How To Get Union Busted

Not long after I wrote a brief piece on how great my 30s would be, I got union busted. I tried to advocate for my coworkers, start a union, and got laid off. I have immaculately terrible timing when it comes to these kinds of things. I remember distinctly in Dec of 2019 when I was writing resolutions with friends that I had a hunch that 2020 would be an excellent year, and we know how that went.

Now recently I've found myself in a similar place to where I was a year ago, unemployed, albeit a tad wiser and with more friends than before. A pyrrhic victory. And although I should be wallowing more or processing or picking up an eccentric hobby or whatever people usually do when they’re laid off, I’ve spent some time reflecting on the past six months (a short tenure, right?) and would like to share a bit on how it went down and what I've learned.

Seeds of Discontent

I’ll admit, when I first got hired I always contemplated the possibility of starting a union, but it wasn’t my intention to start working toward it right away. I gave the place the benefit of the doubt. The owner was someone who prided themselves on their care and concern for the underrepresented. They also had a strong media profile that suggested they were one of the people doing good work for the community in Chicago. I’m very cynical when it comes to institutions, but optimistic when it comes to people, so I thought, perhaps this job will be different from the rest, perhaps I’m working for someone that gives a damn.

But time reveals all. Few received the training to allow them to be successful, dysfunction became the norm, and any attempts to change things would be ignored.

I remember one time we had an issue with some coworkers (and the owners/managers) disregarding folks’ pronouns. As a team we decided to hold a group meeting about it and address the issue head on. The owner was a bit annoyed they weren’t invited to the meeting, but happened to be in the area and showed up anyway. Then once it became clear that the meeting was about respecting pronouns, they walked away to handle “more important matters”.

It seemed as if there was always a tragedy of sorts that took precedence over the employees and I learned fairly quickly that working here would be no different from any of my other experiences at a small business or startup environment.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned here is that it doesn't matter who's in charge of the business, or how much they like you if your incentives don't align. Owners are profit driven, workers want to get paid a living wage and treated with dignity, and as much as we'd like to pretend these ideas align, it seldom turns out that way.

Public Letter

Four months into the job, in the middle of one of our shifts, the owner texted one of the booksellers that they would be reducing the store hours because of profitability. We were actually promised more hours and bonuses heading into the holiday season, so to find out the opposite was true was especially devastating. Folks were angry, yelling, some crying on the spot, so I urged them to write a collective letter representing the entire staff. In that letter we stated that we understood that the business was struggling, but we were open to creative alternatives to make the place succeed, we just asked that there were no hour reductions.

The letter was sent out on the public slack channel using my account, and from that moment on I knew I had started the timer for the end of my career there. Perhaps the reason I’m not quite upset at being fired is because I grieved a bit at that moment, knowing fully well that I had painted a target on my back for organizing this letter. But even as I knew all of this would follow, I still put my name on the public letter, because I wanted to ensure my coworkers have a better work environment, and because frankly I have a bit of an IDGAF attitude. There's scarier things to worry about than losing one's job, and if I let this small fear of getting fired hold me back, then I'll likely never accomplish anything of significance in life.

The letter worked, the owner immediately said they would but the workplace had experienced a collective shift. Things were about to change.

The following week, we all had the opportunity to have a one on one with the owner to speak at length about our grievances. During my one on one I simply stated that the reason we did the letter was because some of the folks working there were in insecure financial situations, and needed the money. I also stressed that because of the dysfunction it felt like we were constantly at risk of losing our jobs. The owner told me that no we weren’t at risk and that we should trust them that they are fighting to ensure we have jobs and are paid well. LOL

I continued to stress that there is a bit of a disconnect, and that we are in different economic classes, therefore we have different risks and ways of doing things. The owner told me that they had experienced poverty at one point in their life so they could understand our position.

Organizing has taught me that that personal experience doesn’t always translate to progressive politics. Some of the most ardent defenders of capitalism and the status quo are currently experiencing poverty or are on the verge of it, and will often use their background as a way of defending their egregious actions. And now that I have a bit of distance from that conversation, I can confidently say the owner is no different than anyone else because if you are someone who has experienced poverty, you shouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing they are sending nearly a dozen people back into it by firing them.

After that public letter and those one on ones, I got some of my most trusted coworkers/friends together and we started to talk about how we could work together to advocate for ourselves and build a healthier environment. One where we got paid training, we weren’t employed “at will” (meaning we could be fired at any moment for anything), and one where we could be happy and proud to come in every day. In short I was starting to unionize my workplace, and it went well at first, but I made some devastating mistakes along the way.

Rat In The Cheese Factory

We had a group chat going, meetings set up with some national unions, hangouts were scheduled. Though things at the store grew progressively worse, I was still a bit hopeful because we started to set up the infrastructure necessary for progress. But while organizing and setting up this infrastructure I made a fatal mistake.

I had one coworker who confided in me that they thought we should change things for the better. They told me that they understood all of the grievances of others and they wanted to do something to help out. They said all the right things and the longer I listened, the more convinced I was that this was a person who would be great for the union.

Now I should stop and preface this by saying that one of my friends and coworkers had a different opinion. They told me they didn’t think this particular person was all that interested in anyone else aside from themselves. I believed my coworker at first, but from my personal encounters I started to believe that this was truly someone who could show solidarity with others. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

A week or so later this person posted in our union chat that they thought the union was a terrible idea and that they wanted out. I offered to meetup with them in person to help quell their fears. We met at a coffee shop nearby and talked at length about the union effort and why we were doing it. Although, no matter what I said they were too focused on their personal relationship with the owner and didn’t quite care about the union or what it would do for the workers. By the end of the meeting they told me that they wanted to tell the owner. I told them that doing so would put alot of people at risk and create a hostile environment and their response was something along the lines of “nah, it’ll be ok.” LOL

Fallout

The rest of the story goes as you would expect. The owner finds out we’re unionizing, two weeks later they announce they are shutting down the store due to “lack of funds”, but don’t worry, they’ll likely be back in business in a few months time. The person who ratted us out will likely have a job, but all of the people who unionized, and even the people that didn’t, were all laid off. The owner has had a wave of support come flooding their way, while the employees are all mostly shit outta luck. I won’t pretend the story has a happy ending, that we are better off for it, or that we learned valuable lessons, because most of us are not. We have to go back into the gruesome job market and figure things out before debts pile up too quickly.

But as bad as things are, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t a bit relieved. I poured so much into that place. I worked tirelessly to make my workplace better, and often the biggest obstacles to that success were the owner and petty managers who cared very little about such things. Now that I’ve been fired, I have all this energy and time to do what I want. My job wasn’t the most important thing in my life, so even as my working hours have decreased, I find that my schedule is busier than ever with writing groups, hangouts with friends, or just spending time alone with a good book.

Perhaps the only thing I regret out of all of this is trusting the wrong person, someone who said all the right things but turned out to care only about themselves, but aside from that I can sleep comfortably knowing that at the very least, I tried.