Also media, Welcome to it could happen here a podcast where my old bookstore from college is unionized, and I'm very excited about it. I'm your host, Mio Wong, and with me to talk about this this tremendous event are Caleb Theo and Finn from the Seminary co Op Booksellers Union. Yeah, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having us.
This is so excited.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm excited to you both because I think somehow in the mold that I got almost three years i've been doing this show now, Jesus Christ, that is terrifying. Somehow, I think this is the first bookstore union we've talked to, which is remarkable. I don't I don't know how it's taken this long, but I'm so excited that y'all get that. Y'all the first.
I mean, as far as we know, we're the first in the city of Chicago.
Hell yeah, we're.
The only in the city. There are like past bookstores that have since closed which we're unionized. But yeah, as best we know, we're now we're currently the only union bookstore in the city of Chicago. Proper.
God, maybe there's one up in Evanston or something, but seems unlikely. This is this is I don't know. I've been I've been. I've been drilling. I've been drilling the Evanston knowledge into my listeners' heads. Now, so now all of you people in Rhode Island or whatever know about my hatred of Evanston.
An extremely fair grudge.
Okay, so speaking of grudges, all right, sobody, co op is it's it's it's an interesting bookstore in the sense that like it's it's it is on the campus of the University of Chicago, like it's just it's just sort of there. And there's been a lot of things happening
on that campus in the past month or so. But yeah, I guess what I wanted to I guess the place I wanted to start was sort of Okay, so you should call it is a campus that has a lot of union organizing happening on it in a bunch of across a bunch of different kind of they're mostly university unions, but a lot different all of different kinds of workers in the university have unions. How did that sort of impact the way this campaign started?
That's a really good question. I I feel like, there's a few things I want to talk about. I think there's the the fact that a lot of us booksellers who come to the sem co op were coming from many of us came from New Chicago or had been there at some point and had been around that kind of organizing. So I think that that definitely has an impact. I also think that many of us know people because
so many of us are in the community. We all know a lot of people who are organizers, a lot of people in the grad student union, and howing them to talk to and kind of like bounce ideas off of and commiserate all of that has been really great.
Yeah, And like I think it's been very emboldening to know that we have that support, you know that because we have friends and comrades and roommates in GSU, in faculty unions, you know, the kind of the whole time, we've known that, Like, if we ever need to draw on that external support for any kind of you know, public campaign that we have like a connection to like a broader labor of movement in the area, that will be there for us.
This is something I guess you've already touched on a bit, but I think This leads into another question that I had, which was, Yeah, I wanted to talk about the sort of the influence of campus and how how how the dynamics of that kind of change, what these what these campaigns look like.
It's really interesting because our relationship to campus is a little bit unclear to us in terms of the way that the bookstore functions in relation to its university partners, because we work with them very closely. There are a landlord, among many other things, but we are not directly affiliated with them, and we carry course books, but that's by professor request and we can't always do it, and so it's a really close, really opaque relationship.
I think the university really likes to have a bookstore that isn't like university affiliated on paper, but still very much is a part of the culture of the university, and so we see a lot of that kind of inform things like our stock and the events that the UH professors that we work with, and of course like the students who come in and use the space and are physically in the space every day doing work buying their books.
It's it's always weird kind of doing organizing in these spaces because like I don't know you you're you're dealing with this mixture. Well you Chicago especially is like this where there's it's this really kind of weird and volatile mixture of like a bunch of on the one hand, like a bunch of very brave, very committed like people who are doing organizing, a bunch of people who are just completely checked out, and then a bunch of people who are going to go lead cups in South America.
And I don't know, it's it's it's a that was my experience back doing Actually, God, I was, I was on the GS you pick it line, like, how God that was? That was half a decade ago. Jesus Christ. Sorry, this is this is turning into the Mia thinks about our time that you which it shouldn't.
Yeah, That's something that is notable too, is that, like we have a lot of community support when it comes to people who are theoretically in favor of unionizing and theoretically in favor of labor power, and that extends all the way through our management team, like they are very,
very in favor of the concept of labor rights. And so it's really interesting trying to parse that dynamics sometimes of like, Okay, these are people who are supposedly our biggest supporters, but at the same time their actions do not very well line up with those ideals.
I think having a section at our store that is devoted to critical theory and Marxism while not paying us a living wage is a real funny situation.
The irony stings real hard.
Yeah, it's this real read the theory, act on it, but read the theory.
It's been real fun. Like we during like your course book rush seasons, we have like sem co op trading cards with pictures of like different authors. It's always really fun handing out the ones that are like Carl Marx sem co ops number one best selling author.
And no, it's definitely not because every freshman at University of Chicago has to buy him from us.
Yeah, that's that's another that's like kind of unrelated, really funny thing. But yeah, like all of the Chicago econ dipshits at least nominally red marks. Did they open it low odds? But yeah, I don't know that that seems like a psychologically destabilizing contradiction that you're dealing with them all the time.
That same kind of like contradiction between like spirit and practice. Just like it's also right there in our name where we're the Seminary co Op bookstore, and like two thirds of that is not true. We haven't been affiliated with the seminary in decades. We were for a time a member co op like RII, but we've never been a worker's co op. We haven't even been a member co op since twenty fourteen. We are a bookstore, so there's like that.
But the old one in three eight bad being simply does not apply here. That is in fact very bad well.
And I think that that is like a very big part of how the larger community sees our stores as well, and the like mismatch there because yeah, of course we're like on the Chicago campus. We are very much connected to the student body and the faculty there, but we're also like in the middle of like our neighborhood where there are plenty of other people who are not affiliated with the college who are like coming in buying their books.
There's the fact that like our our second location down the street, fifty seventh Street Books, which has like our kids sects and like a bunch of other less academic stuff like that's very heavily trafficked as well, and the communities understanding of us as a like worker owned not not for profit, which is a very confusing term because
it's not a nonprofit, it's a not for profit. That that disconnect between what the community needs and wants in its bookstores and what the management has decided our bookstores mean to the community is it's felt. That's like a very felt mismatch.
Yeah, so I'm assuming that that that's sort of the kinds of things that I mean, obviously the standard not getting paid off, et cetera, et cetera, are those those are sort of things that led into how the organizing started.
Yeah, I think it's a lot the way that like the mismatch is so parent to us, and it really brought us together, Like we have such a unique sense of solidarity as a working cohort. I feel like there's a lot of commiseration because we walk a very weird line throughout our community, and so I think it's a little bit just trying to assess what's going on in our stores and like how does that compare to what management tells us on a regular basis, and shouldn't we be doing something about that?
Yeah?
I think that. I know that our first like big pre union meeting where we all got together in the basement of one of our houses and commiserated, was like after a pretty rough like all store meeting that we had had in which we had continued to get really no response regarding questions about a living wage or how we choose stock for our store, how communication between management and hourly booksellers was just so lacking, and we just got the same kind of messaging that was being given
to customers, which is we're working on it. You're all of these things that you're saying are so valid, and we'll address them at a later date.
Yeah, we were getting this great response of like, you know, we want to get you to not just a living wage, but a professional wage, and we have a five year plan, but we were halfway through that five year plan. The five year plan started right before the pandemic and had not been adjusted since, and there was no information on how we were going to in the last half of this five year plan, you know, suddenly increase wages to whatever a professional wage is, let alone a living wage.
So that was just a very straighting, like completely empty answer.
I think we were all very we were all hurt and we got like the very first message in our group chat, which was just like so we're we're gonna we're gonna unionize, right, incredible, And that was like the start of it. And that was like last I want to say that was January of twenty twenty three was when that started.
Yeah, they'reabouts.
Yeah, that's a that's I guess it's a pretty vast campaign by the looks of it. It's yeah, about it about it a bit over a year. Yeah, yeah, congratulations to you all, by the way, thank you.
Thanks.
It's really thanks to the team that started in January though, because they have been really really proactive about reaching out to people when there are new booksellers. Because I have kind of a weird tenure at the store. I've worked there two separate times, but I wasn't part of the
January meeting. But when I rejoined the co op in August, I think within the first week that I was there, one of my kokers like came up to me while I was at the register and like in the standard getting to know you kind of speech, was.
Like, and how do you feel about labor organizing? And I was like very in favor. Why do you ask.
Yeah that by the way, dear listenier. If you're at a union, that is that is what is known as good practice. It is in fact a thing that you need to do whenever someone new joins your workplace and you have a union, bring them in. And if you don't do this, your unions will stagnate die. And there are there there are like there are actually there are unions out there who will get mad at you for doing this because it takes resources or whatever, and don't
listen to them. Please stop. Simply do not do this.
This is the only defense against turnover, which is huge.
Stories that most need to unionize.
Yep, yep, we have really crazy turnover. Like I think that of the original people who started talking, I mean and this was like there was a previous unionization effort too before our time that we know very little about. But of the original like January folks, very few of us are left just because of the turnover rate, which is immense, and we get like groups of like three to four people hired at once every six months or so, and it's like, Okay, how quickly can we scope folks out?
How quickly can we like do like a one on one and talk to them about how they feel about labor organizing. How can we get a sense of like what their main concerns are with the job and what they want from unionizing.
Yeah.
Well, and the turnover is also one of the things that sparked this because we had a way of folks who were fired asked to leave or quit on their
own terms. And we had another coworker who knew that she was kind of reaching the end of when she could you know, stay at the bookstore and was just very committed to like getting some momentum going in her last handful of months here and created, like you oside the group chat and was just very quit, like all right, everyone, we're in the group chat, like this message if you
agree with the following statement. And then it was like, you know, the statements about like how much you care about the job, and then statements about like how much you agree that like a union would improve things, and just about everybody agreed a union would be a huge improvement.
And that was I mean, that was also a really incredible resource because like before someone just created the group chat, we're in this really awkward phase of like three or four different groups of people trying to get a ball rolling and very like cautiously approaching folks. I had approached one or two people and been like that same exact question, like how do you feel about unions? And then there was someone else who was going around asking the exact
same question. And you know, I was also at Redge one day when she came up and asked asked me that, and I was like, Jesus, do I not have enough patches on my jacket? This is a question I need to fix something.
It was a lot of like ships passing until the group chat got created, and then it was really quick we had We started having like meetings. I want to say we had one like every three weeks to a month. In that first six months, we got together a letter of demands that we all read and signed. It was I think at the time of the how many were working there. It was like all but one maybe wow person signed it and we all went to deliver it and read it to management and got a bunch of
stuff right away. This was like well before yeah, well before we had like signed with an or decided who we wanted to unize with, and we still just threw that direct action got so much done.
And I think that's part of the success that we've had so far too, is we do just have kind of a large number in our cohort of impatient people, which means that like, once we figure out what we want, we're just like, Okay, what's the fastest way we can ask for this and get it recognized.
That first march that we did, that first letter was also just I mean, it really like fueled all of the rest of this, I think because the stuff that one was so I think so immediately felt for everyone working there.
There wasn't things, Uh what what kinds of things did you win in that one?
We one expanded health insurance. Previously very few people qualified for health insurance. We got that pretty tremendously broadened. I mean, that's I think how THEO and I ended up getting health insurance. We got things like, you know, improved maternity leave, improved bereavement leave. The definition of who you could take
berievement leave for was broadened. It was like previously a grid of like nine types of relation, and then it got just fully expanded to like include chosen family and just whoever you know, you felt the need to claim berievement leave for. As well as just how many days,
which was tremendous. I mean, it was like a week after the change, you know, got actually implemented into our our leave system, that I found out a relative was dying, And because we had gotten that expansion, I didn't have to choose between driving my grandmother to be by her bedside, be by this other relative's bedside, or going to the funeral. I was able to take time off for both of those, which, you know, meant everything to me, meant everythingthing to my grandma.
And so, you know, when we talk when we're looking at issues, when we're organizing, and we talk about things that are widely felt, that are deeply felt, that are actionable, and like those kinds of changes are very deeply felt. And so there wasn't you know, there really hasn't been a point since then when anyone could remotely make the argument that organizing doesn't create positive, impactful change.
Yeah. The handbook that I was onboarded with second time that I came to the stores was significantly different than the handbook that I was on boarded with the first time, And it was because this list of demands had gone out in the interim, because the policies about like just our character as a store and the way that we want to interact with our community were completely different, and it was very much that like booksellers who interact with the community on a daily basis, had had a say
in the meantime.
Hell yeah, okay, So unfortunately we have to go to an ad break. But we returned, well, I don't know, go back to what we were doing before, question work. I don't know, not not. My fight is to ad pivot. But you know, look, if they if they, if they've paid me more, they'd get more good AD pivots, but they don't fear getting the media.
Once you gotta work your wage.
Yeah, and we're back. Yeah.
So you know, the organizing students have come together pretty quickly. I guess, do you want to talk about how you ended up being an AWW shop?
Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to talk on that a little bit. You know, when we got to the point where were deciding who we wanted to affiliate with, I sent out feelers to just a bunch of different unions. Two got back to me. A larger trade union that I'm totally spacing on the name of, or commercial union, the term for like the really big one, the really big types of unions, and the IWW, and I had meetings or phone calls with representatives from both of them.
The you and I put together kind of a graphic sort of comparing like the pros and cons of two very different options, right, like a big international union or I mean IWW obviously international, it's right in there in the name, but obviously a smaller, much more autonomous union.
And I wanted to go IWW. I did my absolute best to not let that bias inform the pros and cons lists and whatnot, and we, you know, we sat around in this room here and just chatted it out, talked about our preferences, what mattered to all of us, and you know, what we decided was that, amongst other things, one of like the really big sort of organizing principles of this has been increasing our own agency and autonomy in the workplace, and the IWW's model just felt like
it would give us the most control over our own campaign. And so that's that's how we ended up voting to I'm an IWW, you know, lead then campaign and now finally shop branch.
I think that the IWW really fit how our store and our organizing had worked thus far too. It felt like it matched the character of our organizing. It's definitely much scrappier it, you know. The IWW having a history in Chicago definitely was a factor in my personal desire to be affiliated with them. I thought it was really cool to be joining that like long tradition of IWW shops in Chicago. I think that direct the emphasis on direct employee action versus like contract bargaining fit very well
for us as well. I think, especially considering things like the turnover and how we wanted to make sure that you know, if we argue to contract, if we bargained for a contract now, that it would be difficult to know, you know, even a year or two down the line, if those points and those things that we've bargained for
would be what folks would want then. And so getting to use more direct action and response to make gains in the workplace has been I think really helpful strategy and one that the IWW facilitates really well with how it trains organizing.
Yeah, that all makes a lot of sense, and I guess you know, the question from there is how did management sort of react and what's been the kind of what's what's what's what's been the kind of relationship vibe since then.
I mean management voluntarily recognized us immediately, but they also had very clear notice ahead of time that we had been organizing, Like we had been presenting them with demands on a regular basis. We had been emailing them from an anonymous account requesting that they closed the stores when the cold was too intense for most of us to safely get to work, Like they would be very very deeply buried under the rocks if they didn't know that
we were like talking to each other. So I think that they had a plan, and they also know the character of our community, which is very theoretically leftist, and so they knew that they really didn't have another option because like we were at critical mass, and they would look really bad in the eyes of everyone that they respect if they said nothing.
By the time that we announced to management that we'd unionized, something like twenty one twenty two out of twenty three hourly workers were members of the IWW.
We showed up in T shirts. It was a lot.
Yeah, when you walk in, when you walk in in your IWW shirt to sit down at like an all store meeting, and then the next person walks in and they're also wearing that shirt, and then the next person it's like, yeah, we've got the numbers. Something's about to happen.
And they knew.
They knew because we had heard them I think, like not two days before being like, yeah, we think that they're on the precipice of unionizing.
If we were like, boy, you have no idea.
Yeah, they took it as well as we expected them to take it. As Finn said.
We'd been in a you know, organized meeting the night before and had been in our group chet you know, that morning, preparing for all manner of different scenarios. If they didn't take it well and then and then.
They did, how have they been acting after, Because there's there's definitely it can be a huge gap vaultry recognition and then them actually doing anything.
Yeah.
So the structure of management is real interesting at our store, Like I said, we had we have twenty three currently hourly booksellers, and then that to how many managers.
Six at least eight eight.
Yes, this is a fun quirk about our store. The manager to bookseller ratio is insane. And then we've got like our directors who are not counted in the manager number, which is okay.
So we've got five managers and three directors.
Five managers and three directors for twenty three hourly employees.
And I think that, yeah, yeah, and to use that ratio in meetings, they.
Talked about that a lot.
Yeah, And I think that.
No, no, no, we talk about it a lot like as and I think that, well, it's interesting because in these store meetings it is usually only the director that talks. I don't think we've ever heard managers talk in an all store meeting. So when the director voluntarily or recognizes our union, we also have to really look at the faces of every manager to see what they're actually feeling. And I think a lot of managers are.
Have.
My suspicion is that a lot of managers share equal frustration with a lot of the ways that the store is managed, even above them, And I think, obviously they can't say anything to us about how they feel about our.
Union, but anecdote totally, they were so excited to take our picture after we announced that we had utilized.
That's really funny.
We did get management to take our photo, which.
We hadn't joked about in the group chat in the morning, Like, Lol, wouldn't it be hilarious if we made the managers take our picture and then they shor did.
That's so funny.
Yeah, On a day to day level, I think things have been generally no more or less awkward than usual. The vibe can be, yeah, bizarre on them.
The vibe is also very highly colored right now by a lot of other big changes that are happening at the stores that have nothing to do with our union, and so like, it's very difficult to sort of suss out which weirdness is which, But definitely I think the union weirdness is on the lesser end.
Actually, yeah, I.
Mean, I think the only real indication we have in the last in this kind of just little stretch since we announced is that we've been emailing with our director for like to schedule a announcement from the store side, and you know, we sent basically copy that we would like them to use and listed out what venues we would like it posted, and they've been just very accommodating
to all of that. We haven't been getting any pushback like how the store how or when the store announces to the you know, mailing list and the community social media following and so on, so you know there's that.
Yeah, it hasn't really been talked about that publicly yet, it's about to be. I do know that when at the at the event that I was running or working at yesterday, the unionization, we we got congratulated on our unionization and one of my managers was just that was too my manager's face, and I think her reaction was like, oh, so you know they're taking it. They'd being very polite
about it. I don't think they know that other people know yet, but yeah, if they, if they when it happens, I'm sure they're not going to be weird about it, at least I hope not.
I think the main thing management wants to do everything in writing, and I think that's correct in some ways, and like that's about to happen, But in terms of how they will interact with us once it is fully public and fully announced and fully in writing, I'm not sure.
I also think that the reactions that we're getting now are the ways that they interact with us now that we have announced, versus the ways that they may interact with us once we start really pushing for our demands. That is that that could change pretty quickly, especially when it comes to the living wage demand that is bury at the forefront of what we're fighting for. That's also been the one that has like the most tension behind
it when we've brought it up in the past. And I think that once they realized that we're not just unionizing for fun, things might change pretty quickly. And so we're just going to have to be on We'll be on our.
Toes because a big reason that we unionized was because we needed to have more weight behind that demand, because that was one of the core demands that has been made for the longest amount of time, with the least amount of movement and the most empty promises, and so we wanted to prove to them, hey, you have to listen to us about this. And I think that they might not have fully cottoned on to that yet.
Yeah, And I guess I guess we'll just sort of have to see how how they react to the sort of hammer coming down on them now that day spent all this time not actually doing anything. Yeah, I think I think that's a pretty good place to wrap up. Is there anyth unless there's anything else that you want to make sure that gets mentioned Yeah.
I mean, I think one thing I would like to say towards the end here is that a big part of what's been motivating us through all of this is seeing the sort of rise of labor power nationally with you know, the strikes in LA with like the writers, the actors strikes, seeing you know, teacher strikes going on with you know, the union stories that you all have been covering on this podcast, with folks like Frida Egg and I just yeah, I just want to say, like if,
if for other folks who are working in a small space, in a in a retail space and thinking about unionizing, I mean, it's hard work, but it's deeply rewarding work, and if you put the time and dedication into it, it is absolutely possible to organize your workplace, especially if you're somewhere with twenty thirty co workers where you can get everyone into a group chat, where you can get everyone together in you know, someone's basement, someone's living room.
You know, we're really at an incredible moment in labor as a movement, and just if you're thinking about organizing your workplace, start talking to your coworkers, start talking to your friends. It's doable. It's hard, but there's power in a union and we can win.
Hell yeah, I think there was something to be said too, just for the like sheer morale boost that it comes from organizing with your coworkers, because it makes everything better even as like your material reality doesn't change immediately, your outlook and ability to manage it, and to just feel like someone is in the same boat as you unparalleled really worth it.
It feels yeah, it feels good. It feels good to have something to be proud of, something that you've put a lot of time into, like coming to Fruition and seeing all of these people that you've worked together with
to help make like tangible gains for your community. It feels like I think that when you have a job, that is, when you're working a job that sometimes makes it difficult to feel proud of yourself and what you're doing on a day to day basis for whatever reason, having organizing and having your coworker there to make something really really good, not just for each other, but for future workers and for workers at other stores who may see our efforts and go I can do that too.
That makes you. That makes me proud, and it feels really good to have something to be proud of.
Yeah, getting getting to fight for your class is a great feelings. It rules. Yeah, so I guess where where can people find the union if they want to help support stuff?
Got it?
Pull up our newly minted social media.
That's nice.
I had this ready to go earlier today and then I forgot to keep it open.
No worries, We'll put the links in the description.
These are some fresh, fresh handles.
Here we go. Yeah, so, folks can find us on Instagram at sem co Op Booksellers Union, semco Pee Booksellers Union, or on Twitter at sem co Op Union. Hopefully we will, you know, start posting on soon and that's gonna be the best way to sort of keep up with our store, our situation from specifically the perspective of the laborers.
Also, if you're in Chicago, come and say hi, Come to our stores, Come talk to uh our like, come talk to the workers. We have a lot to say. We'd love to talk to you about it.
Yeah, it's it's a great place and it's gotten significantly better now that this now now that it's unionized, and hopefully one day, I don't know, fuck it, don't all I'll say this hope hopefully one day it is a fucking actual co op.
Hell yeah, that's the dream, that's all we want.
Yeah, so thank you all for coming on and good luck and yeah hope hope management folds like a fucking wet paper towel.
Hell yeah, thanks so much for having.
Us you so much, this was amazing.
Yeah, excited to have talked to you all, and yeah, this is this been can happen here? You can do this too, and yeah, well we'll have we'll have exciting stuff coming tomorrow too.
Yeah.
Go go organize your workplace and make your bosses viserable and make your lives better.
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