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
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