Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Class War and Beer with Brace Belden

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Although the reference to war that you just heard could very much be real, actual military conflict — after all, our guest on today’s episode has fought as a freedom fighter in a Kurdish militia in Syria — today’s episode isn’t about that. It’s about a different kind of war: class war. Specifically, class conflict as it manifests in the workplace between employees and employers. You may already know about Anchor Brewery — maybe you love the beer, maybe you’ve seen the iconic steam beer bottle around, or maybe you don’t know anything about it. Whatever your relationship to Anchor Brewery — you’re about to hear a story that stretches from early San Francisco union history, to the dawn of the craft beer renaissance, and into the present. A story about class war and worker solidarity in the beer industry. You might also have heard about Anchor Brewery’s unionization campaign that took place in 2019 after this locally beloved brewery was bought by a giant beer conglomerate, Sapporo. That unionization campaign was successful, but recently, Sapporo abruptly, and controversially, closed Anchor Brewing down. Now, some of the workers at Anchor who don’t want to see this centuries-old institution stripped for parts, want to turn the brewery into a worker-owned cooperative. This is really a sort of David and Goliath story, and to tell it, we’ve brought on Brace Belden, who was an integral part of the union campaign back in 2019. Brace is the co-host of the podcast TrueAnon and a long-time San Franciscan who has worked, in many capacities, within the labor movement. In this episode he tells us the story of the unionization campaign at Anchor — giving us a sort of ‘how to start a union’ 101 crash course. We also explore the struggles with Sapporo, the effort to convert Anchor into a worker cooperative, and also, how local Bay Area beer producers and enjoyers are coming together in an act of true solidarity to stand behind the workers that have been the backbone of this historic brewery. Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Gopal Maurya for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns. Further Resources: Help Workers Save Anchor Brewing (Gofundme) Anchor Union SF's Instagram International Longshore and Warehouse Union FoundSF Fingers TrueAnon The Response: Labor Battles and the Beer Industry with Pedro Mancilla Chapo Trap House — 288 - So You Want To Start A Union feat. Brace Belden (2/10/19) This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Before we get started, please, if you can, go to Apple Podcasts and rate, subscribe, and leave us a review there. You can also leave us a rating on Spotify now. This really helps us get in front of more eyes and into more ears. We don't have a marketing budget or anything like that for Upstream, so we really do rely on listeners like you to help grow our audience and spread the word. Also, please visit upstreampodcast.org forward slash support to support us with a reoccurring monthly or one-time donation. This helps keep this podcast free and sustainable, so please, if you can, go there to donate. Thank you. There's no plan B. There's no other guy that's going to do my job for me.

I have to do my shit. And like eventually everybody in their organizing committee like has to realize that like you have to pull your own weight. Like you have to really like fucking like get your shit up and get into action because you're fighting a war, you know. You're going to be fighting like a real war with the management once this gets announced. And you want to put yourself in as strong a position as possible

to do that before you announce. I've seen so many campaigns from afar that have announced before they are really operating from a position of strength. You always want to have overwhelming numbers on your side before you like fire the first shot. Because they got tons of management will always have more money, will always have the home team advantage. Like every advantage is theirs.

You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond.

Although the reference to war you just heard could very much be real, actual military conflict, after all, our guest on today's episode has fought as a freedom fighter in a Kurdish militia in Syria, today's episode isn't about that. It's about a different kind of war, class war, specifically class conflict as it manifests in the workplace between employees and employers. You may already know about Anchor Brewery. Maybe you love the beer. Maybe you've seen the iconic steam beer bottles around.

Or maybe you don't know anything about it. Whichever your relationship to Anchor Brewery, you're about to hear a story that stretches from early San Francisco union history to the dawn of the craft beer renaissance and into the present. A story about class war and worker solidarity in the beer industry. You might also have heard about Anchor Brewery's unionization campaign that took place in 2019 after this locally beloved brewery was bought by a giant beer conglomerate, Sapporo. That unionization campaign was successful, but recently Sapporo abruptly and controversially closed Anchor Brewing down.

Now, some of the workers at Anchor who don't want to see this centuries-old Now, some of the workers at Anchor who don't want to see this centuries-old institution stripped for parts want to turn the brewery into a worker-owned cooperative. This is really a sort of David and Goliath story, and to tell it, we've brought on Brace Belden, who was an integral part of the union campaign back in 2019. Brace is the co-host of the podcast Truanon and a longtime San Franciscan who has worked in many capacities within the labor movement. In this episode, he tells us the story of the unionization campaign at Anchor, giving us a sort of how to start a Union 101 crash course. We also explore the struggles with Sapporo, the effort to convert

Anchor into a worker cooperative, and also how local Bay Area beer producers and enjoyers are coming together in an act of true solidarity to stand behind the workers who have always been the backbone of this historic brewery. And now here's Robert in conversation with Brace Belden. Brace, it's a pleasure to have you on Upstream, man. I'm wondering maybe just to start, if you could introduce yourself for our listeners. Well, thank you, Robert. It's a pleasure to be here. I don't know. My name's Brace Belden. I worked a lot of jobs. I worked a lot of jobs in San Francisco.

I worked in several different industries, you know, floristry. I worked in a boxing gym for a while. I worked at Anchor, which I guess we'll be talking about today. I have a couple other things. Yeah, I don't know. I've been involved in political work for a long time. And I do a podcast called Truanon that I find difficult to describe without making myself sound insane, but I just sort of hand wave all that and say it's a true crime podcast, which is true in the very, the most generous broad sense of the word.

True non-excellent podcast. Definitely check it out. It is so much more than true crime, but also, yes, I think that could work if you squint i'm just trying to you know it's it's when it's like when you're like at a you know you're at a party or something you meet someone's parents like what do you do for a little i don't want to tell i do a podcast because people think that it's like you and another guy in basketball shorts sitting around talking shit about girls like i think that's what a lot of people think when they're

podcast yeah or you're a nerd and so i just say true crime because that's like a thing that people understand yeah because we're both wearing basketball shorts and we're both nerds but we're also yeah for the listeners i'm wearing basketball shorts and by the time we're done with this we'll see where they go don't get me wrong this is what i hoop in i hope nude sort of more aerodynamic but yeah no it is we're both full basketball yeah sweet well there are many topics that we could embark on right now um as you said you have a lot of experience working a lot of different jobs in san francisco but uh you've also done a lot of different jobs in San Francisco, but you've also done a lot of different things, including your time as a freedom fighter in the Kurdish militia in Syria, which we could probably spend a whole episode on. You mentioned Truenon. We could probably spend at least a

couple episodes talking about Jeffrey Epstein. But I did ask you on to talk about Anchor Brewery. So I first actually came across you and your work on an episode of Chapo Trap House way back in 2019. And you were talking about the unionization effort at Anchor Brewery. And yeah, I'm wondering to start there, like if you can tell us a bit about maybe how you came to work at Anchor and the story of that unionization campaign. And maybe also like a little bit of background and history on Anchor just in general for folks who might not be familiar. I mean, I'm sure most people have seen Anchor steam beer, but you know, maybe they don't know the full history behind the beer. Not that I need a full history here, but just yeah, maybe a bird's

eye view of the brewery and how you got involved in the union stuff. Don't worry. If you were looking for the full bird's eye view, you would not be able to get it anyways, because there's a lot that happened in Anchor's Pass. And I guess I know a lot about it. Well, Anchor Brewing started in 1896, although it technically has roots a little bit earlier in San Francisco. I think the first location of the brewery was somewhere near the waterfront. It was a very different town in those days. This is not too long after the Gold Rush, but also before the 1906 fire that totally changed the landscape of the city, the earthquake and fire.

And so it was a product of a lot of breweries in america and san francisco product of german immigrants they were uh germans love beer um because it makes them sleepy and you listen i don't think anything makes a german sleepy but uh it's it's somehow it doesn't really make them as jovial but whatever um so german immigrants um i believe a german immigrant started the brewery in the first place funnily enough the actual founder of anchor brewery is not nearly as as well known or well loved as somebody who came much later we'll get to in a sec but you know the brewery was founded you know pretty much immediately afterwards san francisco was racked by a uh series of uh strikes actually by brewery workers some really great

stuff I think there's kind of like a short history of it on that I think it's a website called found sf which is a lot of old San Francisco stuff but I'd known about that a little bit and then have learned a lot more in the intervening years but that's that's sort of tangential so anchor was one of many kind of breweries making i guess what you call kind of shitty beer um but you know there was this method they used called well they made something called steam beer and the funny thing about steam beer is that nobody actually really knows what steam beer is the actual nickname steam beer you know could come from you know any number of different parts of the method

in which they made the beer i mean anything from like cooling it on the uh rooftop with ice cubes and people said they used to make steam to other different parts of the process the steam part is like not really a you know that that that throws a lot of people off but it's a kind of beer i think also called california common beer it's my head it's just a regular fucking beer good beer yeah great beer the brewery's you know it outlasted a lot of its competitors from the 1800s i think it closed at various times obviously during prohibition but you know reopened closed again and i believe it was in the 60s maybe late 50s it was doing really bad it was kind of this like well-known san francisco beer but it was a bad beer it was in the 60s, maybe late 50s. It was doing really bad. It was kind of this like well-known San Francisco beer, but it was a bad beer.

It was often sour. It was really, it was sold at like, you know, old spaghetti factory and sort of these like bohemian kind of hip places. But everyone knew it was like a shit beer. This guy Fritz Maytag, who is the scion of the, I guess the Maytag appliance family like the you know refrigerators and shit you know he goes and has one you know he finds out it's closing

and he goes and buys it and fritz maytag is uh not a big fan of many people who uh are in his i guess class position and i'm sure he and i would disagree on things, but I think he did something that's a lot more noble than what a lot of rich people do, especially a lot of rich sons of other rich people, is he basically dedicated himself to saving this beer and he made it a good beer. Like, you know, he actually like applied a lot of like modern techniques,

which they sort of melded with the way that they used to make the beer and made it into a good decent like not super cheap but relatively cheap beer and he was not a fan of unions as far as i know i mean that was sort of i mean obviously you know this is the guy owned the company for many decades but when i started working there people were paid like the old timers were paid a bunch of money part of the reason for that was apparently because first of all, I guess Fritz Maytag really liked at basically a lot of people that work

there. But second is he didn't really want like a union shop. And so he paid everyone pretty extraordinary amounts of money, to be honest with you. Like he, it was a good fucking job. He sells it. And I can't remember exactly when,

but sometime in the mid two thousands, these two guys, I think they're former Sky Vodka executives. They buy it. They don't do anything. I think they probably had an idea that they were going to reconstitute the business and do some fucking hedge fund bullshit magic to it and then sell it for a profit. They were failures. They did not do that. They did not succeed.

And they did sell it to Sapporo, the Japanese brewing giant. And I think that was in like 2017. And is that around the time when you came on board there or was that, did you come after that? I came after that. That was so, I can't really, yeah, it's like sometime like maybe 2016, 2017. I started working there after that. I'd always known a lot of guys who'd worked there. It was kind of a job that like a lot of, I don't know how to describe them, like skaters or taggers and shit like that.

Like dudes I'd just known growing up. Hoopers, basketball shorts. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And Anchor was actually one of the first beers i ever had if not the first beer i ever had oh wow that's awesome i qualify that because it might have been a steel reserve but i had it at a third street at a liquor store it's still around um nice but uh

yeah it you know it was just like a job a lot of guys guys I knew worked at. I think it was 2017 I got a job there. I guess it's fine to talk about it now, but a guy I know, a friend of mine who I was doing political work with, was a union organizer, knew some other people who worked at Anchor, and they had been talking about starting a union, and I had a meeting at, we had a meeting at, I can't remember which, I think it was Evan's house, and I was like, they asked, well, they didn't ask me,

Evan suggested I do it, and I agreed to salt there, basically. But I also needed a job. I'm not qualified, like, it was the exact kind of job I would have worked at anyways, because I don't have any, any like i don't have a skilled labor history or like uh you know any degrees or anything like that so it's like exactly the kind of job i would work anyways just to uh so evan is evan the individual from dsa yeah yeah he's my boy yeah i knew him through like uh the labor labor stuff there yeah yeah yeah the um which caucus were you a part of at this in the san francisco was it san francisco or east bay dsa san francisco i started the uh

i started the red star caucus uh which is still around although i'm no longer a member and then so you were recruited essentially to salt so you were recruited to kind of embed yourself in anchor as an employee and sort of agitate towards trying to get a union started is that right yes yeah yes and i mean i was kind of like a little hazy on explaining that fully like i i spell it out basically in like other interviews i've done but at this point there is like is, which we'll get to, I guess, but anger isn't around as an entity anymore, so there's no repercussions that could happen. But yeah, and I say that.

I was a recruiter as a soul, but I also would have just had to get that job anyways. I didn't want to be a florist anymore. My brief, well, not that brief, my career in boxing, not as a professional boxer, as somebody who worked in the boxing industry, uh, on a very low level was, I didn't, that was not my world. And so I was like, well, I guess I'll do this. And so, yeah, tell us about that experience. So you get there

and what do you do? What's it like? How do you start a union? Yeah. I mean, so luckily, like, you know, it's, uh, we, we were in a blessed situation because there were a group of about, I think I want to say four guys that wanted to do it, that had the idea and it came from them. This guy, Ryan, Garrett, a couple other fools, excuse me, a couple other guys there. And so they were already sort of embedded throughout the workplace you know it's a pretty big spot uh anchor takes up about a full city block in in like a you know one block by one block in san francisco which is kind of rare in petrero hill it's a really big old sort of like classic looking factory, you know, with steam coming out of the top. And,

you know, they have a, um, a separate or had, I guess, a, uh, a separate kind of bar attached to it, like a tap house, uh, that took up another half a block that also functioned as a sort of warehouse. You know, they, they had not high turnover, but relatively medium turnover, I guess. And so, and I got in there, there was a, there was a few guys that I knew just from growing up and from the bar that were working there. And so one thing that we did and that I thought was really, I mean, that's kind of the architecture we built everything around was we made a list of every single person who worked there who would be qualified to be in a union and assign them a number.

We, for some reason, I think that we did it in reverse. I have no idea why we did this. And I think that we also later questioned why we did it this way. But we assigned everybody like a five if they were not likely to be part of it. And if they were like an absolute no, hell no, not in your life. You know, I loveyn rand or something and a one if they were like you know absolutely you know i'll join the organizing committee blah blah and we guessed where people would be at we started a lot of people at just like a neutral three and kind of just worked through it from there we assigned everybody on

the organizing committee different people to talk to people they were closest to we made these maps of like who were friends with who, you know, who would listen to who, um, there's a lot of sort of, that's the thing about, about union stuff is it's a lot of it is just like figuring out how people work and figuring out how, like, you know, who's a leader, who is, and that's what we did too. We identified natural leaders and tried to recruit them, which worked actually worked really well. And now it's, yeah, well, we'll, we'll, we can get some of that later, but yeah. So we, we basically, we just had these meetings like once, sometimes twice a week. And then later, very often we, we met at the DSA office, which was walking distance from the brewery. And, um, you know,

we just sort of laid out our tasks for the next week and, you know, kind of checked in and saw how things were going. And our, our number one thing is that we, we kept it a secret. We only sort of told people when, when they needed to know. And like, it was very, um, it's pretty organized and pretty disciplined. A lot of that came from Evan. You know, I just basically did whatever orders he told me to do. Yeah. Yeah. Central committee. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is like is you know if you look at the history of any kind of i mean not even proletarian organizing just like organizing in general you know a strong disciplined command structure really does i mean

it's it's you know if you got to think of it as war it is war yeah yeah absolutely that tends to be uh very effective yeah no that's a really great way to put it all right so one of the things that was like really interesting for me when i was listening to the chapo episode from 2019 i'm doing some prep for this interview it was just really interesting how this was just like four or five years ago but how much has changed in terms of like the labor landscape and the labor movement in the u.s since then like yeah just that explosion of unions and strikes like high profile strikes like there's multiple looming strikes and there's multiple ongoing high profile strikes happening right now and And then, you know, you have the union campaigns at places like Starbucks and Amazon and REI. And yeah, I'm wondering just like,

have you noticed that too? And like, oh, yeah, of course. How do you sort of like, I don't know, I guess, like, if you just had any thoughts or reflections on that? Well, I mean, yeah, I kind of a lot, actually. I mean, I remember the Amazon thing was really like, it's kind of a few competing groups trying to sort of take the mantle of who is going to organize Amazon six or seven years ago. I think there's a couple different things at play there.

I think one is that some more established unions like UAW or Teamsters have a more militant leadership now and have kind of had reform slates when, you know, the Teamsters, uh, you know, it's not, the guy's not a TDU guy or anything, but like, I know that he is, he's out. I'm not an expert on that. I know he's allied with them in some way, but, uh, you know, with UAW, um, and it's no, I don't think it's no coincidence that both of those unions, which are huge, I think probably two of the biggest unions in America, have used the strike as a negotiating

tactic and that they, I assume, were willing to go through with. I think it's because it's a pretty effective means of getting what you want. And I think for a long time, I have a lot of problems with the U.S. labor movement. I think that probably anybody listening to your show also does. It's a lot of yellow and CIA union shit. I mean, including the Teamsters had many, many, many points in its history. But I think a lot of that slow decline, and I think a lot of the things that were witnessed by people in the 80s, 90s, maybe late 70s with unions, a lot of young people just never witnessed that or were never part of that. And so they think of like, well, they see this vehicle and they're like, well, why can't we use this? And the vehicle being a union, like, well, why can't I use this to maybe get a raise at work?

Yeah, I think it's cool. I mean, I, you know, I think Amazon and Starbucks are pretty tough nuts to crack, but, you know, that's cool that people are going for it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, tell us about the, uh, longshoremen's union specifically, that's the union that you guys organized with. Um, and maybe like you alluded to some, you know, some strikes and labor action back in the way back in the day in San Francisco, but I would love to hear a little bit more about that specific union's history. Yeah. So, I mean, ILWU, International Longshore Warehouse Union, is kind of like the San Francisco union's headquarter in San Francisco.

It was started in San Francisco. It's Union Hall or the Local 10 Union Hall at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco is, you know, my whole life I've walked back. I don't know, my whole life probably. But since for a very long time, I have a distinct memory of walking past there and seeing the bodies of the two dead. Well, I don't know if they were union members, but they were union affiliated guys from bloody Sunday in San Francisco, which I can't remember what year it was. In fact, let me Google this

while I'm talking to you. The union ILW basically came out of the struggle on the docks. You know, excuse me, it was bloody Thursday, not bloody Sunday. That's the fucking Irish thing. This was, this was bloody Thursday.

This was bloody Thursday. Um, it was a big, uh, you know, there was a lot of problems on the waterfront back then. Um, you know,

there's a lot of different competing unions in some places, but also just like a really bad, like hiring hall practices. And, uh, this eventually came to a head in 1934, which I mean, around that time too, there was a lot of really militant union action. I mean, the thirties were pretty incredible for that culminated in a, in a big old strike in San Francisco. And that turned into a sort of running battle between workers and the police. A couple of guys were killed. I know one of them was a Greek cook. And I believe both were members of the Communist Party or communist affiliated. And ILWU really like kind of makes its mark with that. And the leader of the ILWU, Harry Bridges, was a, now it's obviously,

and to anyone who was paying attention at the time, it was very clear. But now, obviously, it's come out in historical archives and stuff. But Harry Bridges was a leader of the Communist Party USA. And, you know, also just a really great labor leader. The US tried to deport him for decades back to his native Australia, which never worked. But the ILWU has had a long history of militancy. I think a lot of younger listeners will probably, well, it's, I don't know how young now, but people probably remember when they shut down the ports in Oakland to protest the Iraq War. At one point, they wouldn't load a, I think it was the Zim,

uh, a cargo ship that was going to Israel filled with munitions, uh, during one of Israel's many attacks on Gaza and, uh, have just generally had a very strong left wing. Not to say that like, you know,

you walk into the fucking union hall and it's like hammers and sickles on the wall or anything like that. But it's, it's been a union that has as long attracted many people who have a more left-wing political beliefs and have found it to be an effective sometimes vehicle to put those beliefs into action and also i gotta say growing up you work on the docks you're making fucking 250k a year here like that's like a good job that you can get without having to go to college and so consequently i know several people who've gone on to work

mostly in oakland although some there's there's actually docks all around the bay area and uh yeah it's just a good fucking job yeah and was it sort of an obvious choice for you guys or like could you shop around for different unions or like how did that kind of play out no we didn't shop we were just like we no no we're like we're gonna we're just gonna take this to lwu well we figured what we would do is this because we're like we want to get closer to lwu as political actors we want to get closer to lwu but also just like it's a it's a union that is not in afl-cio it does not have a lot of the baggage that several other unions have and we would sort of have more autonomy and just also be able to

like we wouldn't be joining this massive faceless machine which is i think a lot of people view including myself view some unions we would actually be able to like not exert leverage because not like we needed really a lot of leverage from ilw but like be able to like, not exert leverage. Cause it's not like we needed really a lot of leverage from ILWU, but like be able to like, you know, come in as partners on something. And it's one of those things where we didn't go to them right away. We, we built it up for a while and like, we're able to show, we were able to come to them and basically put it on the table and be like, listen, this is, we have a score essentially. Like if you guys want to get out on this and they did to their credit they they very much did and assigned us an organizer and then we you know we worked very closely with him and

he was i mean that motherfucker was driving like he lived way out like hercules uh or somewhere like that like far far east bay and he would drive and be you know be sometimes outside the brewery at like 7 a.m. during the later stages. Wow. So spoiler alert, like you guys got the union. And so I'm wondering, like, what are some of the lessons that you learned during your successful union campaign at Anchor? Like, is there advice that you'd want to share with people who are maybe thinking about starting a union or like just want to know a little bit more about like you know what works

what doesn't like any big takeaways yeah i mean i've in the intervening years i i guess you could say consulted on several other union campaigns and i guess my advice is always this it's just like don't ever put the cart before the horse like it's a long slog and it's one of those things where it's like sometimes slow and steady wins the race i think i can't stress enough organization and secrecy are like the two real main pillars that you want to go because fucking up either of those will you will be serving your own ass on a platter to management i mean that's the thing is you know obviously it's hard to keep a secret and it's hard to get other people to keep a secret and it's also hard to to like, you know, I understand like you're at work. You know, you're already probably if you're unionizing your job, your job probably sucks.

You know, you're tired. You're fucking fed up. You don't like your co-workers so much. And I think that, you know, doing something like this, it can be a really difficult. And, you know, it's very difficult on my relationship. It was very difficult. My social life kind of for a large portion of it, a period of time in this campaign, it was kind of a long period of time. Those things were just

completely decimated by it. I had no social life. My home life was not doing great. I had to basically sacrifice that stuff, which not to sound like whatever, but that's just how it ended up being. It's not like I was being so magnanimous. It's just like, that's just what happened. And I think just like, one thing I had to think is like, well, okay, well there's no like plan B, like there's no other guy that's going to do my job for me. I have to do my shit. And like, eventually everybody in their organizing committee, like has to, to realize that like, you have to pull your own weight. Like you have to really like fucking like get your shit up and and get into action because you're fighting a war you know you're gonna be fighting like a real war with the management once this

gets announced and you want to put yourself in as strong a position as possible to do that before you announce i've seen so many campaigns from afar that have announced before they are really operating from a position of strength. Amazon, for instance, the one in New York with the Chris Smalls thing, when they announced, I was like, dude, they're not going to get it because they only they dropped cards with like, I don't know, it was like 40% of people had signed or something like maybe 50. It was just like they were not operating from a position of strength because you always want to have overwhelming numbers on your side before you like fire the first shot gotta count your forces exactly yeah because they got tons the management will always have more money will always have the home team advantage like every advantage is theirs and and he also like you gotta do shit like you gotta try to manipulate people i actually didn't really have to do that but like, you got to do shit. Like you got to try to manipulate people. I actually didn't really have to do that, but like that you do in some jobs have to like not manipulate people, but like, you know, you might want to, you might going to

hang out with a guy you don't like very much. You know, I kind of liked everyone. I work, this wasn't really a problem for us, but I just saw this like, cause everyone kind of chilled together. I just saw this, this stuff happen. And in other, in other companies where they're what people weren't like, so like, I guess chill with each other. Like didn't, you know, there's a strong drinking culture at my work, obviously, which I actually don't drink. I haven't for a long time now, but, uh, I hung out

with the guys every night. And so, or not every night, but you know, fairly often. And so you just got to also ingratiate yourself. Another, another thing I would say is just don't be weird. I mean, and that's the thing is like a lot of people come in they're like i'm the fucking communist superhero or whatever people think that's weird you know like people don't want to people fucking you know like people don't want to be lectured on on that kind of stuff um that's like evergreen advice for the left like totally just didn't try your best not to be weird. Imagine this. Like, imagine your political beliefs are like anime or something. I think most people could realize that nobody really wants to be told about anime at a party, right? I certainly don't.

Nobody really wants to know about your political beliefs. What you're doing is you're showing them your political beliefs by engaging in this campaign. You know, but nobody wants to be like no like you can never the strongest possible thing is you got to just appeal to people's pocketbooks right the company will always say shit like oh but you could lose money or like you know you might actually like this could like nobody has ever fucking started a union in order to lose money that's the dumbest fucking thing in the world why would anyone sign a contract that loses the money no one's fucking that stupid and so like that's just the one thing we've been paid like shit you know i was getting paid my fucking my first raise came when san

francisco raised the minimum wage and it's you know it's 14 50 an hour which i know will sound absurd to people living in and you know actually maybe not so much anymore but at the time you know the minimum wage in like alab like $7.25 or something. San Francisco, $14.50 did not get you much. And that's hard work too in a brewery. It's like you're scrubbing shit, you're lifting shit, you're breaking a sweat. I was on the keg line. That's all I did all day was lift kegs, clean kegs, fill kegs and put kegs on pallets.

And I had a little crane and stuff but you know i'm a machine operator at that point and you look up with the guys like that are making a fucking budweiser or even at small breweries elsewhere in the country because they're making 30 35 an hour and making 14 fucking 50 yeah that's really really low i guess that's a big shift from the for its maytag days exactly i mean i know and that was the you know the old timers that we worked with they were the ones that was like any of their concerns it was kind of concerns i put into two baskets one is like you don't really know what you're talking about you're tripping and i have to like i don't have to you know but like i i need to change your

mind on something because i you're just kind of operating from a place of fear and then there was dudes who've been working there for like 30 40 years years where I'm like, if I was you, I would be like, do not do this union. They ended up being all right. But that was a hurdle to get over. The management will always have these things. And you see this a lot with restaurant campaigns, where there'll be people in the front of house. And in a place like San Francisco, that's probably going to be mostly young, a people, you know, sort of certain demographic there. And then you have like back of house and that'll be like a lot of Latino people, some probably older age demographic. That's a pretty clear split that like management will seek to exploit. But then there's like,

you know, and like in our situation, I mean, we we had people it was a lot of people all different all guys i guess it was almost all guys i think it was maybe two women that worked there uh an anchor at least in our area in the in the taproom there was a few more but uh you know they'll they'll find whatever division that they can and seek to exploit that. Dividing workers by any line necessary. Definitely race is like a foundational part of San Francisco and San Francisco labor history for sure. And yeah, I mean, it's still going on.

Yeah. I mean, there was a, there was a, I can't remember if it's funny. Cause I actually can't remember if it's from the pro, I think it was from Amazon maybe. And Amazon at one point or one of these big companies at one point were like if a shop is a hot shop try to make it more racially diverse and there was sort of a lot

of people trying to project their own sort of political fantasies onto that or whatever it's like well Amazon is right or I can't again I can't remember it was remember if it was Amazon, it was something like that. It was like Amazon or Target or something like that. Or like, oh, they're racist or like, you know, or it's good to be racist because, you know, people sort of projecting their own sort of like political, whatever things onto, but the fact of the matter is that is true, you know? And it's true for a variety of, of, of realistic reasons, right? Is that a lot of times there'll be language barriers. Uh, there might be social barriers. You might, you know, you know, you have a workplace that's like a lot of Puerto Rican guys, you know, maybe some, some white guys, some black guys,

you know, a lot of times you'll find that people kind of hang out with people of their own, of their own race there. And that isn't like something that like we should ignore, but it's something like that we should recognize and seek to overcome in a unionization campaign because i remember when that came out a lot of people were pretending like oh that's not true like it is true and it doesn't mean those people are racist or anything like that like the the people working there it's just like how people are sometimes i don't know it's just i've seen that i've seen that go down so many times in unionization campaigns it's like this like people unable to kind of overcome like a whatever it's like

not only racial you know like just like a social barrier or something like that yeah and that plays right into the hands of the boss right exactly if you're really seeking a serious union somewhere you somewhere like you better start hanging out with dudes you might not otherwise hang out with. And you better start kicking it with dudes and smoking cigs with guys you might not chill with otherwise. Just because that's what it takes. I saw a tweet today that was like, it was like a video of Tucker Carlson talking about

how he was like, the left is so organized because they're so able to put aside their petty differences to work towards a common goal. And I was thinking like, oh man, this guy is another reason that Tucker Carlson is full of shit. I've seen people go, I mean, I think it's a little less now,

but people go, I don't know. This is probably true of honestly every political outlook is there's a lot of people kind of working on their personal problems in political spaces. And that's just, you know, it's just the way it is. And so, you know, the person who's trying to be a real political leader, you just got to overcome all your personal problems by getting addicted to benzodiazepines and not feeling anything. I'm just kidding. is by getting addicted to benzodiazepines and not feeling anything. I'm just kidding.

You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with Brace Belden, co-host of the podcast Truanon and former employee at Anchor Brewery in San Francisco. We'll be right back. Now I'm a union man Amazed at what I am I say what I think that the company sticks Yes, I'm a union man

When we meet in the local hall I'll be voting with them all With a hell of a shout It's out from the top And the rise of the factories fall Oh, you don't get me I'm part of the union You don't get me

I'm part of the union You don't get me I'm part of the union Till the day I die Till the day I die Till the day I die As a union man, I'm wise To the lies of the company spies And I don't get fooled by the factory rules

Cos I always read between the lines And I always get my way If I strike for higher pay When I show my card to the Scotland Yard And this is what I say Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union Till the day I die Till the day I die Before the union did appear My life was half as clear

Now I've got the power to the working hour And every other day of the year So though I'm a working man I can ruin the government's plan I'm not too hard but the sight of my car makes me some kind of superman Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm part of the union You don't get me I'm part of the union You don't get me I'm part of the union

Till the day I die Till the day I die You don't get me I'm part of the union You don't get me I'm part of the union You don't get me I'm part of the union

Till the day I die Till the day I die That was Part of the Union by Straubs. Now back to our conversation with Brace Belton. Before we bring ourselves up to speed here and bring us to the present, because a lot has been going on, a lot of really tumultuous and shitty stuff has been going on with Anchor in the last few months. But I guess, yeah, before we do, just I'm wondering, like, did you notice a material difference after you guys unionized? Like, what was that like? notice a material difference after you guys unionized like what was that like yeah i mean so the first contract that we got was pretty good you know the the job that i started at 14 an hour i believe started i think around 21 an hour a few years after i started working there which is

pretty fucking good i mean raises were so haphazard as to might may as well not exist uh you know they did after we got the contract they existed in this like this black and white way that you can read on paper everyone know where they got paid job descriptions were like actually finalized so you weren't being you know paid maybe like new guy wages for doing old guy work yeah absolutely i mean that you know there was a lot of really big advancements made. And something about that is that when Anchor eventually shut down, a lot of people blamed the union for that, for being too greedy. We're not talking about millions of dollars a year here. You know, like this is, this is not that large a company, maybe 70 people who would be under the contract. The company's substantially larger than that. But that was just the people who worked actually making the product and serving it in the tap house yeah i mean it was it was great and it was actually a way to have grievances you know we actually had uh you know we had we could bargain from a position of strength

yeah i mean i actually it's funny i quit right after we got the contract because i got my merchant mariners uh license and i i was going to start well i did start technically start working the boats the ferries and eventually i wanted to join sup so in the pacific but that got derailed for for a couple of reasons well actually i got direct to the podcast started but you know by the time the second contract i mean there was there was substantial substantial raises for a lot of people i mean yeah there was everyone everyone essentially made for a lot of people. I mean, yeah, there was everyone, everyone essentially made money off of it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting to like, you talk about how, you know, you guys made a little bit more money to get to you to a place

where you're a little bit more able to live in San Francisco, a little bit more comfortable, but you guys weren't like squeezing the place, you know, dry, you weren't like making insane demands, unreasonable demands. And I think a lot of the time, what you hear, you know, dry, you weren't like making insane demands, unreasonable demands. And I think a lot of the time what you hear, you know, the pushback coming from, you know, whatever liberal, libertarian or conservative circles about unions is like, they're greedy, right? A lot of the negotiations, sometimes they're just about like consistent schedules and like maybe a shorter work week or maybe like you know some benefits or something but that all gets lost in this fray of like villainizing unions as being greedy and work union workers let's talk about schedules for a second yeah yeah yeah you're right exactly because

this is anybody has ever worked a job with an uncertain fucking schedule, that totally upends your life in a way that a job with rationally scheduled and regularly scheduled shifts does not. Like at Anchor, for a large part of my time there, my schedule was new week to week. And some weeks I'd be working full hours some weeks i would be working like i mean it was like slowed down it'd be like two three days a week you know and so it's like you can't plan financially you can't plan with second jobs i was working a second job and thankfully it was a job that i had worked a lot before and so it was like i was kind of able to just like come in like it was much shorter note i didn't have to like let And so it was like, I was kind of able to just like come in. Like it was much shorter note.

I didn't have to like let them know. It was like a, it was a flower shop that I'd worked at. Um, and, or I mean, I had to let them know, but it wasn't like I'd let them know with a week's time. I'd be like, Hey, listen, I just got my schedule. I can pick up some shifts this week. Um, but, uh, yeah, it was, uh, you know, it's, it's, it fucking, it sucks. And like, you're essentially like your entire life is upended becomes impossible to plan for anything financially or even just like plan

time with anybody because you don't know what your schedule will be and the financial aspect of that really sucks because okay yeah maybe you're getting paid you know 14 50 an hour if you're only getting scheduled on the books for fucking 20 hours the next week and 40 hours you know it's like you don't know if you're gonna get 20 or 40 hours the fuck do you know 14 50 an hour if you're only getting scheduled on the books for fucking 20 hours the next week and 40 hours you know it's like you don't know if you're gonna get 20 or 40 hours the fuck do you know what you're gonna do that month you know or that year you know becomes impossible and i mean thankfully our floor manager was and this was actually a big gift to the um campaign uh the guy who was sort of the lowest level manager at anchor a guy named pete avery who actually passed really recently uh about a week and a half ago i had known him for a

long time through uh the music scene and uh he's a beloved guy on the floor at anchor and just in general in san francisco but he and, and I guess fine to say this because now, I mean, he's passed away, but also anchors aren't around anymore. He also definitely helped us secretly in our union effort. Even though my rules, you can never mention to a manager

ever, ever under any circumstances, even if they're your friend, he was sort of grandfathered in because he knew from the beginning and got me the job there. But yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, we didn't know our schedules. Nobody knew our schedules. Like it was just really hard to plan for anything. And once you can actually bargain from the union to the company, like that

just changes your whole life. And so, yeah, obviously you just not just by getting like a couple of dollars more an hour, it's about like rationalizing the workplace. I mean, that's why I'm a fucking, you know, I have the political beliefs that I have, you know, that's why I'm a communist is because I want a society to make sense, you know, like I want things to make sense and to work and to like be rational a lot, you know, to an extent. And that's, you know, that's sort of an extent of that. Yeah, no, I love that framing.

And another thing too, like workplace safety yeah like in a factory that's huge and i mean you have fucking amazon drivers like getting heat stroke in their vans because they won't put in air conditioning you know you have all these other issues that also come into play but of course pay is huge pay is really important and but yeah i just wanted to definitely like highlight some of those other aspects i don't really fuck around with workplace safety stuff because that made us take longer but i'm just kidding um no but yeah safety sec i was a safe guy you know i wore the goggles um but but yeah i mean that's a huge thing especially in some i mean our workplace

wasn't particularly unsafe we'd like you know we our management you know wasn't like medieval or whatever like they weren't like you have like but uh you know it was it was it was definitely i've known people who've worked at work sites that are supremely unsafe and that that's like a big issue yeah all right so let's bring everybody up to to sort of the present right now so seoro, like you mentioned, they bought the brewery and then they recently shut the brewery down. And I'm wondering sort of how you like found out about that and sort of, you know, are you in touch with the folks? I know you are no longer in San Francisco, but are you in touch with folks at Anchor and sort of what has that response to that been like? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, um, well to answer that, yes. Yeah, I am. Um, I'm still friends with, with some of them and Patrick. So the person who is the, I guess you would say that the chairman of the co-op, which I guess we'll get to that in a second, uh, is a friend of mine. I talked to him. He's who I found out about this stuff from. Actually, i found out about the rumors that anchor was going to close from from fingers uh which is a great drinking newsletter or alcohol newsletter about this

guy david fonte um but uh i i may be from patrick the same time but um yeah it was sort of rumors it was going to close i'd heard those months prior before, just like whispers that something was going to happen. But what essentially happened was that Anchor was owned by Sapporo and Sapporo USA. So Anchor was Sapporo, which is this Japanese beer company. It's only USA, rather, because they have a North American. They have Sleeman's in Canada. But it was their only United States property that they owned. It was their only, there was only brand in their portfolio from the U S and, you know, they sent some guy out from Japan to sort of manage it. He was never

really around. They never hired people from the American beer industry to work at Sapporo USA, which like, you know, not to like, obviously Japanese people are good at selling beer. Sapporo is a giant fucking company, but different markets are, you know, different like obviously japanese people are good at selling beer so poro is a giant fucking company but different markets are you know different you know you if you if you open up a subsidiary of your company in a different country like you would probably try to hire some people from that country to work there who know the market i don't know what that looked like on support was that but they did not do that and they sort of just let it languish they were unable to bruise the poro at anchor which is crazy if that they want to do that in the first place just because Anchor is a very it's an old facility you know it's very like it looks like something out of a movie you know

where they actually brew the beer in these giant vats and it's not it's essentially it's not up to the standard that Sapporo would use to brew Sapporo. And so they couldn't brew Sapporo. Anchor's still a strong selling brand, but they switched distributors. And I have no idea what the thinking was behind that decision. I think everyone who worked at Anchor, who kind of knew the history of Anchor and just knew the American beer market, realized that was a bad move. So Anchor disappeared from shelves all over the country because they switched distributors.

They're also locked in a bad financial agreement with the distributors. And they did this shit, like Anchor has a very classic looking, had a very classic looking label, been around for decades. I actually don't know when that label was first drawn, but a really long time, very old school looking label without looking like, you know, tattoo shop, sailor Jerry style old school, but like very classic looking anchor through that out and redesigned. And it looks like some shit that you'd see in the background. So stupid. So bad.

Right. Yeah. And they had, um, did they change the bottle design too? Yeah. Cause that was like a patented bottle design, right.

That like was, was classic, like totally classic. I think they did. I actually don't know, but I think they did. Just a quick update. Sapporo USA actually kept the original Anchor bottle shape. They just changed the label.

You can't even tell with that new label. It just throws the whole thing off. It just looks like every other fucking shape you'd see in like a Whole Foods or like whatever. Like some, it looks like the word gentrification sort of like built into metal it looks like like it's the kind of beer that should be sold at the bottom of a uh like mixed use uh new condo development yeah you know it's like exactly yes totally disconnected from san francisco's history from california from anything mean, it could be anywhere. Those labels were so cool.

Like the Christmas ale label was beautiful. And like they dropped the Christmas ale entirely. This old motherfucker, like 90-year-old dude was the guy who drew all the Christmas. So Anchor, to those listening, put out a Christmas ale every year. It was one of our best sellers. And we made these like big Magnum bottles. We all would take a break from our regular work, go make these giant

bottles of beer. People love getting them. They're big sellers. The beer was really good too. It was changed every year, but it was really good. It was really good. Yeah. Different every year. Different every year. And new hand-drawn label of a tree every year. A different kind of tree. And the same style, but the same old

old guy. And then i think on the 49th year that we did that that was would be this year i guess um or december of last year no this year it was this year anchor just announced that they weren't going to do it anymore and everyone's like what the fuck like i think that was before they made the actual decision that they're definitely going to close. And yeah, it was just bad decision after bad decision. Part of Anchor's strength was its connection to California's history and San Francisco in particular. And there's a fierce, you know the Bay. There's a lot of fucking hometown pride in the Bay.

A lot of it. Unlike more than a lot of other places. I've lived in other places. I've been to a lot of other places. There's a lot in the Bay. A lot of it. Unlike like more than a lot of other, I've lived in other places. I've been to a lot of other places. You know, there's a lot in the Bay and that was just like Sapporo USA trashed anchors and reputation in the Bay and nationally really sort of threw away a lot of things that made it unique. And,

uh, you know, just bad move after bad move after bad i think at one point there was like they were going to do a collab with thrasher which would have been great right like thrasher is a local fucking um also employed me at one point uh local fucking uh company a lot of people like them but it's also like a big brand and like they just fucked that up and like it was just decisions like that they were just like they were like well who is this some skateboard bullshit like whatever yeah yeah no connection like no no understanding of that yeah exactly yeah yeah and uh yeah it's just like you know

eventually they bought stone brewing which is like another brewery i guess uh i don't know what i call micro brew another craft brewery and they are bigger than san diego yeah yeah they're they're bigger bigger workforce more modern facilities and it became clear that they were like fuck anchor like we're just going with stone now and so they sort of just wrote it off as a loss and then shut the company down with with pretty short notice right after the second contract was negotiated. Yeah. I actually talked to Pedro Mancia about his experience waking up at like three in the morning to an email that they had sent from Japan. So the time was off, but they hadn't even considered the timing. And so in the middle of the night, he got the news that he was no longer going to have a job and just like the

tone deaf sort of callous way that they went about that is just like i mean i've i've been in similar situations and workplaces that have done shit like that and i just know how much that stings and how horrible it is yeah i like pedro yeah he um was the uh the tour manager right yeah he did too i actually remember we started working there. Pedro was perfect for that, actually. He was a very charismatic guy. I remember when he started working there, like when he first got his job. He was like right, actually, he was one of the people

too that was like right on board with the union shit. Like, pretty much the first conversation was just like, some guys you gotta be like, well, it's this and this and this. You gotta have multiple meetings with them. Pedro's like, yeah, sounds good to me. What's the problem? What what is that this number one immediately yeah exactly another guy I really gotta talk about is Patrick because that kind of segues us I guess into like what's going on now so like yeah yeah anchor like you mentioned like Pedro and everybody got this

email 3 30 in the morning that that anchor was shutting down there was a lot of despair that I think people felt, not just at Anchor. I mean, I think just in the Bay, but also just like, I mean, that's been a part, Anchor tattoo, you know, like that's been a part of my life since I drank the, like I was never a craft beer drinker, but we didn't think, cause we like, we're like fuck those kinds of guys when I was younger.

But like Anchor was like the beer that we drank. It was like the SF beer. It's like, that's what you fucking had. You know, it's like our local, it's like our one local besides it's it. No,

it's an institution. I remember, uh, having to sign up like six months in advance to go on those tours. Cause they'd book up and like the only available times would be like a Monday. Like, I don't know like 11 or noon or something so we just take the day off and just do the the brewery tour and then like

have the tasting at the end and it was always so fun yeah and uh like whenever friends would come from out of town like you try to do that you know yeah so it's it's sick i mean the facility is fucking sick to just look at anyways and so you know anchor announcer was shutting down So it's sick. I mean, the facility is fucking sick to just look at anyways. And so, you know, Anchor now sort of shutting down and it's liquidating its assets and IP and everything through some like, I don't really know how this process works, but there's some like California agency or whatever. VC kind of guys who are like, oh, we'll buy it, we'll buy it, we'll buy it. None of that ever panned out, of course. Maybe it will. I don't think so, though.

But a lot of the Anchor workers, I think it was like 90% signed on, were like, we're going to try to raise money for co-op. And keep in mind, Anchor, I mean, this is like, we're talking over $100 million thing here. But there's all these different organizations that help people cooperatize and industry i don't know a ton about that like how that process works in general project equity is i think um one of the big ones in the bay and pedro mentioned that they're working with them and

um we've been connected with them in other ways uh because we did a whole series on on cooperatives okay so like i know about them but yeah there are there's a whole ecosystem out there there's a law center um the sustainable economies law center in the bay that does a lot of help with that kind of stuff too there's definitely a network of support yeah yeah because there was always growing up or not growing up but in my life i remember like rainbow and erismendi were like the big ones yeah erismendi always hooked it up with shit they would always like if you ever had an event you asked erismendi for shit they'd always hook it up rainbow a little less so but i knew a fool worth this i used to get

it was like some discount you could get on thursdays or something like 20 i mean rainbow was always expensive as hell but you get like 20 off uh groceries or some shit there on thursdays maybe it was a coupon actually i can't remember but yeah i mean so now now they're sort of anchor workers are trying to raise money uh and so far they've raised i think a little shy of a hundred thousand dollars in order to actually reopen as a co-op which would be incredible and i think there's actually it's funny you know i i was like there's no way they can pull this off and then i've kind of been watching this process i'm like i think they actually might be able to pull this off which would be insane yeah it is

it would be quite a feat and on that note we are throwing the link for the uh the go fund me into the show notes for anybody who wants to support the Anchor employees, the ex-employees, I guess, in buying back their brewery. And there's also a lot of support coming out of the whole beer community, the whole beer industry really in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yeah, a ton. I know that a bunch of breweries have done like essentially like guest beers for them which has been really cool to see but yeah there's been a ton of support i mean that's the thing is like anchor was one of if not the first like craft brewery in america and it's like it's sort of revered in those spaces you know i mean obviously that reputation

was a little bit tarnished once they'd sold first the VCs and then to Sapporo, but like not really. And so like it's, it's the, you know, they still holds like a really big place in a lot of people's hearts. So there's been a ton of outpouring of support from the beer industry as well. I mean, it's been, it's been, it's been cool to see. ale that my buddy down here in San Jose actually came up with the recipe to brew. And they're going to start, I think they had the event in San Francisco already, but there's going to be a San Jose event and hopefully more as they pop up and more breweries decide they want to brew this Solidarity Ale in solidarity with the anchor workers who are trying to buy back the brewery. Just a quick update, The event at Foxtail Fermentation Project in the South Bay already happened over Labor Day weekend, but they're planning on brewing more Solidarity Ale all over the Bay. So if you want to try it and also support Anchor employees in their co-op campaign, you still can. Anchor Union's Instagram at anchorionSF is a great place to stay up to date on upcoming events.

There's a link in our show notes. Yeah, I just got to mention, too, like I said, Patrick, sort of the chairman of the co-op campaign. You know, I think seeing the way that that guy has come into his own as like a real leader has been like the single greatest, like, I mean, it's, it's like not, not even my doing whatsoever.

It was all, I mean, it's all him, but like, you know, we, we, we,

I remember me and Evan talked to him at like a coffee shop or something to get him on board with the union stuff. And he was like, yeah, okay. Like, I'll give it a shot. And then like,

you know, like six months later, he's like running the fucking thing and then like negotiating the contract shot. And then like, you know, like six months later, he's like running the fucking thing and then like negotiating the contract and like really just like, you know, I, I think, I think with some of this stuff is like, I think within a lot of people, there is like this real power that they may not like get, I mean, not saying the guy obviously has a full life, you know, but like, you know, know in all of our lives there's very few ways in which you can actually make yourself be heard in the world yeah to exercise your agency right

exactly i think for almost most 99 of people there isn't really a way to and it's cool to see like you know unions as a vehicle for people to like grow into themselves as like real leaders of other people and patrick i mean it's just been incredible to see when the guys are fucking i mean makes me look like a fucking fink or whatever i mean the guys star yeah that's awesome to hear before i let you go i have one sort of last question that i think might help sort of tie a lot of this stuff into, um, maybe some more upstream, uh, upstream ideas in terms of like the economy and, uh, the political situation in San Francisco and the Bay area. I'm wondering if like, if there are any connections

that you'd make between this whole saga anchor Anchor and, yeah, like the broader political and economic situation in the Bay Area, as I'm sure most of our listeners know quite well and both of us have experienced personally, like it's fucking hard to live in the city. It's hard to live in the Bay Area in general. A lot of people commute like a couple hours to the city to work because they cannot afford to to live there and i'm sure that was true at anchor so i'm wondering yeah like do you feel like what has been happening with anchors is like emblematic well i hesitate to say emblematic because i think you probably pick other things that are more emblematic of the state of the city but i think it's important because you know san francisco was at once upon a time like a lot of places in america very blue-collar

town right like a town with industry in it a town that made things that weren't just like computer programs or whatever and you know when i started working at anchor i i really really thought like what other shit is actually even manufactured? I think the one other real big manufacturing facility in San Francisco makes belts or something like that. There's a belt factory somewhere in the city. And it was a combination of that and also seeing a lot of guys that I just knew from

around town working there. Guys who were never going to get, none none of us are gonna learn to code or anything like that or whatever and uh and like be able to actually participate in these new rich rich high-tech industries that are kind of you know frothing over since san francisco and i think it was just like anchor closing it's like of course they fucking closed it you know what i mean like it made it so hard to live as a normal fucking person in san francisco that like yeah of course they're gonna fucking close it like everything that like made san francisco just like a town a regular person could be in and have like a good time and have a good job in and have a family in and all that shit it's like they've just done their fucking best to like destroy all of that

and it's so like yeah i mean it is you know it's if it gets replaced by like a ai factory or whatever then it'll really be on the nose but i will say this you know we used to be out front smoking cigs anchor and uh we'd have those little motherfucking robots those delivery robots driving past us and it was it was where like waymo or one of the crews or one of those car things like they had their fact they're not their factory they're like little testing center near us and so i we saw them real early i was just like this is not good yeah i mean it's just it's it's it's just fucking it's so crazy it's a bizarre place yeah yeah and like it's funny too because all these people are like all the tech people are like oh it's a bizarre place yeah yeah and like it's funny too because all these people are like

all the tech people are like oh it's like these progressive democrats in office that are doing that the made san francisco suck ass it's like i mean i don't know i mean obviously i got some fucking beef with some of those peoples especially jane kim twitter tax break which is a ground zero for a lot of this shit that's been going on the fucking mid-market shit but it's really i mean it's so obvious like well no it all this shit started happening when you motherfuckers moved here and like you know it's it's not a coincidence that like this this shit exact started declining exactly the same fucking time is that what drove you out of san francisco um i know you moved a couple years

ago oh no i just was like man i've lived i've i've i've never lived outside of the bay in my entire life and i'm 32 and so i was like i gotta or 31 or something i was like i gotta get the fuck out of here just even for a little i'll be back at some point i love san francisco but yeah no it was really just like i I can't be like, I'm too much of a townie now. Like all my friends when I was, from when I was like younger moved, moved away and then like came back in the time that I was really good.

I've just been chilling here. And eventually, you know, you get tired of the same, same pavement. Yeah. I hear you. Well,

brace, it's been a genuine pleasure to have you on the show. And yeah, thank you for, for, uh, all of the, the wisdom that you've imparted and all of the inspiration, hopefully for folks that want to start a union or cooperative eyes even who knows. Yeah. I mean, there's only, there's only, here's the thing. There's only like two ways you can really tell your boss to, you know, fuck off. And one is you can tell your boss to fuck off and get fired. And the other one is you can start a union and ruin his fucking life. Structurally fuck him up. Yeah. And you can also tell him to fuck off and he can't do shit about it.

It's like, okay, take me up on fucking charges. The union will make sure it doesn't get fired, motherfucker. You've been listening to an Upstream Conversation with Brace Belden, co-host of the podcast Truanon, and former employee at Anchor Brewery in San Francisco. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to Bethan Muir for the cover art and to Straub's for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is a labor of love. We distribute all of our content for free and couldn't keep things going without the support of you, our listeners and fans.

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