A popular Bay Area bakery with loyal customers, delicious baked goods and dramatic expansion plans now has an overwhelming majority of workers organizing to join the ILWU.
Tartine workers kicked-off their union campaign on February 6 when employees at each of the company’s four Bay Area locations asked management to recognize their new union.
Goals include better pay, benefits, a voice in decisions and a written contract.
A healthy majority of the more than 230 Tartine workers have already signed union cards, but instead of recognizing their new union, management responded with a union-busting campaign. It began quietly with voluntary, informal chats led by the couple who founded the bakery, but quickly shifted to nastier “captive audience” sessions with a team of four professional union-busting consultants.
Lots of community support: Tartine workers have a large and loyal customer support base that is supporting their effort to join the ILWU.
Workers say their employer no longer feels like the small, street corner bakery in San Francisco’s Mission District that’s now transformed into an international corporation with outside investors.
Veteran employee John Lapp from Tartine’s Manufactory, says union support has grown steadily – and is needed now to ensure workers have a real voice. “Having a union contract with all the important things in writing is the only way for us to have accountability and rights on the job,” he says.
He and other Tartine workers got an inspirational boost last year when workers at the nearby Anchor Brewery organized and joined the ILWU.
Anchor workers also endured an anti-union campaign, but the brewery management took a more cooperative approach when it was clear workers were united and well-organized. That unity helped win an impressive contract with significant wage and benefit improvements.
Tartine workers have filed for a union election that will be supervised by the National Labor Relations Board. Workers in San Francisco will vote on Thursday, March 12; Berkeley workers vote Friday, March 13.
Employee Pat Thomas who works at the original Tartine Bakery in San Francisco says, “people say San Francisco is a union town and that’s proving to be true. Many of my personal friends in the San Francisco music community have told me how proud they are of what we’re doing. I think people are taking a lot of inspiration from our effort.”
One group of Tartine workers at San Francisco’s International Airport terminal are already covered by a Hotel & Restaurant Workers Union contract, one that covers most food service workers at the airport.
The effort by workers at three other San Francisco locations and one bakery in Berkeley has received strong community support, including concern from local political leaders who have criticized Tartine’s union-busting campaign.
Employee Mason Lopez, who works at the Tartine Bakery in Berkeley, says support from customers has been impressive. “Customers see our buttons and tell us they’re supporting our union. There’s a lot of support out there to back us up, and not much sympathy for companies that try to bust unions,” they said. Future issues of The Dispatcher will cover this ongoing story.