was like, yeah, that's what
I'm doing absolutely hell yeah. Yeah. So these days I'm

(35:15):
just working with UM some other stores in the Greater
Fitburg area helping get them filed. I won't be too
specific about this, but we are going to see some
stores picking up in DC, which is really really exciting.
We've been doing some canvassing trips out there. Well. At
Starbucks Workers United, we call it a clean play because
in Starbucks what a clean play is is that one
day a week, UM, all the closing crew is scheduled

(35:37):
for an extra two hours at the end of their
shift deep clean the store, and they call that a
clean play. So we like to take Starbucks plan language.
So we feel like our little canvassing blitzes clean plays.
So for the DC clean play, we've been I've been
out there twice. UM. We have visited a ton of stores,
definitely some interests there. Seems like the union busting has
been really tough, but we have we have one store

(35:59):
that's guys and you'll see it in the news soon.
Hell yeah, I'm very proud. It was like one of
that was one of my DC leads. UM they've reached
out to us on our website for an organizing request,
and um, they've just been like super strong leaders and
they've been incredible and union investing really hasn't faced them

(36:20):
at all, and they're going to be stress very proud
of them, a little bit proud of myself, but they
they can have all the credit for that. They they
really like stay strong throughout the union busting, do good stuff.
It's scary to be the first store in your area too,
to actually make moves. Like my friend Jake Welsh, he
was the first store in Pittsburgh. His store was the

(36:41):
first in Pittsburgh. And I know that's like really scary,
and I'm glad that it's happening because it feels like
once the one store goes, then the dominoes starting to fall.
So once we see that one store in DC file
for the union election, we're going to see a lot
more go down there. Um, are you able to talk
at all about what the search of organizing process has

(37:03):
been like? And you know, if you can't talk about
like what has been like as an organizer, just like
what it was like at your store and what it's
been like going to other stores totally. So at my
store we started. We had heard a little bit about
what Buffalo was doing, and we started very casually talking
about it at my store, like, yeah, if any store

(37:23):
needs a union, it is the store. Like we are
an absolute shit show here, so we could definitely usnized
that would be awesome. Um really had no idea how
to get started though, until a couple of weeks later,
I get a panicked phone call from one of my
baristas and she was like, Tori, this weird guy came
into the store when I was on a register today
and he started asking me questions about unions, and I

(37:46):
know he wasn't a barista, and I think he was
a corporate spy. And we were like, oh okay, So
we googled a guy started to like like get some information.
We found like his LinkedIn or his coworkers LinkedIn account,
and we were like, okay, they seemed trustworthy, We're still
in not sure, So we emailed the guy from a
burner email account. The fake name. I think the fake
name was like Darren or something, even though like our

(38:08):
names are like Tor and Kelly and Kayla. So we
emailed them from a fake name and a Burner account
and eventually got in contact with Daisy Pickens, who is
now our national campaign director, but at the time she
was working mainly in Pittsburgh and from there she she
taught us everything we know about organizing. We built an
organizing committee consisting of me, Kelly, and Kayla because like

(38:32):
the three of us were pretty good friends. And we
got cards signed. We were able to get on people
want my store to sign a card, and we filed unanimously.
Yeah so um. Something that stores do right before they
file is they write a Dear Howard letter. And you
might have seen these on Twitter. If you haven't, you
didn't find them on the Starbucks Workers United like national

(38:54):
official Twitter, they always post those there. So we wrote
our Dear Howard. We turned in our cards to the
n l RP office, and right after I finished turning
in the cards to then l RB, I walked right
back to my store and I had printed out a
physical copy of our Dear Howard, and I handed it
to my store manager, Joe. I wanted you to hear
it from me, and he was like, okay. UM. From there,

(39:16):
the union busting started. We had captive audience meetings, which
I believe to my understanding the company has stopped doing
because they were kind of declared illegal, or maybe it
was just that the information they were sharing was so
misleading that it was declared illegal. But they handed us
like a bunch of really really misleading handouts saying things

(39:37):
like withdrawn petitions. If Workers United thinks that you're going
to lose lose your union election, they will withdraw your
petition and abandon you, which is crazy. Another thing was
that like, if if the union thinks that you're going
to vote no, they're going to try to talk you
out of voting. But Starbucks is the one that really
cares about your voice, and we wanted to make sure

(39:59):
everyone has a voice. We're like, literally, you can look
objectively at this. You can see what Starbucks has done
to try to prevent you from voting, Like they were
pushing for in person stores or in person elections in
stores where most of the partners don't have cars, are um,
busy with other things, have second jobs, and just couldn't

(40:19):
feasibly vote in person. Um. They challenge ballots left and right,
they think. I think they challenged a total of nine
ballots at my store, including Kelly's ballot, even though Kelly
was literally like working at the time of our ballot count.
She was literally behind the counter and like you can
see her like in the zoom call like people as
she came out to watch the ballot counts on her break,

(40:41):
they tried to challenge her ballot claiming that she didn't
work there. So there's just like hard evidence that the
company is the one that doesn't want people to vote.
So we got through the union busting. It was it
was tough, it was an uphill battle, and eventually we
won our election eight to one on May six. So

(41:01):
after that, I became an intern with Workers United UM
for the Summer Solidarity Internship program, and that's when I
started really getting into helping other stores file. So there
was one out in out in the Pittsburgh suburbs like
Greater Pittsburgh area. Peters Township was the first store, like
my first really solid lead that I ever took on UM.

(41:22):
They filed. I helped them write their Dear Howard letter.
We were interviewed by the Washington Post. Super cool. So
they have their ballot count on August eighteen. Very excited
for them. I have my stores in DC that I'm
working with and a lot of other stores throughout Pittsburgh
and um going on a lot of Queen play trips,
whether it's a big one to Washington, d C. Or

(41:42):
smaller local one. But we'll go out in teams of two,
visit as many stores as we can possibly get to
in one day, and we wear our Star Wars Workers
United shirts, so immediately people know why we're there. Basically,
just go up as if we're going to order a
drink and be like, hey, so, like we heard about
what we're doing in downtown Pittsburgh were like the stores
in Buffalo that unionized. You have to feel like, what
do you guys think of that? And typically our approach

(42:05):
is to find the gayest looking person. Yeah, we gotta
trying to find like the young, like maybe like twentysomething
person with like dyet hair and a septom piercing. It's
always the sceptom piercings. Let me tell you, they're always
the leader, the ring leaders at their store. I don't
know why, but it's been funny. So yeah, I try
to find the gayest person and be like, hey, so

(42:26):
what do you think about unions? And that's how we
brought a new store. Yeah, yeah, and we've been pretty
successful with it. A lot of people either don't know
what a union is or they really like their boss,
and that seems to be the company's best union tactic
union busting tactic because by having good bosses, because we

(42:46):
always say that sometimes the best organizer is the boss.
So sometimes the stores where they're like, we love our boss,
our boss takes such a good care of us, I'm like,
darn it, um, Like, good for you guys, but you
should unionize anyway. Yeah, I would also like, like I
would say, it's like I really like my boss, and
I am also still because yeah, totally trying to explain

(43:06):
to them too. Sometimes those stores where they say that
they're hard to talk into it, but I always tell
them what happened at my store and what happens that
we had the same store manager for I believe like
five years. He was great. We loved him, he was cool,
and when we unionized, it wasn't about him. It was
about the working conditions at our store and that upper
management had been giving us false promises and the things

(43:28):
that needed to be changed at our store were kind
of out of my store manager's hands, like that was
like above his vay grade, so he couldn't do much
about it. And we made it clear, like Joe, it's
not about you. You're great, we love you. UM gotta
do it, do you though, Sorry, buddy. UM. Then we
got even though we loved Joe, we got a new
store manager in mid June, and she was a little

(43:48):
bit less awesome. And you know, you never know when
things that your store can change. And even if you
love the store manager you have now, they could they
could leave tomorrow. So you gotta like, the only thing
that guaranteed your store manager isn't guaranteed to be at
your store forever. What is guaranteed is a contract, and
that's something that's really important. Sometimes it's hard to get
people to see the long term of it, though. UM.

(44:11):
Otherwise we're normally pretty successful. UM. We uh typically try
to get phone numbers at every store, reach out to
them within the next two days, and then we'll hold
like an intake meeting. So whenever we have an intake meeting,
we tell them make a spreadsheet of every partner at
your store, what shift they work, what their job is
like if they are strip supervisor or barista, and assign

(44:34):
one person on your organizing committee to talk to that person.
So every person at your store should have an organizing
committee member assigned to them. From there, once they have
a plan for who's going to talk to who, we
get cards to them and they can be either physical
cards like my store did, or digital cards, and then
they start getting signatures, having little conversations like hey, here's

(44:54):
what do you mean is here's why we're doing this.
If you agree, sign this card. Once they have sevent
cent of cards signed, then we take it to the
on l r V and say hello, we would like
to do a union please, and then hopefully they get
a valid count date. And the company always pushes for
in personal elections, we always push back. We pretty much
always win, and um we always want mail in ballots

(45:18):
because we do, like, really genuinely want everybody to be
able to vote. Whenever I was organizing at my store,
I told everyone my best possible outcome, best case scenario
is that every single person here votes and votes. Yes.
My second best possible outcome is that everyone here votes
and some of you vote. Now, like I I want
everyone to vote. I want every single person here to vote.

(45:40):
I don't want to be like there is one store
in my district that did end up winning their union election,
but out of there I think fifty to sixty partners,
only twelve people voted, and although they won, like, that
is not the way we wanted to get you want
everyone to have a day, yeah, which I think is
interesting on sort of two levels. One, it's like you

(46:01):
can see the exact moment at which corporations start carrying
about Prince are pretending to care about democracy, which is like,
oh wait, hold on, our workers are doing stuff. Oh no,
we have to care about Yeah. Suddenly we're like this
incredible pro democratic force we want everyone to have to say.
It's like, okay, it's funny. They actually just came out
with this happened after I got fired. That happened in

(46:24):
the past two weeks. But they came out with I
believe It's an app where partners can share their feedback
and share their experiences. Um. So they are trying to
be so democratic, Like, look at them just really listening
to us. Um. Yeah. They also did this really fun
thing where even though hours are being cut across the company,

(46:46):
people are having their hours drastically cut because this poor
little billion dollar corporation can't afford to schedule us any
more hours or properly staff their stores. We were all
scheduled an extra hour for one of our ships during
the week so that we could sit down and watch
an hour long speech by Howard Shoulder do a survey
about how much we like our job, which was funny.

(47:10):
That Wow, that was like a kind of a new
load for Starbucks. Like wow, there's two people working on
the floor right now, one person like making drinks and
one person on register and they're getting slammed out there.
It's so glad you guys had the had the labor
hours to be able to schedule me to sit here
and watch this Howard speech. Great. Thanks, Like I think,

(47:32):
like just the scheduling stuff like that, everyone being consistently understaffed.
It's like this is something I was talking to the
plant parenthood people about two, which is like like there too.
It's like you get you get these managers who are like, wow, okay,
we're gonna do cost cutting. We're doing and you know
the price of cost cutting is we're gonna just make
all of our people work can possibly hard because we

(47:53):
refused to put enough people in the store. And then
you know, we're we're we're we're not going to let
you work long enough, like we're not gonna let you
work long enough to actually get benefits. And then yeah,
it's like the worst combination. Yeah, but but it's like
you know, okay, you know, like like they have the buddy,
they can't schedule you. It's like, yeah, what I mean,
like like you know, I think like it ideally, in
a society that wasn't just like like not even not

(48:13):
even like a perfect sidey, in a society that was
not like entirely based on cruelty and violence, it wouldn't
even be able to do this at all. Everyone would
just have a fixed schedule. Yeah, just like exactly, because
it's so it sucks so much because it's like I
barely get to go to work even though I asked
for a full time I'm scheduled seventeen hours a week,
but I am there. I'm like so freaking stressed because

(48:35):
there's just not enough people to make the number of
drinks that need made, and all the customers are super
piste off because they've been waiting ten minutes for their drink,
and like corporate is just watching this happen. I'm sure
that they have to be getting bad reviews, Like there's
no way people aren't calling corporate to complain about the
weight times because there's only two of us working on
a Sunday morning, and like they're really just shooting themselves

(48:58):
in the foot, just all around, all around, shooting themselves
on the foot. Yeah. But I think also like there's
a part of this which is just like they are
insulated from this, like you know, I don't know, it's
like the managers don't have to deal with this ship
and it's like, yeah, they're gonna they're just gonna throw
all of the angry customers, Like people who are angry
because of decisions of management do they throwat you? And
it's like this is this is fucking bullshit, Like yeah,

(49:20):
it's like here's a cupe on for a free drink,
Go bully the brist does again. Yeah. Yeah, it's like Michelle,
my district manager, doesn't have to come in and deal
with like forty angry customers staring at her while she
tries to frantically make drinks. Like yeah, it's like I
don't know, like there is definitely a part of me

(49:44):
that is like I mean, okay, like I know, on
the one hand, this isn't true because there have been
a lot of terrible corporate people. There's been a lot
of like I don't know, like terrible world leaders who
actually had to work real jobs. But like, okay, like
like some part of my soul still holds onto the
belief that if like these people actually had to work
in these conditions like consistently, that it wouldn't be like

(50:08):
this because they wouldn't be completely insulated from just the
absolute horror they're inflicting an iPhone. And it's, yeah, you
can see whenever my store manager is scheduled to be
on the floor, like scheduled for a coverage shift, which
means that they're required to be out on the floor
making drinks and doing register, they were always very fully staffed.
Whenever whenever the man is scheduled for coverage, there's always

(50:29):
at least five other people on the floor. But whenever
it's like me on a Sunday morning opening the store
and there's like a Steelers game and a convention in
town and everyone, like the city is packed, and all
the hotels around around my store are packed. Everyone's gonna
want coffee. There's like three of us, which is just
like it's really frustrating to sort of like on a

(50:50):
political level, it's like every job that I've ever worked,
it's like if it was literally just us running this
and there was no management, everything would work a hunter
times better. Yeah, and it's like yeah, that's yeah, it's
like okay, Like at a certain point you have to
just be like get rid of these people, like what
why why why are we doing this our new new

(51:13):
store manager since our recent new one quit because working
visions are so bad. Our new new one is an
outside hire who doesn't know how to ring in drinks,
you know, how to make drinks, doesn't know anything, and
they just put him in my store as a store manager.
And my roommate is also a barista, and she's been
like having to coach him every day, which is a
really awkward situation because she's not even a supervisor. She's

(51:36):
like a a barista and she has to be like, hey,
there's a difference between nitro coold Brew and regular coold Brew,
like keep putting the wrong button. Very frustrating when they
sent this guy into run my store. Meanwhile, like he
probably knows less than everybody else that works there. Yeah,
definitely knows you do, like, yeah, definitely knows less than me.
It's so funny. Since I've been fired, I still like

(51:57):
every time there's an emergency at my store, my barristas
called me. It's wild. Like I got a call at
five in the morning the other day from one of
my favorite barristas and he was like, hey, Tori, I
know you don't work here anymore, but sal was supposed
to open and he's not here yet and I'm locked
out of the store. What do I do? Or Like
another barrista called me when I was in d C.

(52:19):
And he was like, Tori, I just shrote up for
work and the store is closed. What do I do?
And I was like, I don't know that I can
do my best to help you, but I there's not
much I can physically do. I don't have keys anymore. Sorry. Yeah,
And it's it's really like, you know, one of one
of the things that I mean, I guess you get

(52:40):
this in both sort of like like when I want
to like so I went to the rist of Chicago,
and you know, it's like, okay, so these are the
people who infamously produced all of the terrible economics to
make the world suck, right and it's like, okay, well
you take econ classes there, and it's like everything is
about sort of like I like, you're doing all of
this because I like, okay, so like the you're doing

(53:02):
all of this under the assumption that if you let
corporations run into free market, they will do everything optimally
and they will produce the lowest prices and they will
produce everything as efficiently as possible. And it's funny because
like you see this in Marxist theory too. And then
it's like you look at like any store place and
it's like no, no, no, they're firing their most competent
workers and hiring people who are incompetent because like because
the thing that they actually like care them most about,
even more than efficiency, even more than like making more money,

(53:24):
is maintaining their power. And it's like it's something that
like is really obvious when you're working, but somehow, like
the people who write about this stuff has like deluded
themselves into not being able to understand Yeah, that's no idea.

(53:45):
It's like it feels like they almost don't want the
experienced workers to say I've seen like so part of
my internship project is keeping a database of the fired
partners in the anti union firings, which is kind of
ironic because I was like, well, got to add myself
to this, but she now, But I've seen I see
people must French treat who worked the company for five years.

(54:05):
There's one person on there who worked for the company
for seventeen years. But we don't get raises or anything
for seniority or anything like that. There's actually a cap
on how much you can make in each state from
Starbucks because they don't they don't want you to work
there forever because then the frustrations start to come through,
and then new the new unionized, and it feels like

(54:26):
they the high turnover feels really intentional. Sometimes I think
it is, like I think that that's that's like a
pretty common like Amazon Justice too, where it's like like
their whole their their whole business strategies is intentionally on
working every one so hard if they quit so I
can get a new group of people, and so people
don't organize and it's yeah, yeah, it's really brutal and

(54:48):
horrific and I hate these people. Yeah, same, It's like
if I see this person here for ten years and
make this look like it's a sustainable career. Then then
we have to make it a sustainable career, and I
don't want to do that. So it works people out
after like two or three, so very frustrating, which I
think I guess also helps them with the sort of

(55:10):
like like the way that people look at like I
mean minium wage workers and also just service workers in general,
where they're like, oh, well, yeah, you know, we don't
need to raise minium wages a bunch of teenagers, Like
these people don't need like good wages because this is like,
you know, you're not actually supposed to be doing this,
this is like a transition thing. It's like that's not
how any of this works, Like it's just not that's
just you're you're you're making excuses for corporations doing exploitation. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah.

(55:34):
And it also seems like another thing they're doing is
that we've seen a lot of really high manager turnover too,
and I think that also is really intentional because they
had to even though the store manager that ultimately fired
me was new, like she couldn't she didn't even have
the heart to do that. She had to bring in
They had to bring in a support manager to like

(55:56):
actually say the words like you're fired. Here's your termination notice.
And it feels like the reason they're making the managers
anniverse so high is so that the managers don't like
form those relationships with staff of the store because it
doesn't feel as bad to fire them. Like, I don't
think this ever would have happened to me if my
original store manager, who had been there for five years
and like knew me personally, was still at my store,

(56:18):
I don't think this would have happened. And I think
that's why they're doing this big manager shuffle right now
at least. I mean, I'm sure it's happening in other places.
It's definitely happening a lot in Pittsburgh. I think there
are very few stores in my district that had the
same manager that they had three months ago. It feels
like they're intentionally shuffling them around so they don't form
like personal relationships or any sort of emotional tie to

(56:39):
the partners at their store, and they don't feel guilty
firing them. Yeah, it's like it's community is really dangerous
to them. M absolutely, Like I think I talked about
this like some number of episodes ago, but like, yeah,
like this is this is the thing that's really common
with like IM but I'm just I'm just gonna straight

(57:01):
up called Starbucks dicatorial organization because it is, like it
is just a dictatorship. It's like the tatorships do this
a lot where like, yeah, like communities are really dangerous
to them. Communities with any kind of strong bonds with
each other really dangerous because people will fight for each other,
and you know, you can't for example, like I don't know,
it's it's really really hard to support someone who has

(57:22):
a strong community around them that will fight back. But
if you can isolate those people, if you can like
like physically isolate them, if you can like socially isolate them,
if you can make sure that they don't have the
support networks, then you can then you can you know,
do whatever you want to them. And that seems Yeah,
it seems like it's it's a very deliberate like and everything.
It's like you know this also like this just makes

(57:42):
everyone's life worse, right, Like did you see what happened
in Seattle with the new Starbucks Heritage District. I think
I've vaguely heard about it, but yeah, so in Seattle,
the three like original I believe it's the three original
Starbucks stores, like first ever Starbucks stores to open the
free in Seattle. Um, they've made it so that you

(58:04):
don't the partners there don't have a specific store that
they're assigned to. They're assigned to the district and can
be scheduled at any store at any time, So you're
not working with the same people all the time and
you're not forming those relationships. And if you were to
somehow forming a relationships to start organizing, UM, you wouldn't

(58:25):
be able to vote as a store. You have to
vote as a district, which is just a lot more
logistically difficult. And there was a lot of pushback that happened,
but unfortunately those stores hadn't filed for an election yet
and UM weren't really able to do much about it.
But we're definitely scared of that happening, like in Pittsburgh
and like at other Starbuck stores around the country, that
they're going to make it so that you work for

(58:45):
the district the specific store, and that's kind of terrifying.
So yeah, I mean, and I think that that's not
everything where it's like okay that they have to have
to weigh efficiency versus like their own power and they're
going to choose their own power every time, and as
like there's just like an aspect of that too where
it's like they're just incredible dehumanization of it. Yeah, it's

(59:08):
just totally it's like really careless, like you don't know
what someone's transportation situation looks like. Um, you don't know,
like if they feel comfortable working with like different groups
of people, Like I don't know, I know that like
a lot of people at UM. So this is just
reminding me of something that happened at the store in
my area. So at Penn Center East, the Penn Center

(59:29):
East Starbucks, they are union store. They decided they were
closing Penn Center East for like a for an entire
week and gave them the option to work at three
stores that were like an hour away from them. And
of course, like they were only given the option to
work at other stores that were unionized, they weren't going
to send the union people into the non unionized store
potentially influenced them. So one of the partners, the one

(59:51):
that was actually fired yesterday, it was like, I do
not feel comfortable working at this store because I worked
at the store at one time. And I they still
a lot of discrimination from the from the manager there,
from the partners there, and I don't want to be
put in that situation again. There's like a customer at
this other store that said that called me a racial slur,
and I don't want to be in this area. I

(01:00:12):
don't I don't want to go out to these stores.
And it just like exposes partners to like a lot
more like situations that they're potentially not comfortable with there,
with new managers that they don't have like a good
rapport with yet, And it makes everything just a lot
more difficult. Like just let everyone work at their own store,
Like we all have friends. All the partners that, like
my store at least were very very close. I know

(01:00:32):
a lot of the stores are the same way. It
just makes work worse to not be working with your friends.
I don't think anyone would work in Market Square if
we weren't all really close with each other. Um, overall,
just work situation. Yeah, And I don't know, hope, hope,
hopefully they're not able to do that on a large scale,

(01:00:52):
because yeah, yeah, that would be it just feels like
a disaster, especially since I mean there's a lot of
Starbucks stores like concentrated in cities, but I know, like
the Penn's Center East Starbucks was kind of out there
in the suburbs. And another big issue that they faced
was that like, we don't have some of us don't

(01:01:13):
have cars, and we just can't get to like the
city Starbucks stores because our parents drive us to work
to our parents drive us to work every day because
we're in high school, and we just don't have like
a means of transportation. There's nowhere to park there and
just puts them. It just makes them face a lot
of issues that they weren't really planned on dealing with,
planning on dealing with, and aren't really prepared to. And

(01:01:34):
they probably chose the store that they currently work at
because like they didn't just pick it at random. They
picked because it was convenient to get to, They like
vibes there and it was like a good fit for them.
And forcing them to work at other other stores where
there are a lot less comfortable not a good decision.
Just feels shady, very humanizing for sure. Yeah, and so

(01:01:55):
I guess I do. I do have phone messing to ask,
which is if people want to support you and people
want to find you in places where can they do that?
Oh yeah, So my Twitter is Tory Underscore TIMBERLINI and
that's my personal Twitter. We also have a Pittsburgh Starbucks
Workers United Twitter account. Um, if you want to support
me and Kim specifically, there is a link to our

(01:02:17):
go fund me there. There's a link in my bio
and somewhere in the Pittsburgh account as well. We also
just released a national solidarity fund um through Coworker, but
I'm actually not quite clear on how people can donate
to that yet. I can, it's very new, so I
can send you an email with a link to that. Yeah. Cool. Yeah,

(01:02:38):
well we'll put all the links in the show notes. Awesome,
thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Thank you so
much for joining us. Is Yeah, it was really good. Yeah,
thank you so much for sharing my story. I I
feel like there's a lot of fired partners, fired partners
across the country, and like we all kind of need
to stand together. And I like people to hear my
story and hear about how the union has supported us,

(01:03:02):
and there's been a lot of community support. And you know,
as soon as I was fired, I was immediately hired
by work with United. You know, they're really willing to
take care of us. And if I had like anything
to kind of like like any advice to give the
partners who are trying to organize, Like, the union has
your back, don't worry too much about losing your job.
Probably won't happen. If it does, the union has your back,

(01:03:23):
and all the other fire protters have your back as well. Thanks.
Hell yeah yeah. And on that note, yeah, fight your
bosses together. You can beat them. Uh yeah. Go out
into the world and make havoc for people who do
bad stuff, cause problems on purpose. It could Happen Here

(01:03:47):
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