“Oh, I don’t know, Bobcat Bonnie’s just isn’t the right environment to organize in. No one else seems to really care enough to take a stand,” I told the facilitator of the Ypsilanti IWW’s Workplace Control and Resistance workshop in early July of 2024. I said this as a somewhat experienced organizer, too! I had already taken an OT101 and been part of two organizing campaigns prior to my employment at Bobcat Bonnie’s. Even experienced organizers can fall prey to this type of “doomerism” thinking. As you read along, you will see that there was always an opportunity to organize here, and everywhere, including your own “unorganizable” workplace.
Little did I know, less than two months after this workshop, individual workers would begin to be very vocal about their grievances at the restaurant. A couple of days after Labor Day, I woke up to this message in my 7shifts (our scheduling app) group chat from a fellow worker:
“For everyone listening…You can’t expect us to work Labor Day while we wait to cash our paychecks. For my coworkers, educate yourself on French history. Fire me.”
I immediately realized I was wrong in my assessment I made back in July. I then felt a sense of urgency to meet with this person (let’s call them Ember) and get organized. So, I reached out to them over Facebook Messenger:
“Hey, Ember, I really loved your messages in the 7shifts chat, and you’re 100% right. We should get together for some coffee in the next couple of days to talk about this.”
I will note here that the staff at Bobcat Bonnie’s was a really tight-knit crew. We were all friends with each other and hung out outside of work frequently. We mostly had each other’s contact information, and for those we didn’t, it was easily accessible on the 7shifts app. The boss gave us a great resource for gathering information through that app, and we already had built amazing relationships with one another. So, in a way, I think we were informally organizing before this happened, and it set us up for success.
So, when Ember and I met for coffee, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Then, when we took it a step further and asked a few of our closest coworkers to meet for dinner and fill them in on our discussion, it also was nothing out of the ordinary. Let’s fast forward to that dinner.
Ember and I began the conversation by talking about the bounced paychecks and how f*cked up it was that many of us worked on Labor Day with no pay. Out of the seven of us at the table, the majority had at least one bounced paycheck. Personally, I never had a bounced paycheck, but after this discussion, it became apparent that this had been an ongoing, widespread issue for over a year and we had no idea because everyone was gaslit by management into believing it was their own fault somehow. This is why it is critical to agitate. Ask your coworkers about what makes them upset on the job, and record it somewhere; we could have started organizing around this issue much earlier. One worker had six bounced paychecks in just the past year.
The conversation quickly evolved into an informal grievance hearing. We realized we were all collectively experiencing many issues besides just the bounced paychecks. I suggested to the group the idea of a petition; it seemed like a good first step to collectivize our grievances. So, in the coming weeks, we continued to meet and workshop together as an informal organizing committee until we had a finalized petition on September 16th with a plan to deliver it to the corporate office on October 7th. It had four demands outlined in it:
1. An end to bounced paychecks and a resolution of payroll issues by the next payday, October 11th.
2. Guaranteed, consistent scheduling with sufficient hours to meet each individual employee’s needs starting November 2nd.
3. Updated and comprehensive training procedures for both management and employees by November 18th.
4. An immediate end to inappropriate comments from management. Management routinely belittled us and talked trash behind our backs to our fellow workers, in an effort to pit us against each other. Other times, they would talk inappropriately to the younger women on staff, using their positions of power to make predatory remarks.
We also worked together in this time to complete a full social networking document with each employee’s name, contact info, job position, an assessment column, “Who Is Talking?” column, and an area for notes. With a finalized petition in hand, we split up the rest of the staff amongst each organizer to complete one-on-ones, so we could get their input and, hopefully, their signature! Over the course of these three weeks leading up to our delivery date of October 7th, we spoke with every coworker and received signatures from nearly 90 percent of the staff.
Armed with a petition with full support from the entire staff and signatures from the overwhelming majority of us, we hatched a plan to march on the corporate office in Ferndale and hand-deliver the letter to the owner of the company. A group of nine of us committed to driving out to Ferndale from Ypsilanti; we assigned roles to each person and role played the delivery beforehand. Not only this, but we prepared an employee “press release” flyer to hand-deliver to the workers at each Bobcat Bonnie’s location across the state of Michigan so that our narrative would spread before the employer could formulate a response to our organizing. We split into different teams to cover the most ground in the least amount of time. This flyer explained what we did, why we did it, and contained a QR code that led to a carrd.co website we had prepared which let people know how to join the fight. We also plastered these flyers near employee entrances and dumpsters.
Everything went according to plan. The March on the Boss (MOTB) was beautifully executed. The workers at the other Bobcat locations were all sympathetic to the cause and expressed similar grievances. The general vibe at each store was “Wow, I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner.” We felt like we were on top of the world and that it was only a matter of time until the other stores would join the struggle for a better Bobcat Bonnie’s.
Things from this point on, however, escalated very quickly. Someone, not a worker, passed by one of the back entrances at one of the restaurants. We received an email on our newly created union email: “I really support you guys so I wanted to do what I can to help out; so, I posted your flyer on Reddit.” Boom. Just like that, the cat’s out of the bag. It blew up, and within an hour, the owner found out and was having a full meltdown in the comment section. Rumors and other misinformation began spreading as well. We agreed it would look bad to battle it out in the comments (unlike the owner), and decided we needed to produce a Bobcats United press release. We were forced to go public far sooner than we wanted. Then, just two days after going public, an hour after our dinner service concluded on Sunday, October 13th, and while our organizing committee was in an active meeting discussing next steps, the owner sent out a 7shifts announcement informing the Ypsilanti staff:
“…as we stated, we will be taking action on the concerns you have shared about inappropriate and/or harassing behavior. As such, we want to make sure this is done legally, and thoroughly so we will be suspending operations after Sunday’s service.”
Just like that, we were all out of jobs, and we were smart enough to know that this was probably not going to be a “temporary” closure. Since we were already in a union meeting, we started to discuss what to do, and immediately filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge. While ULPs are not the most effective tool, we were out of work; we had lost our most powerful weapon, shopfloor direct action. Knowing the ULP process can take months to years to resolve, we also began preparing plans for an emergency picket line outside the corporate office demanding either a reopening of the Ypsilanti store or severance pay.
Due to the extreme reaction Bobcat Bonnie’s had to our organizing in conjunction with our announced plans for an emergency picket, our union email began flooding with inquiries from local news outlets like WXYZ, CBS Detroit, Fox 2 Detroit, MLive, and Detroit Free Press. The community pressure, the extensive news coverage, the damage to the reputation of the company, the legal pressure, and our informational picketing outside of the corporate office proved to be too much. The company gave into our severance pay demand on day two of our picket.
And that’s kind of where the story ended. Obviously, it wasn’t a great ending; if anything, it was bittersweet. This campaign left me asking a lot of questions: how did things go so well, but so wrong at the same time? Was it going public that shut our store down, or was the Ypsilanti store on the chopping block already? After all, the Partridge Creek store had closed about a month ago and, as you know, paychecks had been bouncing for over a year. We will probably never be able to definitively answer these questions. But here are some of my key takeaways:
1. I feel like going public was what inspired the company to take swift and severe action against our store. We delivered our petition on October 7th. We were forced to go public on October 11th. We were shut down two days later. Not only this, going public shifted our focus from organizing and winning demands to trying to appeal to the general public. It transformed the fight from improving our conditions to desperately trying to save our jobs (or at least win severance pay). I often wonder how this campaign might have been different if that random passerby never posted our flyer to Reddit. Or, perhaps, if we were more careful to prevent that from ever happening. In my estimation, going public escalated the situation greatly, but not in a way that built lasting worker power. It escalated the situation in a negative way and in a way that was not in our control. Escalation plans are meant to be in the workers’ control!
2. Despite this, negotiating a severance agreement on the picket line and winning it was a huge win for food workers. We caused a big enough problem that it made the boss realize giving in was cheaper than fighting. We also spoke to many food workers on that picket line who told us how inspired they felt to take action in their own workplaces. Thanks to the public-facing nature of this campaign, we were able to spread the Wobbly gospel widely. I think it was good for food workers to see the power of solidarity unionism in action.
3. Even more importantly, many of my coworkers learned how to organize on the job, attended an OT101, and became active members of our local IWW branch. And the former Bobcats organizing committee is meeting to come up with a brand-new branch project. We can scatter and continue to build the IWW wherever we go.
4. This campaign revealed to me the ultimate purpose of the IWW is to develop more worker-organizers. We can’t hyperfocus on any individual workplace; our focus is on organizing the worker. As we do this, our capacity to do bigger things exponentially grows.
Now, it’s your turn! Get a head start on organizing your “unorganizable” workplace. Schedule a one-on-one with some of your coworkers. Start agitating. Who knows, an Ember might be in your workplace; fan the flames of discontent!
Editor’s Note: If you are a member in good standing and wish to take the Organizer Training 101, please email the OTC. If you would like to request a group OT101 with your GMB, job branch, or coworkers, fill out this form.