It Could Happen Here - Coffee Unions Spread to Peet's

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Mia talks with Dino and Cole, two organizers with the Peet's Labor Union, about their ongoing campaign and how the rise of delivery services has increased their exploitation. https://linktr.ee/peetslaborunion https://peetslaborunion.org @peetslaborunion https://checkout.square.site/merchant/MLR6ZV4VZRBPT/checkout/2KLSQDHYHY7D3GNP7YUX62CDSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and In Your Ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey man, what are you into? I have the hookup. The hookup? The hookup for what? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Poppers?

Why are there so many poppers? All roads lead to... The hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to... Yeah, that's a word for it. ["I Heart Radio App," by The CW plays in background.] Listen to The Hookup on the I Heart Radio App,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche.

Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and batter than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila.

And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms, but not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe.

Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Call Zone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. I'm your host, Mia Wong. As the new regime settles in, we face a struggle on a thousand fronts. It's bewildering.

It's terrifying. It's an offensive design to overwhelm us with the sheer totality of the horror. But its diversity is also our greatest advantage, because every struggle on every front brings us closer to victory. And that allows us and it allows you to pick a field and hold it. One of the most important fronts in the years to come is labor. Much of what is to come will be decided on the shop floor. And today, we're talking about that. And with me to talk about that is fellow worker Dino, an IWW pizza union organizer in in Berkeley and fellow worker Cole,

who's a IWWP's union organizer in Portland and both of you to welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Hello. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, me too. I'm excited to talk to you both. So this is a Pete's coffee unit. We have talked to several other unions, but this was kind of personal to me because this is one of the sort of coffee things that my dad kind of grew up on and I'm now here to deliver wrath against them for their many crimes. So yeah, let's start off with, can you talk a bit about how these unions came together and what the sort of like beginning process of this organizing looked like?

Yeah, so the first store that organized actually was in Davis, California. They organized, I think, in 2022. They launched their public campaign at the end in winter, and then they voted for their election back in January of 2023. That's around the same time period where a lot of media was writing about their unionization process and a couple of the Bay Area stores heard about it and started to meet together. And that's kind of where we started. We weren't IWW at the start, but we eventually started meeting with unions and chose IWW. Oh yeah. So it was an independent thing that became an IWW.

Yeah. When we joined the IWW, we were basically fully organized to the extent that we were going to be. We already had our like committee set up. We had our meetings regularly. We had like Robert's rules and everything already implemented. That's so cool. You want to talk a little bit about like what the sort of process of doing that initial organizing before you went to the unions look like? How everything sort of came together?

Yeah, when we started organizing, it was very secretive, and it was a little bit scary at the time because there was a lot of already kind of union busting from management. There was a lot of managers kind of like trying to overhear. People were talking about the union or already instigating themselves and asking like, what do you think about unions? And it was a little bit scary to try to just like go up to coworkers and be like, Hey, like, are you interested in, you know, hanging out after work and, you know, talking

shit about our manager or something like that. And over time, we eventually started doing like one on one conversations with our coworkers and meeting together. Once we had our three stores that really were solidified, we had at least one person in each store that was like willing to like drive the campaign forward for months and maybe even years. As some of us have been around for that long now, we felt ready to start setting things into stone. So we had meetings every single week and we had bi-weekly meetings at some point.

We had committee meetings and people started to kind of select themselves into like social media or we had outreach, we had intake. So other stores were also reaching out to us because there was like just secret kind of like people knew what was happening. People didn't want to say it out loud. Yeah. So it was just a lot of like hanging out, having socials and things like that, that kind of like created the foundation for like personal relationships for organizing. And at the time it was mostly

just us complaining for a really long time until we were like, what if we did something about this? Yeah, one thing I'm curious about is like how large, roughly, are these are these shops? There tends to be about 12 to 16 workers at each shop. So I think the biggest union shop that we have has 16 workers in it. The shop that I work at is fairly small. We only have 12 workers right now.

So fairly small. And I will say, just to give some context for the organizing process for my shop as well. Pete's did not make it difficult to organize in terms of like the policies that they were pushing. Everyone was pissed off about how we were being treated and so just sort of pushing people in one-on-one conversations to look for solutions rather than just bitching about it, which is great. That's where it all starts, right? Pete's pushing poor policies, they're cutting hours.

That's one of the biggest things. They're slicing our hours week after week, even as the volume of sales goes up. And so just being like, hey, do you want more hours? Like, do you feel like it's fair for us to be staffed this way? Let's try to do something about it. Yeah, and the staffing issues, this is one of the things we're talking to,

I mean, just people across sectors. It's really one of the, it's one of the things that's the most obvious if you're working one of these jobs and also somehow, it's not something that ever gets talked about in the mainstream at all. Like it's never a part of the discourse that, you know, you don't have a set number of hours that you're going to work. You don't know when you're going to work them.

And also, you know, there's no guarantee that you're going to get to work enough hours to actually survive. And then also the entire condition of labor, like every sector, is just chronic, it's just chronic under scheduling and chronic under staffing of everything. And you know, that ranges from like, coffee shops, like hospitals to schools to like everyone has decided that the way that you manage things is by chronically overworking everyone and trying to pay people as little as possible by not giving them hours. Can you talk a little bit more about the kind of the actual effects of the understaffing and how that sort of drove people into the campaign?

Yeah, I would be more than happy to. I mean, one of the sort of primary catalysts for organizing for our shop was the introduction of Uber Eats. So when I first started working at the shop, it was around two years ago, they had just recently introduced DoorDash. So previously, you know, obviously it started, it was just a cafe,

people would come in and get their coffee. Later on, they ended up introducing mobile orders through Pete's own ordering system. And then when the pandemic hit initially and everything locked down, they started doing DoorDash to try to continue having a revenue stream. Now, after more things started opening up, they opened the shop up again. Obviously, they continued to have DoorDash because it brings in a lot of revenue for them. Yeah. Um, and then without really any forewarning and certainly without any increase in staffing for us, they introduced Uber Eats, which is a similar amount of volume increase,

a similar amount of orders increase as DoorDash. Like we're probably getting at peak, like 30, 40 drinks per hour in addition to what we're getting in store from DoorDash and Uber Eats. That's a drink every like sub two minutes. Yeah. Jesus. And we are expected to crank these out at less than three minutes in order. And that's per order.

So an order might have like five drinks if it's Door to Asher Ubereats, where in particular, people will order a lot of things at a time. Cause it seems like using these sort of apps and stuff, people will order much more egregious things, much larger orders than they do when they're in store. And so everyone's really annoyed

about this. Just like, okay, all of a sudden we have all this extra work to do. They're not increasing our hours at all. Yeah, you're not getting paid more either. Oh, certainly not. And we don't get tips from that either. Oh, Jesus. Wait, you don't get tips from it? No, no. I mean, like- Wait, oh, the tips all go to the drivers. Jesus Christ. Which I won't- like, that's not a bad thing necessarily. The drivers Good, good, good for the drivers, but you should get paid too, yeah.

But it's like Uber who's taking the vast majority of the money from that and peace. And so us and the drivers are both getting screwed over by this. Yeah. But we both have to do all this extraneous work. So people were super fucking irritated about that, myself included for sure. And that really got people going with like, okay, what are we going to do about this? How can we try to push them to staff us better? Yeah, and it seems like the incentive structures for these delivery services add up really badly in terms of the way that incentives people to order.

Because you have these like minimums on the amount of like stuff you have to order to get below. Like there's all this, you know, all this like threshold stuff of like, if you do this, you get free delivery, you spend this much, you get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that, yeah, it seems like the sort of perfect maelstrom for producing even more work. Yeah. And I will say this is that they like to push out promotions to people of like buy one, get one free, that sort of thing for like our Pete's location constantly. And they never tell us about it.

So, you know, one day we'll just be getting like five large mochas and like six different orders. And we're like, why are we getting five large mochas and all of these orders? And someone pulls up the DoorD different orders and we're like, why are we getting five large mochas in all of these orders? And someone pulls up the DoorDash app and they're like, oh, it's because there's like a half off if you get more than four mochas or something like that. It's just like, we never hear about this

until it's actually happening. And that's the case both for DoorDash New Breeds, but also for just like internal pizza promotions. Like we tend not to hear about any of these things until we are on the shop floor working and people are asking us about it. Customers are asking us about it. Yeah, it seems like the way that the integration

of these apps into these business models is working is it's just every single thing they do just compounds the amount of work you have to do and compounds how awful the experience is And speak speaking about how awful the experience is unfortunately we are a podcast sponsored by ads So go experience them or don't I don't know there's a if you have Apple There's a there's a thing you can get cool cool is that media. We don't have ads the Android one I

Don't even know what I'm legally allowed to say about that shit but oh my god it is the biggest legal clusterfuck I've ever seen in my entire life. I'm gonna leave it at there but we're trying, we're doing our best. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? I met Santi at a luau party in October. I'm Santi. Damien.

Oh, it was bizarre. The guy just disappeared one day. Santi has been missing ever since. The hookup, what is that? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to the hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro?

I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to- Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry. Poppers? These aren't just any poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No. My psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either.

["I Heart Radio App"] Listen to the hookup on the I Heart Radio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When I smoke weed, I get lost in the music. I like to isolate each instrument. The rhythmic bass, the harmonies on the piano, the sticky melody. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Careful, babe. There's someone crossing the street. Sorry, I didn't see him there. If you feel different, you drive different. Don't drive high. It's dangerous and illegal everywhere. A message from NHTSA and the Ad Council. Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and in your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes

on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are so back. Yeah, so let's go into their other of their myriad crimes. Oh man, where do I even start? So Pete's, the second they found out that we were organizing, launched like their worst union busting campaign they could have ever imagined, wasting so much money. Oh god. Right after we went public, the first big thing that they messed up on was they took

me off the schedule indefinitely, and we had to file a whole unfair labor practice about it. An unfair labor practice is a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, and we claimed that they were being retaliatory. And at the time, it was very clear that management thought I was a key organizer. I was very public and vocal about being a union member at the time everyone was, but for some reason they singled me out. That was one part of how they messed up, but they eventually put me back on the schedule, apologized, gave me back pay.

And we withdrew the ULP because we were like, all right, I guess it fixed itself. Yeah, that's the thing that happens, by the way, like, if you're submitting an unfair labor practice and the company resolves that you don't actually have to, and this is actually one of the things about UOP sometimes is that, like, neither you nor your employer wants to go sit in front of the National Labor Relations Board and like do a whole thing. So like sometimes you can get them to resolve it just by like just by the threat of it and then you don't actually have to go sit in front of the actually relations board because they've done the thing they were supposed to do So note for all you people out there who are considering filing one of these

Yeah, I know just stack them up and sometimes that's enough to put pressure especially for smaller businesses or People who just like especially corporations that don't necessarily have experience with union investing quite yet Yeah, so at the time that worked in within a week, I had my job back and everything. And that was right after we had filed, which meant that if for some reason I wasn't put back on the schedule, I would have been gone leading up until the election, which would have been really bad in terms of, you know, having those one on ones with coworkers and making sure everyone was connected. I also just want wanna mention here, it is illegal to fire someone for union organizing.

It's not the most easily enforced thing, but they legally cannot do that. So just note for all the people who are listening to you need episodes for the first time, they can't do that. And if they do it, you can launch campaigns and you can sort of force them to do it. But yeah, this is the Mia Labrin note of the episode.

Yeah, no. And I think especially something that's very IWW of how we reacted to that situation was that my coworkers were also just like being really like annoying to the manager. Like, what happened to Dino? Like, why aren't they at work? Like, what's going on? And I think that internal pressure also made it really uncomfortable for management to realize how much they had fucked up and how much my coworkers were willing to have my back. There was definitely more talk of

like actual direct action in other ways that eventually like we actually didn't do because I got my hours back. So that was really good. Yeah. Yeah. And then yeah, so that was still within the first few weeks of when we filed our paperwork to have an election with the NLRB to be a certified shop, according to the government. Not that that's always important. Yeah. That's something that we wanted. Especially as the fucking Trump regime unfolds. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really, it's a really tough position, especially because I mean, we're, we're IWW members. And I know that there's definitely an internal debate of whether or not, you know, contractual agreements versus

direct action. Yeah. But there's always the option to use it to both a combination diversifier tactics. But yeah, so that happened. They also hired a union buster. Of course they did. Now, according to LM reports from the government that they have to file, they spent over $100,000 in like a span of like two weeks to hire this union buster. Jesus Christ. And- Well, what's it? What's an LM report, by the way?

It's like a report that you file with the, I think, forgetting which department it is, but- Is it the OLM? The Office of Labor and Management? Thank you. Yeah. So they are required to file that by, I think, March 30th of the following year for like fiscal reasons. So we finally got those documents this previous year. So they did spend a lot of money. and this guy who was just basically messing with us for like two weeks and he was, you know, trying to be super helpful, answer any questions about the union and like tell people that the union was, you know, like racist, not for them, or that the union was exclusionary or that unions cost a lot of money. And thankfully that didn't work.

We won all of our elections, but leading up to that, it definitely kind of morale dropped a lot. People felt a little bit, they were questioning whether or not it was the right decision we made to unionize in the first place, because it seemed like this was just the start of Pete's just messing with us because they care on. And it didn't seem like there was much that we could have done in that situation other than try to maybe have fun with the union buster and mess with him. But even then that still wasn't like enough to turn out the fact that like, people were

just being messed with at work and they couldn't really leave. Like there was someone like on the floor asking them questions about their activity with the union. And even though now we know it's like illegal and we could have filed unfair labor practices on that at the time, we just didn't do it. And now we're learning about it. But that's something I definitely wish we knew and stood up for a little bit more. Yeah.

Could you tell a little bit about what the specific thing was so that if people are experiencing it themselves, they can know what they can do? Yeah, so management shouldn't be asking for your affiliation within a union. They're not allowed to ask or make assumptions about it. So if I'm a manager, I'm not allowed to go up to me and be like, hey, Dino, since you're in the union, what is the union doing about X, Y, and Z? Like, that's not an appropriate

question. And there's definitely times where like my own manager asked me questions like that. And I definitely had to like, hey, like, this is actually like not appropriate for you to do. Like, I don't feel comfortable with this. But that's not always the case. And some workers definitely were like, disclosing private and confidential information about the union to management. And it was really hard to make sure that every worker felt comfortable. And they definitely picked out workers based on, you know, like social person, like personalities and things like that, which is really disheartening to see.

Yeah, it's really scummy. And I think morale is a terrain of struggle. And that's one of the things here, too, where it's like a lot of these efforts are just attempts to make everyone in a workplace miserable and attempt to make people sort of too depressed and too despondent to sort of organize. And a lot of that, yeah, again, is like, is stuff you can organize against the stuff that like they're not allowed to do and whether or not they're going to be able to do it is a function of

labor regulation and labor law is not something that's enforced by the government something that's enforced by you as enforced by the people around you and so you know like the law can sometimes help and sometimes dozens it's useful to cite the management is useful because it makes them think that there's like the full power of the state behind you whatever but like in in in in terms of how you deal with this stuff, it is something that is enforced by you, by how organized you are and by how organized your shop floor is,

by how organized your community is. And that's something that's I think important for people to understand when you're forming your own unions, which you should also go do because you can just do it. I said it before and I'll say it again, like the people who organize unions are just regular people, like you, you person dear listener So you can do this too. What do they say? It's like a union is just two workers talking to each other

Yeah, and yeah just to expand on that point a little bit like the NLRB is quite understaffed And it will be yes more understaffed almost certainly as the the Trump administration Yes more understaffed almost certainly as the the Trump administration You know gets deeper into gutting the entirety of the government It already takes months two years to get unfair labor practice Filings resolved for the NLRB to do most things So that is a core tenantet of the IWW, is actually taking action on the shop floor. Like that is the key aspect to unionism as a whole. And I think one of the great parts about the IWW is that it actually acknowledges that the power comes from the workers.

It doesn't come from laws. The laws only came because workers were pushing for things on the shop floor in the first place. So it's like, let's get back to the root of that. Yeah, like the NLRB, we've talked about this on the show before, but the National Labor Relations Act, I think it established the National Labor Relations Board, that was part of effectively like a truce that was enforced by by the government because as a way to have like labor unions stop being armed and stop getting into shootouts with bosses so yeah it is as

as as this framework comes apart it is important to remember like why we had this in the first place which was union militias would occasionally start like small-scale civil wars in the US with bosses over stuff. People would shoot cannons at each other and we're sort of distant from that period. But there's also another thing about direct action, which is that, yeah, it's hard to organize, but also like quite frankly with the way that the NLRB is functioning right now. Like the time to organize that A, makes a union better and B is going to be faster than the NLRB right now. Like the time to organize that A makes a union better and B is going to be faster than the LRB right now. So yeah, this is this is this is this is your practical we have your ideological pitch we have your practical pitch for direct action,

which is that it's quick. Unfortunately, the other thing that's quick is the approach of this ad break. Here's here's ads. ["Santy's New Year's Eve Party"] Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How? Goes lower? I met Santi at a luau party in October. I'm Santi, Damien. Oh, it was bizarre.

The guy just disappeared one day. Santi has been missing ever since. The hookup, what is that? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like, no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to... The hookup, you think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to f-

Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry. Poppers? These aren't just any poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No, not my psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either. ["I Heart Radio App," by The Bachelorette plays.]

Listen to the hookup on the I Heart Radio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, hey, hey, hey, careful, babe. There's someone crossing the street. Sorry, I didn't see him there. If you feel different, you drive different. Don't drive high. It's dangerous and illegal everywhere. A message from NHTSA and the Ad Council. Jon Stewart is back at The Daily Show,

and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The daily show years edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the shows, correspondents and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed?

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, the greatest true crime stories ever told. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. So let's talk about sort of what's happening right now with the union, how things are going and what management has been doing. Yeah. So right now, I mean, we're dealing with a lot of the same issues as we have been dealing with. The staffing issue is only continuing to be worse, right? One of the things that we are

trying to get initially is schedules further out. Right now, we get them two weeks out, more consistent scheduling, more scheduling, obviously better wages, better benefits, you know, all of these sort of things. And those are only continuing to get worse. And so we are continuing to try to think about tactics, strategies to counter that, right, to give us more power. So we're both doing direct actions and trying to push for a contract right now. Now, one of the big difficulties is that Pete's has basically hired this law firm

to do the contract negotiations on their behalf. And the law firm is basically stonewalling us. Like they are responding to the emails, but basically by just kicking the can down the road and trying to not actually come to the bargaining table. And so it's this very frustrating thing of like, how do we actually get them to come to the bargaining table? And that's definitely still something that we're wrestling with and that we're working on. Yeah, I don't know if you have any more to add to that. Do you know?

Yeah, no, I think another thing that's kind of on everyone's mind is that a group of us got written up for another direct action that we did back in October. And then we got written up like the week of Thanksgiving and holidays and finals for most of us that were students. So that kind of just dropped morale and activity and because of the holidays, people were either kind of not paying attention or just organizing activity tends to just drop during no holidays. Yeah. People are just a little bit.

Yeah. People check out, people go home home and especially for like us and like food service retail like a lot of people are kind of just like around for school. So my location we're like a few blocks away from UC Berkeley. So most of the students like go home and they're not going to like log into zoom for 30 minute union meeting and like hear what's like, you know, the most recent check-ins that we need to do. So that is a little bit frustrating that he'd definitely wrote us up right at the perfect time where activity kind of drops. So they're adapting, they're learning a little bit more and it's really frustrating.

But yeah, a group of us, including me, got written up for something and it was just a blanket discipline and it started restricting all of our abilities to like cover shifts, to swap shifts, to pick up hours, to call out. And they restrict everything so badly and then are also like final warnings and there's no like period in which all these made up rules that they're making kind of end. I'm just like waiting to hear when my manager decides to like stop punishing me, which is like obviously very personal. And that's like really worries them because we tried to file a grievance with Pete's according

to what they told us. All our district managers were like, yeah, file a grievance with HR. We'll discuss it there. And then we did, yeah, file a grievance with HR. We'll discuss it there. And then we did that. We filed a grievance, we all signed on and then management turned around and was like, actually you haven't bargained for a grievance procedure. So we actually don't care about this. And unless it's legally mandated, we won't listen to you.

So now we're again stuck between like, we want to bargain, we want to go to the table, we want to meet with PEDS, but they are creating these made up rules on how they want to bargain and meet with us, and they're unwilling to cooperate with us. There's like five public shops and they're like not willing to meet with us at the same time. That actually makes no sense. We have like the same bargaining team members for all our shops. We're in the one big union like it doesn't make any sense that they're trying to I mean

It makes perfect sense for management to try to divide us But it's what the workers want to be in one contract to you know Be able to do like one grievance and like, you know go against management together But yeah, it's like a really annoying thing and it's really frustrating to not really know exactly what our next move is I mean, this is something that I think both union organizers and management knows which is that the first place that unions fail is trying To get the vote trying to get to which was trying to get enough people organized around this sort of campaign So the second place that they fail is before the first contract We're trying to negotiate the first contract and so every company just like tries to draw the shit out as long as humanly possible.

Like it took us. God, I think what two years in bargaining and that's like not even that like for a first contract. I mean, that's like bad, but it's not even as bad as it can get. And there's the other aspect of it too that you've been talking about, which is that the way that companies break unions, just terror, right? It's just, it's just a terror campaign. It is, it is, it is a campaign to inflict sort of fear and suffering on people. And the fact that this is the way that the system works, that, you know, there are a bunch of people

in power who are, who the way that they're attempting to keep their power is just through fear and through like inflicting pain on people is just ghastly. And if you want to sort of take a step back and go like, why is everything like this? It's like, well, that's because because that's what this entire system is built on has always been built on. In terms of countering that, one thing that I definitely want to call for from all of my fellow baristas out there is to organize your own shops, right? Like, that is the key thing. The more people that we have pushing for better rights for workers in the workplace, whether that's through a contract or not, the more effective it's going to be. And it's when we feel alone and isolated that their

terror is most effective. It's when we're together that it is the least effective, that they are the most scared by our tactics. So just keep pushing for it. I mean, I think that's one of the things that the Starbucks campaign has showed us, you know, it, they still don't have their first contract, sure, but they're so much closer now, like over, what is it, like almost three years down the road with over 500 shops organized than they were when those first shops organized in Buffalo and That's due to that persistence and due to Having more weight on our side

So please organize do it. That's just my little call for that Yeah, it's a snowball rolling down the hills like the more the more shops, the more that will convince other shops to organize and the larger that snowball is the harder it is to stop its momentum. But what do you think the next steps are going to be for this campaign? If you can actually talk about it in terms of like putting pressure on the company in terms of like drawing other people in in terms of like what's going on in the shops. Yeah I think one of the main things that we think that we've been really quiet about is how much union investing they've been doing and just talking to the public about that.

I think part of why we're here today also is it's going to help with that. A lot of people, especially when people were calling for boycotts on Starbucks, were like, okay, we'll go to Pete's then. They're like the good company. And I think Pete's gets away with a lot because they have that kind of protection of like, okay, we'll go to Pete's then they're like the good company. No. And I think Pete's gets away with a lot because they have that kind of protection of like, oh, they were a small company from Berkeley and they're, you know, still in the Bay Area. They're so small. Now they have like so many shops like across the world. They're like an international conglomerate. They're part of like a large holding company and they got

bought out like over 10 years ago and the quality has been declining. They're part of a large holding company and they got bought out over 10 years ago and the quality has been declining. They treat their workers like shit. We don't get any raises anymore unless it's like minimum wage increases are mandated by law. So a company that maybe was right and was maybe a little bit better is now just going downhill. And I think people still pride themselves and being a Peatnik and being a customer and being part of this weird subculture of coffee that is no longer... It's just not what it was back when it was created in the 60s in Berkeley. It's not the same and it can't go back to that anymore. Just not with the way that their union busting out with the way that they're

just cutting the quality of everything and over like, yeah, everything, the exploitation of us and in other ways that they do, it's just not sustainable. Yeah. And you can see that it's not the same company by just like, oh, yeah, hey, they've you know, I mean, and this is this is this is not a defense of like small businesses, which also do just absolutely terrible shit to workers like if you like you see the current like, nightmare of, oh, hey, here's like an additional 50% of your workload. And also, you don't get tips on it. And, you know, unless this stuff is rolled back, and unless people understand what's happening, unless it's more organizing, like, that's just the latest terrible thing is going to

happen there. They're like, five years down the line, they're going to have invented a new app that like, does something though though the magnitude of the horror of which we haven't even like comprehended yet. Like, I don't know, we're probably two years out from like the Chinese style thing where you can order a coffee on a train and someone has to go run out to the train platform to the next station to hand it to you on the train. to the next station to hand it to you on the train. Like there are depths of even this algorithmic hell that we haven't hit yet. And the only way for us not to continue to plunge the depths of suffering with a line the size of the universe is by organizing more. And by getting people to understand that, you know, all of these sort of progressive brands are a thin veneer for exploitation and suffering. Absolutely. And honestly, one of the legitimate worries that we have about next steps in the

evolution of what Pete's coffee shops are going to look like is the register folks being replaced with kiosks, you know, like self-service kiosks. I mean, that's something that we've seen, you know, in a number of places from grocery stores to like McDonald's now and Dunkin Donuts there, even rolling out some like beta testing kiosk shops for Peets in the Bay Area. And Peets has introduced this new service deployment system within the shops, which basically pins the person on the register to the register where they're not allowed to do anything else. They're not even allowed to turn around and get coffee for the people. And you know, the more that we do this and the more that we get yelled at by our managers

for literally trying to help a customer and get them something because we're deployed to the register, the clearer it becomes that they're just trying to basically make that position obsolete so that they can shift it into a kiosk. Yeah, it's just more corporate cost cutting because if they're not bringing in any more revenue, they got to make that profit line go up somehow. And so, yeah, one of the big things that we're doing right now to try to push back against that is doing this sort of PR campaign to try to just bring more people into the organizing

effort on the worker side of things and on the customer side of things, just making people more aware of what's actually going on here. And that, you know, we're not actually better than Starbucks. You know, we're not the better option. We're part of a massive conglomerate that is practicing the same horrible

anti-labor business practices as the rest of them. Yeah, I think that's a good place to end. If people want to support y'all, where should they go? We'll also have links to stuff and what other things can they do to help? Yeah. So you can go to our social media at Pete's Labor Union. We also have our website.

We have an intake form. So if any barista is interested in reaching out, learning more about organizing, what that entails. And if you want to organize their own shop, we have members, part of our organizing committees that are willing to meet with you, sustain contact through however long you need for your campaign. And you'll be part of our organizing. We have shops across the country organizing with us. It's very

exciting. I'm sure there might be a shop near you already organizing and we can get y'all connected as well. Oh yeah and Jesus Christ I had a terrible based coffee people of the world unite pun thing but it's it slipped from my mind. All right all of you will be spared by terrible coffee related puns as long as you go organize your workplace. So go do that. Go join the struggle, go make it stronger. And I don't know, like there's going to be a number of you for whom this is like not your terrain, right? And if this isn't your terrain, find it,

find find the struggle that you're going to do and wait and wage it there and take your field and hold it. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Jon Stewart is back at The Daily Show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. correspondents and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content

you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey man, what are you into? I have the hookup. The hookup? The hookup? The hookup for what?

I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Poppers? Why are there so many poppers? All roads lead to... The hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to... Yeah that's a word for it. ["I Heart Radio"]

Listen to the hookup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists,

lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and batter than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms. But not your mommy.

Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast.