Report on workplace organizing campaign in Ypsilanti, MI. Originally posted to the Industrial Worker. “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…

Fieldnotes: Bobcats United IWW Campaign via thefreeonline.. https://thefreeonline.com/2024/12/15/fieldnotes-bobcats-united-iww-campaign/#respond

Report on workplace organizing campaign in Ypsilanti, MI. Originally posted to the Industrial Worker.

“… 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.