Boston's Blue Bottle stores are now unionized!

Most of the time I, like the majority of all bloggers in the world, keep a blog because I have things to say about things that affect me. Rarely, it's to make sure that something is memorialized because no one else is touching it.

Such is the case with Blue Bottle's Independent Union, and it's bizarre.

I talked about the work my daughter and her colleagues were doing to unionize last month here and here. I'm really proud of her because I think this is essential work, and I'm not just saying that because she's my daughter. It has been well known since I had jobs in food service (and most other parts of retail) that you can't afford to live off of that salary--excuse me, wages. The only way to survive--and that is literally how people put it--is to be in management. That is easier said than done in many businesses, and it's still a hustle, even if you can now afford your rent and your meals.

Once you don't have to live in that, it's quickly obvious how ridiculous that is. If food service--if retail--can't offer sustainable employment, then it is not a sustainable business, period. Asking for a livable wage is not unreasonable or unrealistic, especially when the product you're serving is premium priced. And the fact that people are starting to assert their rights to organized labor is a very big deal, and it should be a bigger story.

Last month the Blue Bottle stores in Boston filed their papers with the National Labor Relations Board, but in order to be fully unionized--i.e., they could begin negotiating with management--they needed to have an election, which they did last week. This wasn't a foregone conclusion, and up until the last minute the management was trying to dissuade employees from voting to unionize. Yes, they were successful, as the title of this post indicates, but *that wasn't a foregone conclusion*.

Why, then, when I did a search for the story just now, three days after the election, is there no news of it? Someone in my family suggested that the BBIU should have sent out a press release, but sorry, why isn't the press covering this on their own? This is an important story--no, it's an important VICTORY.

Well, to hell with the establishment media. If you're reading this, now you know. So go tell everyone, and celebrate with coffee from a union shop. There may not be that many now, but soon there will be.

Deb in the City

Let's go, unions! (Day 73)

My younger daughter is an employee of Blue Bottle, and today she and other employees at her store and the stores in Boston publicly announced their campaign to create a union. My husband, my son, and I showed up to support the effort, as did a friend from the Boston Public Library's union. It was small--it's been raining--but I'm still pretty chuffed. There's a lot of work we need to do, in every aspect of life, and fair treatment of labor is fundamental to all of it.

My oldest child works for another coffee chain, albeit part-time. Before this, she worked at several cafes, in roles ranging from barista to manager. (All of which informed her decision to return to school and pursue a master's degree, hence the need for the part-time job.) Before her time at Blue Bottle, her sister worked in various retail jobs during college, including during the pandemic. They've both seen how precarious a job like that is when you are dependent, essentially, on the good will of your employer. Without a union, and without the enforcement of labor protections, your best hope is a benevolent dictator. 

That's not good enough.

I haven't worked a job like that in years, but I'm still outraged at what I experienced and what I saw when I did. When I was sixteen, I was fired for asking if I could have my birthday off. Even then I thought that was pretty erratic, and I came to find out the next year that I was suspected of stealing. (I was the prime suspect because I wasn't white.) That was a rough summer, capping off a rough few years, and when the owner didn't have my final paycheck ready, I snapped--and by snapped, I mean I went directly to the Attorney General's office to file a complaint. The manager I spoke to later, who also loathed the owners, chortled as he recounted how the man scrambled to get my check ready.

Years later, during the Great Recession, I got a job as a barista at a nearby cafe. The hours were fine--I'm a morning person--and the pay was what I needed to help my family get over the hump. But after a year it was time to move on. I kept in touch with my colleagues, so I wasn't surprised to hear that the owner was mismanaging the place. What I was surprised to hear was that he hadn't paid them for weeks (never mind that he always made sure he had his own salary), and when the manager confronted him about it, he fired her. I happily directed her to the office at the AG's that she needed to file a complaint with, and thanked my luck that I wasn't in the precarious position all of the people I used to work with were.

It's one odious thing to need a spouse or financially supportive family to see you through the lean first years of a career in journalism, publishing, teaching, etc; it's entirely another to need a second income to support you for most of your career in a service industry. A requirement to be a barista or a waitress shouldn't be a graduate degree; it shouldn't even be a bachelors. Everyone--even if they didn't go to college--should have a livable wage as part of the dignity of their work, regardless of profession. Unions like this are the first step.

Deb in the City

Meanwhile, in South Korea (Day 35)

I haven't been following any news as closely for the last week and a half--as I've said, the more you read books, the more foolish "the news" seems--but I do try to keep an eye out for news out of South Korea. As ever, the stories that make me scratch my head are the ones that keep my attention.

South Korea is hurting for medical personnel. This is something that I, as a resident of Boston, can sympathize with. You may live in an environment where a lot of doctors are trained, but the competition to see said doctors can be brutal, especially if you're in the midst of a demographic shift, as South Korea is. On top of that, South Korea is one of those places where the capital dwarfs the next largest city, so the lion's share of the action still takes place in Seoul. And because they are a highly urbanized population, activity is biased toward the cities (I am hard pressed to think of a case in the world where that isn't true right now).

So, as it stands, there aren't enough doctors, and there especially aren't enough in rural areas, or for the elderly. (You've got to imagine how dire it might be if you're an elderly person in a rural area.) Not surprisingly, the government announced a few months ago that they would now increase the number of students accepted into medical school, both to get more doctors into the field and to relieve the pressure on the existing doctors. 

A little digression: this sounded like a great idea to me, in part because last year some of Boston's residents had a strike. They had been laboring under low pay (Boston is very expensive) while being absolutely hustled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I've been in medical settings; they are overworked, and I supported their positions. Thus, I thought South Korea was on the right track.

Oh boy. Clearly, the younger doctors did not agree, but they are not just striking but *resigning* since the announcement. They are, in a word, outraged.

This is where I started scratching my head, until I came upon this: 

However, these proposals have been criticized by doctors and professors, who argue that medical schools are currently struggling to provide adequate teaching and training resources to students at their current enrollment levels. 

Oh. Right. Yes. And in retrospect, not sure why I expected more from the Yoon administration.

There is no doubt that South Koreans, just like the Americans, just like most other people on the planet, need more, but we need the *right* kind of more. It is not enough to increase the supply of some resource; we have to make sure that we can put those resources to work.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a Lyft driver years ago. He was more conservative than I am (this isn't hard), but it was a pleasant discussion. This was around the time politicians were beginning to make proposals for free college education. At least one child was in college, and three would be going later. I don't think college solves everything or even most things, but I think it should be accessible. My driver did not agree, but not because he didn't think everyone deserved an education. What, he asked, would that look like if it happened right then? What would the quality of that education be for everyone if all we did was make college available to everyone but didn't really change anything else?

As he spoke, I remembered the classes my daughter had taken at community college, taught predominantly by people who had to teach at multiple institutions to make enough to live on. Many times those professors or instructors aren't as available for questions as their tenured equivalents might be, and who can blame them when they have to hustle as hard as they do. I could easily see a nightmare scenario, a la Tithonus, where students could take whatever classes they wanted, they just shouldn't expect that the instruction would actually teach.

Just as, perhaps, South Koreans might be able to get more doctors, they just shouldn't expect that they'll actually be well-trained.

Temporary stopgaps can be simple, but permanent solutions don't tend to be. Which is why it's not a bad idea to keep an eye on labor groups and what they have to say about a given issue. They see things the rest of us don't, and when we don't listen, it's almost always to our detriment.

Deb in the City