It Could Happen Here - How Strikes Build Democratic Workplaces 

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Mia and Spencer Jordan of the Urban Ore Workers Union discuss the workplace as a microcosm of the authoritarianism currently sweeping the American political system and how their strike is fighting back. https://gofund.me/9ce38160 https://www.instagram.com/urban_ore_workers/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Zake It Happened Here, a podcast increasingly well named as the days go on. I am your host, B.O. Wong, and it occurs to me over the course of the many, many, many, many, many, many union episodes we've done in this podcast, we haven't really done much coverage of just straight up. How do you do a strike? So today we're going to be covering a pretty long running strike. We're gonna say how many days has been going it's unclear when this episode is gonna come out. So who fucking knows how long it'll be when when when you hear it, but Yeah with me to talk about this strike is Spencer Jordan who is a rank-and- member of the Urban Ore Workers Union. Spencer, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about this. So this is what day is it today? I should know this. April 15th. And as of April 15th, you've been on strike for 25 days. Yeah, that's just about right. Yeah, it started on the 22nd of March. We held our strike vote like a solid 12 days before before we actually went out on the picket line and won that strike vote with 14 yeses, a single no, and I think four abstentions. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So 93% of those voting voted yes.

Yeah, which good so 93% of those voting voted yes, yeah Which good good ratios good ratios. I think like Typically you want at least like mid 70s Mm-hmm if we're gonna do this kind of thing, but you know as listeners to the show Hopefully understand by now you can't just like call a strike and have it happen You know you have to do a whole bunch of organizing. So I want to kind of start at the dynamics of the organizing of how this shop got going, because this is a pretty small shop from the sounds of it. And yeah.

Yeah, so do you want to talk a bit about what the basic process of getting this organizing started was like and what the sort of like social mapping looked like and stuff like that? Yeah, so the organization process started around like a year and a half before we actually had our unionization vote, which was actually we had the vote in March and we got our win on April 7th two years ago. So we actually just had our union two year birthday.

Oh, happy birthday. But yeah, so proceeding that was like, like I said about a year and a half organizing that involved, you know, the typical thing of like one-on-one conversations with like all the staff making the, you know, color coded spreadsheet and everything, which all of this was not my purview. I'm a lot more involved now than I was

at the start of the process. And I was approached by one of our lead organizers really shortly after being hired, just to kind of read the dipstick as to my sentiments about it and whatnot. I was pretty on board right away. I mean, you know, like I'm from the Bay Area, so. There are only two types of people from the Bay Area.

You wouldn't be having one of them on the show. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I'm of the latter type. So, you know, being pro-union isn't isn't like a foreign thing to my background. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You don't look like a tech worker Yeah, especially like my family's from the Midwest and everything so there's yeah My my aunt actually just learned that she was like a clerk working for the railroads Back in the day when like railroad jobs were still like a big thing you could have

anyways, but yeah, so I had had my like own sort of like just back in the day when railroad jobs were still a big thing you could have. Anyways. But yeah, so I had had my own sort of just observations of like, whoa, what's going on in the workplace? Aside from my own predilection to thinking more worker power is better. Also kind of seeing some of the factors that precipitated it like for instance like when I was hired here, I was hired in my interview it was the one of the owners and The manager of my department my department being salvage and recycling department of a

urban or which is kind of like not super public facing we like go to the dump and like root around through the garbage like You know, so whatever get to get stuff for the store but that manager, you know, he was there in the interview and we got to the portion where the owner explained What at will employment is? Oh and she and she went so we're at will here so Sam well same was my manager some well how long have you been here 21 years he's there hands folded on the table yes what at will means is uh it could be tomorrow I could say you know Sam well it's been a great 21 years.

I really appreciate all the work you've done. Today's your last day. And then he has to sit there and go. Jesus Christ. And then she says, of course, likewise, tomorrow, Sam, well, could come to me and say, hey, Mary Lou, it's been 21 years. I've enjoyed it. I'm quitting. So, you know, the sort of sword over his neck is being cast as somehow equal to him not being like indentured.

Yes. What are we doing here? This also just I mean, like, you know, yeah, on the basic level. Yeah, it's like, OK, your opponent. I guess they are your opponent. Your boss, your boss can just instantly fire you for any reason whatsoever for any amount of time and then also you could quit the job but what and then secondarily I feel like just as a management tactic like I are you like trying to piss off your support units it's like what what I have never had a boss like just That in a hiring meeting what? Yeah, I mean have you have you worked at like a like a like a sort of small like mom and pop

Go and go business. Yeah, I mean that that's that's probably that's probably why because I've usually had like larger-y... My shitty jobs have either been like government jobs or like larger companies. So there was less of the like... I heard a line recently that I wish I remember where it was from. It might be a line from Star Trek. Like one of the Ferengi rules is just like, treat your employees like family, exploit them ruthlessly. Which I like, you know, that's a.

That's a traditional line in business, especially in small business. And it's a it's no stranger here. Yeah, that question of like. Wanting to piss off your subordinates or whatever. It's a. I don't know if pissing off is necessarily like the concern, but man ownership here definitely... I've gotten the impression that they enjoy showing their power. And I've gotten the impression that the

sort of like uncertainty and like yeah my mom would call it jockeying for position that you have to do is a dynamic. But they, I can't say I really can't say they honestly, because the other owner, he hasn't been very active in the business since since my hiring. But at least Mary Lou, yeah, tends to lean on that's kind of like the the special quality that you get with like a small business and organizing in a small workplace is that like, you know, you can see sort of in their public communications the way that like the Zucks and Bezos's and the rest of them feel about their employees and you know, you can get a sense of perhaps how they might act towards their employees if they like interacted with them on a daily basis.

But in a small business setting, you really get a keen view into how like the. Power of the employer mixes very readily with. mixes very readily with a person's like predilection towards discipline, predilection towards like personal, what would you call it, personal battling almost. Yeah, well, and it's also like, it's inescapable in a way that it isn't with like, you know, if you're dealing with people who are, you know, you're at a larger company, you're not dealing with the person, like, there's an old Chinese expression that's like, heaven is high and the emperor is far away. So, you know, it's like, you know, like a lot of times you're dealing with, okay, yeah, there is like, you know, your Zuckerberg is there, but he's like, he never

interacts with you. But with this, it's like, no, the, the, the small business tyrant is right there in your face all the time. And all of the weird petty shit that they want to do and all of this sort of like... You know, and I would say this isn't just like a unique thing of small business owners. Like, people in all positions, like in all portions of like the class society, have in them kind of like the capacity for cruelty,

and there's just people like that. But they don't normally have the ability to just do it to you directly in your face. And that's, yeah, and that's like, you know, this is what you've been talking about. It's like, yeah, you have like these small business tyrants, like every suddenly in the same way that's like, I don't know, you're dealing with like, like one of the random King Louis and you're like in the court and suddenly just like the fact that this guy doesn't like people going to the bathroom means that everyone around him doesn't get a doesn't get doesn't get a shit

Right, like it's just like yeah No, exactly. It's like it's actually an argument that She's deployed in her reddit correspondence Which has been seemingly a pretty active part of her spare time that she's not spending at the bargaining table with us part of her spare time that she's not spending at the bargaining table with us, you know, made this comparison of like, this isn't a question about oligarchs or whatever. And it's true. Like, the small business man is not an oligarch, but the small business is a microcosm of like the larger capitalist social order. And while the small business man might not have the scope of power of the oligarch

or like the actual capital resources of an oligarch, the behavior certainly rhymes, at least. Yeah. And again, it's like, it's a lot of it is about, it's just how much power you have access to, right? Like, lots of people can be like this, but only the few, the proud, the small business get to do it. Yeah, totally. And, you know, ultimately the employer, wherever they are, they're in this privileged position of being able to, you know, you spend most people more than like a third of your life at work.

Yeah. The employer has this unique power to dictate what that third of your life looks like. You know, we talk about, I mean, shit, we don't. People are not so much talking about democracy writ large in the US in the same way now that they used to. But you know, you talk about this idea of like living in a democracy. the US in the same way now that they used to but You know you talk about this idea of like living in a democracy, but democracy ends at the shop door Yeah, yeah, and and like the the kind of power that These people have is something that like

These people get to control when you can go to the bathroom like what clothes you wear Like literally what you can do what you can go to the bathroom, like what clothes you wear, like literally what you can do, what you can say at any given time. If you employed the exact level of control that your boss has over you on a state, it would be a totalitarian state. And yet everyone seems to think that this is sort of like, you know, and this is an argument I've been making about, like Trump is that like, yeah, this is this is this is an argument I've been making about, like, Trump, is that, like, yeah, this is what sort of Trump and Elon and, like, that whole cadre and, you know, and Patrick, if you want to go into the sort of ideologues behind it, too, this is what people like Peter Thiel want. When they say run the government like a business, what they mean is

that they want to import the sort of, like, just the pure tyranny of the workplace and expand it into the entire political system so that their like sort of pure, like totalitarian corporate rule can't be challenged. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, wasn't it Mussolini who coined the term the corporate state? Probably, although it would not surprise me if it was like some other fascist theorist and Mussolini just started saying it because...

Yeah. But yeah, like that's, you know, that's a substantive thing here. And what this also means is that like, even in ways that are sort of hard to see, like a fight over democracy in the workplace, right, is a, is a part of the larger struggle against all of, all the thing that's happening because if, you know, if we're going to survive this, and if we're going to make sure that we don't all live in a world where, like, if you say the wrong thing, you can be sent to a prison camp, democracy, if you want this to survive, is going to have to march into the lair of the beast. It is going to have to go into the source of this tyranny itself, which is the workplace,

and it's going to have to crush it there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you said it very, very aptly there, like the corporate structure mirrors the totalitarian structure. And, you know, not only does like fighting the corporate structure at the level of labor make sense in that, right?

Labor is what enables the flow of capital that sustains the totalitarian state. But also, like you said, you're addressing the structure in its, I don't know, I almost think of it as like the, you know, like Grendel's mother in the thing or whatever. And like, like, you know, the, the, the authoritarian thing is like, uh, is like Grendel maybe. And like Grendel's mother is like this capitalist hierarchical structure. Yeah. You know, you take it on with an insistence on workplace democracy as kind of Libby as that sounds.

Okay, speaking of capitalist totalitarianism, here are the ads that we are required to run by our corporate overlords. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. Let's hear them. And we are back. So let's get back a little bit towards the more concrete parts of the union, although I do have more to say eventually at some point about the way that sort of labor liberalism co-opted democracy in the workplace from like, you know, the old sort of like anarchist idea of workers control, right? But okay, so one thing I wanted to talk about before we sort of get into the more formal stuff about the strike is I was, I'm really interested to

hear you talk about what the process of kind of onboarding you to get more involved in the union is because this is something that like, okay, every functional union wants to do this. Like if your union is not trying to bring people like its members like more to get more involved in the union and become more of the people becoming like core organizers and becoming you know like the people who are doing your bargain people are doing you think like union is, there's weird shit about it and you should probably like be looking into that. But it's pretty hard. So yeah, can you talk a bit about the process of like how you were brought in and what sort

of worked and what didn't? Well, I think ultimately like the easiest thing is a sort of ramping up degree of responsibility within the organization, right? So at the start, I would come to some of the meetings, I would miss some of them, I would be like, oh, I'm fucking so busy with whatever is going on in my life. And I was supportive and sort of involved but you know I wasn't like our master wasn't doing things like this and you know eventually one we like kind of persisted as a union over a longer period of time the necessity of the Necessity of an involvement became more like obvious to me, right?

And that's that's a hard ask, you know, like you're organizing You want momentum and you want? Yeah, you want to be able to change your conditions for the better as soon as possible. Yeah, and with with urban or you know And with UrbanOre, lots of workplaces that need unionization have high turnover. And UrbanOre is no different. And so I saw some of the more committed elements of the bargaining unit be fired or quit or whatever.

And they'd be replaced with other people and you have to begin the work of organizing over again and with some of them you succeed with some of them you don't. You know, you have different dynamics. I feel like the hiring procedures may have changed a little bit after we won our election, but, you know, I can't say that for certain. So the sort of, like, necessity of, like, keeping that keeping that like flame going, especially after we had won the election, we were in contract bargaining for a long period of time, made me feel like a sort of sense of like, I need to be more active in this because like, this is an important struggle.

And like, I see our like main organizers taking on like a fuckload of work and like Needing more voices at the table needing more more needing more people to be more involved and so like I You know volunteered to Like run for treasurer That was the only candidate. Yeah, But theoretically I could have been voted down. They could have been like, I don't know about Spencer. And you know, like ended up having like a little bit more direct responsibilities. Like I was like receiving some of the donations

to our strike fund once we started fundraising for the strike and track those and you know, put them in a special bank account and then eventually take that money get it to like the IWW branch Hand it hand a big check to Dino That kind of stuff and just like having like little things to be doing like spurs involvement other people, you know became responsible for like parts of social media outreach, making graphics, stuff like that. And also like sort of, I guess, giving people the opportunity to leverage their individual connections within the workplace, because

every workplace is like clicks and groups and subgroups and all that, to leverage those connections in like service of bettering everyone's conditions. So like to a certain degree I've been like important as like an envoy to my particular department because it's our job takes us away from the job site or like from like the main the main work site often and stuff like that so there's less of a direct avenue for communication there. So I can say that's my experience. As far as organizing goes, I'm easy. I was already believing in it and there are others that it's been harder.

I will say though that the strike itself is, I mean, a strike is a conflict. And when you're in conflict together, it's an extremely coherent force. Yeah. Which doesn't just say that, like, necessarily you want your unionization to come to a strike, but perhaps, like, raising a sort of consciousness of, like, the fact that, like, you are that you are ultimately in conflict with the boss. The boss doesn't want you to unionize. The boss doesn't want you to force concessions out of them. And that as a union, we are taking on this responsibility to look after each other's interests and to support each other tangibly in terms of what we do

and also intangibly in terms of the kind of conversations we have around morale, planning, and stuff like that, to succeed together. I think those are really potent, coherent forces. And it helps to have a good opponent, you know, the boss is the best organizer. And at Urbanor, it's, you don't go along without coming head to head with like, the, with conflict with ownership, or with like ownership through the mediator of management. Like although like support for the union might be divided a bit at the workplace, one thing that's pretty universal is like frustration with ownership.

Yeah. So, okay, speaking of speaking of a frustration with ownership, it is time for us to go to ads one last time. Oh, beautiful. But then after we come back strike strike strike strike strike strike strike just after this message okay we are back from a bunch of people who almost assuredly do not want you to go on strike but.

Yeah, so let's let's let's get into the process of how you actually organize a strike. Yeah, let's start from just like the very beginning. What are the kinds of things that were happening that, you know, made people think that you needed to do this in the first place. So the strike itself is a result, specifically like this is a ULP strike. So it's in response to something that falls under the category of unfair labor practice according to the National Labor Relations Act. And it's backed up by charges filed with the board as opposed to like what's called an economic strike, which is a strike that

is specifically about, you know, economic issues at the workplace. So this is the specific ULP that's being cited for our strike is bad faith bargaining. And for us, what that's looked like is two years of completely stalled negotiations where we are basically being faced with a take it or leave it offer of the status quo in the vast majority of our proposals. Bargaining is very very slow and ownership has held tightly to the offense at us having unionized at all, which to my understanding is pretty typical of small workplaces. The ownership takes it very personally and that personal feeling of betrayal or whatever becomes like a stumbling block in the negotiation

process. I know that was the case with Moe's another bookshop in Berkeley that also unionized with the IWW. Oh, yeah. So, you know, we've had our whole proposal on ownership's table for a year and a half now. We had started with bargaining proposal by proposal. They said, well, how can we possibly agree to any of this without understanding

the full context, especially the economic context? Oh, my God. And so we gave them a full proposal and they said, oh, my God, how do you expect us to read all of this in time to bargain? This is way too much. How are we going to evaluate this all? Oh, my God. We got to do a proposal by proposal. So it's been really unclear to us if ownership has even actually like read the entirety of our collective bargaining agreement that we put on their desk.

I know that in the past, lawyers have the lawyers have said things like, oh, my my eyes glazed over when I read your email. So I missed such and such part of it. Just literally your job. Yeah. You're a contract lawyer. You have one job.

Yeah, you would think like a lawyer would have like a little bit more of a... Jesus Christ. ...beyond like a tweet, tweet-sized reading capacity, but... Well, they give anyone law degrees. Yeah. Or like ownership saying like, well, I just thought it was so ridiculous. I didn't feel the need to read all of it. Stuff like that. Oh my God.

Does these readers bad faith bargaining? Yeah, that's bad by like the standards of like normal. It takes two years to do a fucking contract because they're just not doing shit like good Lord. two years to do a fucking contract because they're just not doing shit like good lord usually in those long contract negotiations by two years at least there's like been some progress yeah yeah they've read the proposals like yes okay will will will your boss show up to your meeting an hour and a half late because they didn't bother to look through the proposals until literally right the time the meeting was going to start yes But will they have done it usually yes? Mm-hmm. Yeah

in fact in in the Sort of company propaganda where they're claiming that this like bad faith bargaining charge has no grounds. They're like ownership has come to like 25 to 30 bargaining sessions Neglecting dimension there have been somewhere in the range of like 50 to 60 Maybe they've shown up to more than half. I don't want to be libelous But yeah But still like if at the point at which you are failing to show up for any bargaining session I think you can like look I I have always advocated that if that if that advantage

But doesn't show up to a bargaining session You should just be allowed to take the company because clearly they're not serious about it, but oh Hey, you know they've been talking about a worker cop for 20 years not reformist reforms But yeah, so those kind of things and then like finally like one of the bigger Precipitatingitating factors is like, we've been trying to bargain over economics. Ownership has implied a lot of times that they cannot afford to pay what we're asking. They say it'll ruin the company.

They say a company will go bankrupt. They say it's unsustainable. They say this and that. And then when they get to the table, they say we have never and will never argue inability to pay because the thing is never and will never argue inability to pay Because the thing is is that to say inability to pay right? Obligates you to furnish information to prove that and they for whatever reason do not want Wow. I wonder why furnish financial information

So these have been some of the sticking points and that's why we've been out on the picket line for about three weeks now. Still waiting for them to come to the table. God damn it. So, OK, let's let's talk about like the just sort of the process of like how the discussions went for doing this. What did those sort of look like and how did how did you sort of, you know, just like plant plan this thing out? Well, I guess the process towards like deciding that I needed to come to a strike was like, you know, that that is a sort of thing that builds over a long period of time.

You know, you see ownership doing bad faith bargaining. You go, what more conciliatory approaches can we take first? You know, can we try this? Can we try offering this to make, you know, can we try this display of good faith? Can we offer offering this to make, you know, can we try this display of good faith? Can we offer this compromise? One of the things that was a big part was of some of the not exactly contract related discussions but like ownership has been talking for a long time about a co-op transition that has never happened, you know, it's been 20 years. And you know, now that we've unionized, they're like, are people who we were talking to about

doing the co-op thing, they don't work with unions. And so the only way that they're going to be a co-op is if the union goes away. And so in response to that, we said, well, we're totally open to a transition to a co-op that involves the union. And here is such and such organization. There was our lead negotiator who actually provided the information, saw more of the name ofsuch organization. It was our lead negotiator who actually provided the information somewhere, the name of the organization, but you know here's such-and-such organization that actually specifically deals with union co-op

workplace transitions was not received with interest. So it's like you mass this catalog of bad faith bargaining and you end up in your strategy discussions with the whole unit testing the waters of like, when is too much? What's our red line that we need to take more direct action? And what that began with for us was first, well, if we're going to have a strike, we need funds for it. have a if we're gonna have a strike we And so we did start with trying to get like a sense of like what we could get from, you know, the branches reserve and we moved on from that to how we were going to fundraise and stuff like that. So we held informational pickets that had donations.

We sold shirts, posters, stuff like that. We held like a big strike fundraiser. Hell yeah. I think something around like a month in advance of our, or it was maybe like a month and a half in advance of our, of our strike. We also gave management like a courtesy notice about this, so they could pass it on to ownership saying, hey, we've started fundraising for a strike in the hopes that like being aware that we're taking active preparations to go on strike would facilitate bargaining Sometimes it works. I've seen I've seen it before I've seen it before sometimes it works Yeah, and sometimes you know, sometimes you end up on a podcast talking about how it didn't

You never know until you try. Yeah, you never know. But we did, yeah, we did give them that sort of early warning and our readiness to strike kind of like depended then on like where we were at in the fundraising process. So we continue to source listening donations, reaching out to various organizations in the

area that are pro labor. We've talked to like DSA and whatever because they have their workplace organizing committee. Yeah. I think it's Ewok. Yeah. Yeah. And various other organizations that are pro labor. And once we got to a point where we felt like we were reasonably prepared to sustain a open-ended strike

because that's what we're doing. This is a strike with no set end date. Then we announced our intention to hold a strike vote. We held a strike vote, strike vote passes. The ownership was made aware at the bargaining session before the strike vote. So it was like the Monday before the strike vote, which is on, I think, a Saturday. So in total, it was like around maybe like two weeks and change that they knew, like definite possibility.

Pass the strike vote. Twelve days later, the strike begins with unfortunately no bargaining in between. Good the strike vote. 12 days later, the strike begins. With unfortunately no bargaining in between. Good Lord, yeah. The whole way you hope that they'll come to the table. You hope that they will. Come to their senses. Yeah, take the risk seriously.

Take the risk seriously. And unfortunately, this is not what's happened here. And I think part of that is maybe an age thing here. Ownership is in their 80s. And they've pretty consistently held the view that the union is a bunch of young people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, even though the age range of our union

spans the age range of the workplace. We've got people in their 50s and 40s and 30s and 20s, you know, which is of course the problematic group. But yeah, the young radicals. Yeah, so there's been this sort of patronizing attitude that I think has resulted in like a real strategic failure on their part to seriously prepare for the strike or You know bargain to avoid it Yeah

One more fundraising thing that I just I just want to mention this for people if you're trying to fundraise for your own thing So I think that's actually we've had a lot of success with up in Portland is Getting bands to do benefit shows so like because it's Portland right like the local hardcore scene has a lot of bands that you know are just supportive of stuff and we've done this for a whole bunch of different causes and this is this this this can also be a good way to just sort of do fundraising things that are fun and also raise morale because yeah you're doing the show yeah I was I was I was hoping to have every more of a thing with our fundraiser

But yeah, it can be hard to organize sometimes. Yeah, the people I knew were didn't get quite the response I was hoping from the community That is that is totally a good option. What we did, we ended up doing that. There was music, but it's also like one of our organizers is really into cooking. You like do like a barbecue thing. Yeah. Sold food, stuff like that. And had a raffle.

A raffle is a great way to fundraise for us. We like raffled off like stuff we have. But honestly, you can even do like a straight monetary raffle is still a great fundraising tool. You know, where everyone puts in money, the winner, the top three winners or whatever get like a certain percentage of like the total pool and the rest of the pool is is a to the cause it really simple

Really effective. Yeah, there's a reason it's not good But there is a reason why a whole bunch of state education budgets are funded are funded by the lottery It does work and we're people love to gamble Having turned off if her lunch her path of exile to lunch break to come to this interview. It's pretty such cases. Okay. So let's, let's speaking of, I guess this is something that's been tied into sort of

all of what we've been saying here, but yeah, let's talk about, you know, sort of maintaining the strike when it starts and sort of, yeah, what, what, what have been the processes of like keeping morale up and keeping people engaged and yeah. Yeah, I mean, definitely when you go into a strike, you want to go in with a militant core group. You want to basically be sure that everyone is committed to holding the line until a collective decision is made. Otherwise, you don't want people like peeling off that's really bad PR for your strike yeah yeah and like the bosses will grab on that so like for instance like you know we have some people who are respecting our picket line but chose not to pick it with us which is fine as far as I'm

concerned but the issue with that PR wise is that now the bosses are saying and they're like tallying up of who's working and who's not working. They're counting them as working, you know, they're like, Oh, it's only. Yeah, whatever. They've been saying eight people. I think it's more like nine or 10 or on the picket line. But the rest is the rest of the employees are working. They count themselves as employees in that count, of course.

And they count these these people who are not crossing the picket line, but not on it also as among that that count of the rest of the employees that are working. What? And they've had the opportunity to really inflate that count because in sort of, you know, classic move, really all the moves are classic, you know, you read your organizing books and you're like, can it happen here? And it does. So like, we got a lot of new assistant managers after we won our election. So right now, like the composition of the workplace, right? Got

34 people, 15 managers. I really wonder when we're going to see the day where you have companies that have six like non managers and 55 managers. Like, I feel like we're not that far out. Well, we're leading the charge here. We have a department that's two people, a manager and assistant manager. Who's the assistant manager managing? Solid Sweat!

Oh, god. So yeah, you know, they've had these particular angles to, you know, sort of do their propaganda from and I mean, honestly, I think a big part of, again, the boss is the best organizer and like, a thing that keeps you committed on the line is like reading all this bullshit they say about you And knowing otherwise and being able to talk to each other and be like have you seen this isn't this crazy like what the hell? Yeah also, you know is this is where the sort of like

seeds of organizing all the way that you start all the way back at the beginning of your Union campaign become you know they show themselves like really important again because like the start right anyone will tell you is it's like getting to know people like being like you know being on like a hey how's it going kind of level you know and having like a personal rapport with the people you're on the line with is vital just in the sense that you know obviously like you know each other you're sort of friends you're gonna be more likely to stick up for each other but also like you're out there nine hours walking in a circle with these people yeah you know you gotta you gotta have positive strong relationships

with them you want to be able to have the kind of rapport where like you can talk to people about like what they're feeling anxious about, you know, like Where they're worried in like the strike strategy like, you know you need to have that like trust between each other that you can have like an open dialogue about how it feels to be on the Picket line because You're not going to maintain morale if ever if like everyone feels like they've got things they got a hold in about it like yeah There's room to be like shit like are they gonna close the business like and what are we gonna do? I'm like sort of like talk through that from a from a place beyond like, you know

Like what you're not letting it and speaking to a crowd of a million people or whatever You're just like yeah two people and going through a stressful experience together Yeah, yeah, and you have to stressful experience together. Yeah, yeah. And you have to actually grapple with that in a way that's not the sort of like weird corporate like we ought to improve morale things like that's not what that means. It means like, you know, it means actually grappling and engaging with people's feelings and how input they need in a moment. And yeah, and their fears and their concerns and

yeah, you can't just sort of brush them aside. You have to actually grapple with it because that's what doing this stuff means. Yeah, exactly. Having like these authentic conversations with people. Because like, yeah, that's like a totally great point you bring up there. Like the HR speak, that's the boss's tool. And it's the boss's tool to divide and create disunity. So you can't lean on that model for morale within your union. It just creates distrust. Yeah. And I mean, I've, I've, I've seen that happen with, with, with unions where it's

like, you guys did not do a good job of like talking to people about this and like, yeah, and it can be really disruptive to attempts to do this. But on the other hand, if you do it well, it's the most powerful single thing that you can possibly do, which is like forging relationships that are based on like the actual experience of having gone through a struggle together and having had to like literally had to face your feels on the picket line. Yeah. Yeah. Like, ideally, you know, the union is a community and it's a community of interest, right? It's a community of work interest, but it is ideally a community. It's not a family, right? And it's certainly not a family in the way that the bosses will tell you the workplaces. But it is a community and it's a family in the way that the bosses will tell you the workplaces. But it is a community.

And it's a community in the way that an employer's idea of a community is fundamentally like incompatible with. Yeah. There's this Vicki Osterwald line that I think about a lot from her book in Defensive Fluting where she talks about how, I feel like it was Ferguson that this is about, where like the police chief is talking about the damage to the community and they keep saying, our Walmart. It's like going into a Walmart and buying something is not a community, right? Like, you know, they like that, like those,

those kinds of relations are not actual community relations. But when the bosses talk about community, that's what they mean. They mean like our collective community Walmart. They mean preserving the relation of extraction that they have. And we are using the same word and reading something literally so radically different than that. And you have to make sure in the way that you're acting that that radically different than that. And you have to make sure in your in in the way that you're acting that that radically different meaning is clear. Yeah. And yeah it's funny you bring that

up because that's just bringing to mind like you see the difference in those attitudes like when you're out there on the picket line like interact because you know our picket line a really pivotal part of it because there are so many managers in there that they're able to maintain this skeleton crew, is the community outreach part. It's like talking to every single person who's coming up and being like, hey, how's it going?

Did a guy been on strike such and such long? This is what's up. Please don't cross my picket line. And, you know, I've noticed you get this real funny situation where there are the people who are like, I've shopped here for 20 years, you don't know what the hell you're talking about, I don't know you.

And they have to be like, well, I'm normally at the dump getting the merchandise you're buying. But, and who attribute the entire, attribute everything that they like about the business to the bosses. And then there's the other part of the community that is coming by frequently and like hanging out with us on On the picket line, you know, I pet the dog and we chat about what's going on. They're like, how's the strike going?

They're like, you know, I know it's been rough on you guys for such and such and like these people are our shoppers, too right, but they like yeah, they it highlights that like sort of divide in like what you think of as like community and your responsibility to your community. Cause like these people also love UrbanOr and come here all the time, but they recognize that like it's the workers at UrbanOr that create it every day, you know? And it is a company that was like founded by an individual. The individual still owns it.

He did found it with his with his labor and all that. He did the labor, you know, back when it was, you know, only a few people and stuff like that. But ultimately, a business like any sort of social phenomenon has to be constantly recreated in order to exist. Yeah. Yeah. And like the people who do the work that makes it more than just like a room full of garbage are us. And a lot of the like regulars recognize that. And a lot

of them, you know, flip me off as they cross the tick line, whatever. I think this is a good place to sort of start coming to a close of on this is a fundamental question about what the nature of our society is going to be. Right. Like is the fundamental nature of our society that a community is a bunch of people who buy things and a bunch of people who make money from you buying things and to make money from the labor that you do. Right. And then take credit for the labor and take credit both financially for the labor and in public for the labor, right? Is that going to, is our society going to just be a bunch of pure commercial relations

where a bunch of people get very, very rich off the labor of everyone else in the society and get to rule them as sort of like these petty tyrant kings? Or is it going to be a society where the people who produce the society control it? Right and that society is a democratic society is an egalitarian society It is a society where people are free to do the things that they need to do and people are free to You know have a life where they can fucking pay for their groceries, right?

We're like, you know We're there whether or not forced to go to the market for all of the things that they need to, to live where you can survive in a way that doesn't involve subjecting yourself to just a tyrant for like a third of your life. Yeah. Where, where like the place that you spend like a third of your life is a place where you actually have like dignity. Yeah. Dignity and freedom. And where, you know, where you don't have to go home at the end of the day of making your boss money worrying about whether you're going to be able to eat or not.

And it's, and that's also a society that does not involve again on, at the very highest level like you getting thrown into prison camps because your God King hates you. And we can do this. We can live in that society. Yeah. The demands are not that crazy. And that's like the thing that we've encountered over and over again is this constant push and pull of people saying that like the expectation of bettering our conditions, whether it be like us on the picket line, just trying to get like a stable wage and just cause employment and stuff like that, or whether it be, you

know, those larger societal changes that like you're talking about, you just butt up against these people who have such like a paucity of imagination about what's possible. And like about the legitimacy of trying to make something better the legitimacy of saying sure I can subsist on this but Yeah, there's so much more that's possible. Yeah, so I maintain that there's something more that's possible Yeah, I I think it's possible too and that that's that's that's the thing about this world Right is that our enemies have figured out that it actually can change Mm-hmm. That's why they have to fight so hard Yeah, but the thing is the fact that it can change for the worse also means that it can change for the better. Oh beautiful stuff. Okay, where can people find

your strike fund? We'll also put it in the description. Oh yeah great. So it's on GoFundMe. I'll send you the link and it'll be down there, but also people can hit up our union Instagram. be down there. But also people can hit up our union Instagram. It's urban or workers with underscores between the words urban underscore or underscore worker that we've got the link to like strike fund. And also, hey, if you're if you're in Berkeley, you can sign up for a picket shift and you get to enjoy listening to me discourse for nine hours instead of one. It's great. It's fun. Bigotry are cool and good.

If you haven't been on one, you should go on one. They're great. They're great. Yeah. It's a good time. 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.