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