How to Potluck Your Way to a Union

Summary

Podcast Summary: It Could Happen Here

Episode: How to Potluck Your Way to a Union

Date: June 2, 2026
Host: Mia Wong (Cool Zone Media)
Guests: Morgan & Renee (Muji Workers United)

Episode Overview

This episode explores how frontline retail workers at Muji, a Japanese minimalist department store in Portland, organized a union from the ground up—beginning with wage grievances, building solidarity through potlucks, and overcoming union-busting tactics. The episode focuses on the practical steps, challenges, and unique culture that emerged during the organizing drive, giving listeners a granular look at contemporary workplace organizing and mutual support.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Muji & Why Unionize?

• Muji Overview:
  • Japanese minimalist retailer, with worldwide locations. The Portland store is the only US West Coast location.
  • 32-person bargaining unit—everyone below the lowest management level is included.
    ([03:14])
• Reason for Organizing:
  • Triggered by lowest raises ever, despite record store performance (“store of the year” internal competition in 2024).
  • Raises ranged from 25–65 cents, all below inflation, even for long-tenured employees.
  • Increasing sales targets have meant bonuses dropped; some workers earned less this year than last, amounting to an effective pay cut despite the store's success.
    ([05:11], [07:03])
  • “My raise of 65 cents last summer was the highest by a significant margin.” — Muji Worker Rep ([07:03])
  • “There are employees who have been working for more than two years who still get paid around minimum wage.” — Renee ([07:20])

2. The Spark: From Grievance to Organizing

• Initial Steps:
  • Started with a small group and an IWW organizer in late 2025 after appraisals/raises.
  • Early meetings were small and informal.
  • Union drive took a holiday break; energy reignited after.

3. Building Solidarity: Potlucks as Organizing Strategy

• Why Potlucks?
  • Inspired by communal feasts from guest's childhood.
  • Potlucks offered a non-intimidating, social atmosphere, boosting turnout and morale.
  • “People are going to be more willing to come to an event if it wasn’t just going to be…talk shop…but a way to just hang out with their co-workers and eat dinner.” — Muji Worker Rep ([11:30])
  • Meetings grew to 10–12 people (out of 32), building confidence and community.
  • Sessions often started (and sometimes only consisted of) venting about work—cathartic, motivating, and built trust.
  • “It really agitated people in a way that I don't think we would have been able to do if we had just tried to talk to people at work about unionizing or had a more formal meeting.” — Muji Worker Rep ([13:20])

4. Workplace Conditions and Boss Behavior

• Issues Beyond Pay:
  • Emotional abuse: Yelling, insults, pressure not to use sick time, blaming staff for illness.
  • Overwork: Only a fraction of staff present to serve thousands of customers (3,000 over Memorial Day weekend).
  • Health hazards: Inadequate sick time, especially for part-timers—some evicted due to lack of hours.
  • Discriminatory enforcement of uniform code (fatphobia, racism, targeting alternative styles).
  • Inconsistent and exploitative HR practices: No direct access to HR; “complaints box” ignored.
  • Use of workers for ad-hoc security—vague instructions to profile customers.
  • Mishandling of sexual harassment complaints—delays, intimidation, and retaliation against those who spoke up.
  • “If your sick hours can get rejected, you don’t have sick hours.” — Mia ([23:19])
  • “They didn’t say outright, but they implied everything up to job loss for the people that were talking about this [sexual harassment].” — Muji Worker Rep ([29:37])

5. Going Public: The March on the Boss

• March on the Boss:
  • Decision to go public made after months of underground organizing.
  • Anticlimactic: Manager left early the day of action, highlighting managerial privilege and detachment.
  • “Management’s just like, ‘Yeah, fuck it, I’m just leaving. Everything’s going to be fine even if I’m not there.’” — Mia ([10:44])

6. Escalation and Legal Tactics

• Union-Busting Tactics:
  • Bosses tried to split the bargaining unit: Argued that merchandising staff were too different to join, and key holders were “supervisors.”
  • Hearings with the National Labor Relations Board, with workers self-representing.
  • Workers prevailed on both counts.
  • “Neither I nor my co-representative have experience in any sort of…legal fields…It was just putting in the work that was required.…It is something that everyone is able to do.” — Muji Worker Rep ([45:58])

7. Community Support & Media Attention

• Outreach:
  • May Day tabling, press coverage in NW Labor Press, Portland Mercury.
  • Growing Instagram/social media presence sought (Muji Workers United on Instagram).
  • GoFundMe set up to support potential strike fund: Financial insecurity is the biggest barrier to direct action.

8. Direct Action and Beyond the Contract

• Union as Community:
  • Beyond legal recognition, aim to use direct action for workplace improvements (e.g., ICE raid response plan, mutual aid, fitness/social groups).
  • Direct action is central: “The goal is not a contract. The goal is to use direct action to enact the changes that you want to see in your workplace…unionization at a workplace gets you much more than just a better contract.” — Muji Worker Rep ([50:01])
  • The union is a “fun hangout" and an antidote to alienation: "Extreme hanging out." — Renee ([52:59])

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Raises:

  • “My raise of 65 cents last summer was the highest by a significant margin.” — Muji Worker Rep ([07:03])
  • “There are employees who have been working for more than two years who still get paid around minimum wage.” — Renee ([07:20])

• On Boss Logic:

  • “So you’re getting yelled at for doing the thing you were told to do that is explicitly not part of your job…Explicitly not supposed to do this, so you could get punished if you do it, but also if you don’t do it, we’re gonna yell at you.” — Mia ([25:40])

• On Organizing Culture:

  • “It’s like, extreme hanging out.” — Renee ([52:59])
  • “If you want a way out of the stultifying boredom and isolation and crushing poverty of the modern capitalist experience, you too could create a union and resist all of those things simultaneously.” — Mia ([53:52])

• On Legal Process:

  • “Neither I nor my co-representative have experience in any…legal fields…It was just putting in the work that was required…It is something that everyone is able to do.” — Muji Worker Rep ([45:58])

---

Important Timestamps

• [03:14] — What is Muji? Scope of Portland’s store, basic facts
• [05:11] — The “spark” - lowest raises ever after the “store of the year”
• [11:30] — Potlucks as organizing tool: building solidarity off the clock
• [19:48] — Non-wage worker grievances: emotional abuse, sick time, unfair policies
• [23:18] — Sick hours denied through an app: “If your sick hours can get rejected, you don’t have sick hours.”
• [28:23] — Mishandling sexual harassment complaints by management/HR
• [32:54] — Upcoming union election and recent escalation in organizing
• [34:48] — Boss legal tactics to divide bargaining unit and worker self-representation
• [45:58] — “Everyone can do this”—on self-advocacy and legal action
• [48:33] — Strike fund and calls for outside support (GoFundMe, Instagram)
• [50:01] — Direct action: more than just contracts, power beyond paperwork

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Ways to Support Muji Workers United

• Financial support: GoFundMe for strike support [Muji Workers United]
• Social media: Follow and share [Instagram: Muji Workers United]
• Spread the word: Share published articles, news, and this podcast episode

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Closing Reflection

This episode demonstrates that successful union drives are built not just on policy demands but on building a culture—one where workers break the isolation of modern worklife, support one another, and put their collective strength into action both inside and beyond the official structures of recognition.
As Mia Wong puts it:

"If you want a way out of the stultifying boredom and isolation and crushing poverty of the modern capitalist experience, you too could create a union and resist all of those things simultaneously." ([53:52])

---

For more information:
Visit Muji Workers United on Instagram and check out the GoFundMe (linked in show notes).
Listen and share this episode to spread the word about organizing practical solidarity in retail and beyond.

Transcript

[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Renee]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Mia Wong]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Renee]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Mia Wong]

Cool Zone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about what workers can do when they try. I am Your host, Mia Wong. And with me today to talk about a company known, I guess in Portland for being a place where you shop and known most other places for being the people who make pens is Morgan and Renee from Bougie Workers United. Morgan, Renee, welcome to the show.

[Renee]

Thank you.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Hi. Thank you, Mia.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, so and obviously, I guess as you may have gotten from the word union and the title probably containing the word union, I don't know, we haven't written it yet. Is that. Yeah, one of the. One of the Muji stores in Portland is unionizing. Can you talk a little bit about like what Muji is for? People who are unaware of this slash, don't follow pens and or haven't been to the store.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah. So Muji is probably, I would describe it as a worldwide Japanese minimalist lifestyle department store. And that's a lot of words to say. It's a department store that is for essentially basics. Muji is short for a full name that essentially translates to no brand. And that's the idea that they're trying to push for and they're trying to show to people that it's like an eco friendly company and they try and push high quality products. And at our location in Portland, it's the only one on the American west coast and we have a relatively small shop. There's only 32 people in our bargaining unit. And this is a wall to wall bargaining unit which essentially means that everyone below the lowest management level at this location is involved with the union.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Which is A, really cool. And B, so you're talking about how this is the only one on the west coast. This is mostly a Japanese company that operates a little bit in the US and does things here.

[Renee]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

My understanding.

[Muji Worker Representative]

So it is a Japanese company. It actually primarily operates all over the world. It began in Japan in the 80s, I believe, if I know my company history correctly. But they pretty rapidly expanded across Asia and Europe and then have also since expanded into Africa and the Americas. If the Americas were relatively late, I don't think that there was a store in the Americas before the turn of the millennium. And the Portland location itself opened in, I want to say 2018 sometime like just pre Covid. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

So it's relatively recent. And I guess the thing that's even more relatively recent is y' all starting to organize a union. So can I ask sort of how did that start and what was the sort of things that started to get the ball rolling on it?

[Muji Worker Representative]

So I guess the way that organizing started was back in November of 2025 maybe shortly before that, we had a round of appraisals. These are like yearly end of fiscal year appraisals that are technically supposed to be the end of the fourth quarter. Typically they get pushed back by a month or two. Just company practice, because the appraisals are tied to our raises. And each employee who's worked for a year or more at the company gets a praise. And so we're scored in a system of one to five, and if you get a three or better, I believe the system goes, you get a raise that is directly tied to the number that you got. They use decimal systems. So the thing is that this year they gave us the lowest raise in memory of any of the workers that are currently there, myself included. For context. I'm one of the workers that has been at the store the longest and more than four years now. We have a pretty high turnaround, which is how I ended up being the longest tenured of the lower the management workers. And this came in a year that was the best year in the Portland locations history. Yeah. There's this competition that Muji runs internally where it puts each store under a group of stores worldwide, almost like World cup groups in a way where you're just kind of like randomly sorted into groups. And each year one of the groups is chosen. And within that group, they examine the performances of each of the stores within that group and select a winner to be the store of the year. So in 2024, we won store of the Year. And it was kind of a shock to a bunch of us to have such low raises after that.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

For example, my raise of 65 cents last summer.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Was the highest by a significant margin.

[Mia Wong]

What?

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yes.

[Renee]

It went as low as around like 25 cents.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah, that's right.

[Mia Wong]

I have done the math. But like, is. Is that sub inflation? Like.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yes, that is sub inflation.

[Renee]

It tends to be. There are employees who have been working for more than two years who still get paid around minimum wage.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[Muji Worker Representative]

In addition to that, the staff members who are key holders and full timers and above get bonuses. And the bonuses are directly tied to the amount of money that the store makes over the target amount for the month. And they drastically increased the targets for the year going forward, which meant that because of that, our bonuses were getting lower. So this year, for the last month since that raise, I've actually been making less money per month than I was the year before.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ. So. So you're getting pay cuts?

[Muji Worker Representative]

Basically, yes.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ. After winning Story of the Year. Incredible. Incredible stuff. Incredible stuff from the people who are running their company in an extremely normal way.

[Muji Worker Representative]

That was the spark that set this push for the union ablaze. And so in November, I contacted the IWW Industrial Workers of the World, and received a response. And so at first, it was just me and one of the IWW representatives that we were meeting together to talk about forming a union. And we ended up having those meetings somewhat regularly, and the amount of people attending those meetings slowly started to grow. So it was maybe like two people, three people here and there. And then we took a break for the holidays because people were just generally unable to make it out. And everything was super chaotic at the store. And after the holidays, I had the idea of hosting potlucks, essentially, and inviting people to potlucks. I can't remember, Renee, were you coming to these meetings before or after the potlucks?

[Renee]

The first meeting I went to was at the hall, where it was essentially just us grieving about our working conditions while the seasonals were there. And sort of. It was. I don't know how much it was in the works for you, how much stuff you had done up until that point, but I think that was the moment where we sort of became confident as a body in our prospects for unionizing. And then the potlucks thereafter.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah, and the potlucks ended up starting to pull around 10 people. I think the highest attended one was actually 12. And so when you have a shop that has about 32 people in the bargaining unit, that is about a third of the shop attending an early union meeting while we're still in the underground phase of organizing. And we managed to successfully remain underground up until we decided to go public on our own terms. On March 31, we had a march on the boss, which, slightly inconveniently, the boss had actually left the shop about 45 minutes early into her shift. And we had accounted for her leaving early, but we didn't account for her leaving that early. And so the march on the boss kind of had this anticlimactic moment where the manager just wasn't in the store anymore and there wasn't anyone that actually had supervisory authority at the store for the march,

[Mia Wong]

which I think there's two things there I want to. I want to come back to. One is the like, oh, yeah, of course, of course, management. Management never found out about the union, but just left early because their management. And it's like, oh, right, no, yeah. What happens if you leave? Just randomly walk off your job site, like, 45 minutes early. You're fucked. But management's just like, yeah, fuck it, I'm just done. I'm just out. Like I'm just, I'm just leaving. Everything's gonna be fine even if I'm not there. So I'm just gonna leave early.

[Renee]

Right.

[Mia Wong]

God. I wanted to talk about the potlucks a little bit because that's a, that's a really good idea as just a way to make sure you can consistently get a bunch of people there. And.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Can you talk about sort of what that was like and how they've been and what the effect of that has been?

[Muji Worker Representative]

The potlucks came about because I had the idea that people are going to be more willing to come to an event if it wasn't just going to be a meeting where they sat down and had to talk shop and they had to start talking about work while they're off the clock. But they'd be much more likely to come if the meeting was framed more as a way to just hang out with their co workers and eat dinner.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

So this actually came from my experience when I was a kid. I grew up Baha' I and, and even though I'm no longer Baha', I, the way that our community did it back home was mostly through community feasts and prioritizing the feasts first and then the religious discussion later. So taking that sort of idea and putting more of a union spin on it was the idea behind that and it was a massive hit.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Rene, do you have any more thoughts on that?

[Renee]

Yeah, I think the fact too that our worker body is, I don't know if uniquely is the right word, but especially tight knit and supportive of one another really just sort of helped things flow in a very natural and easygoing way. It was just super like salient for everything to come about out of these pollux. We just sort of like sat down and immediately started like complaining about work.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

[Renee]

Sort of got us going and, and like pretty much every meeting since, like that's how we just like start our, our discussion or in our meetings. It's just what bullshit have you been facing from your managers, et cetera. And we have to cut it short every time.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah, it feels bad sometimes to have to cut these complaints periods short because I think they can go on for two to three hours if we're not careful. And I think the early ones did actually go on for two to three hours and we had entirely potlucks that we didn't get any actual business done. We just spent two to Three hours eating food and complaining about work with each other. And honestly, that kind of helped people get more comfortable with the idea. And it really agitated people in a way that I don't think we would have been able to do if we had just tried to talk to people at work about unionizing or had a more formal meeting, and it really just kept the momentum going.

[Renee]

Yeah, I think it has this effect of realizing everything because, I mean, even I would walk in and be thinking like, you know, this is like such a taxing endeavor, unionizing the workplace. And, you know, every once in a while you'd have some sort of hesitation, I guess. But then every time I would leave, it would just sort of be like, this is. Like, this is the only option and we're definitely going to do it and we're all with it and it feels good.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It seems like from everything that I've heard and everything that you're saying, it seems like it's a really powerful way to sort of both combat atomization, both as a. Just like, oh, this is like a social space where you and the people you work with, who are your friends, can exist with each other. And then also in a. We can combat sort of alienation and atomization stuff by just doing the union work of, oh, my God, we all have all of these issues with our bosses. Yeah, yeah. And when we return, we're going to start talking and going to ask about the issues with the bosses. But first, here are, I don't know, the products and services that support this podcast.

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Renee]

Didn't he tell you not to audition

[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Mia Wong]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

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[Mia Wong]

We are back. I was like, oh, I have a good transition. I can, I can go from complaining about the bosses to talking about what the bosses are doing. And then I was like, shit, I, I was supposed to cut it and pivot it here. We didn't, we didn't think of that one fast enough. But you speaking, speaking of doing things fast enough. So, yeah, I wanted to ask before we get into sort of how things have been going more recently and where the campaign is going in election stuff, other than sort of the pay raise stuff, what are the kinds of things that people have been dealing with at Muji?

[Muji Worker Representative]

So there's a lot of small things that have kind of piled up. And honestly, I say small things, but each one of these is kind of just like shocking on its own, but not surprising necessarily to anyone that's worked in the service industry at all. So beyond the raises, there's just been like a long pattern of emotional abuse from the bosses. People have been yelled at for pretty much no reason. The bosses have directly insulted workers abilities like on the floor as they're doing stuff. They've done things like pressure staff not to use their sick time, even going so far as occasionally implying that getting sick is like your own fault and that people are able to perfectly prevent themselves from getting sick.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, in your job you have to be around people all the time because you're doing a service. God, I hate this like weird pseudo eugenicist shit about disease that's just everywhere. Now that runs the Department of Health and Human Services and the cdc.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Like this, this, this weekend or this last weekend at the time of recording was Memorial Day weekend. And on Saturday, the peak day of that weekend, there were 3,000 customers approximately in store over the course of the day.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And reminder that we are a team of 32 people in total. And so of course not all 32 people are going to be at the store at once at the same time. And so when your crew is maybe 10, 15, if you're lucky, people big and handling a customer volume of about 3,000 over the course of a day, you're interacting with so many people that it's worse than. Maybe it's not worse than. Because kids can get pretty nasty sometimes. Much respect to all the teachers out there. It can get to be a bit of a biohazard, especially when you're working in places like the fitting room that don't have ventilation. And you're possibly interacting the closest with customers. And you're constantly interacting with clothing that has been pressed up against people's bodies. You're interacting with people that just aren't being super conscious about the space. And maybe you're in this small confined area with two, three, even four other people for a prolonged period of time. Of course the customer service team is going to get sick more.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, that's like a small, medium sized convention that's just running through your store over the course of one day. It's like, oh yeah, everyone has pax pox or whatever like convention plague is. But that's just like going to work. Oh, it's like, oh yeah, no, of course. Apparently somehow you're supposed to like magically have the like anti disease talismans.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

As like the plagued masses.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And on top of that, I've called out maybe once a month. I think that maybe there's one month where it was twice a month since January. And I've already used up all the allocated sick time that I get for a year.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And that's with one of the better sick pay plans as a full timer. And so I can't imagine what people are having to go through at part time where they're already not getting enough hours to pay rent off of their job and they're having to decide essentially between coming to work sick or calling out and taking that financial hit. I know one of our staff members has actually been evicted because they were not able to make rent because they didn't make enough hours.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Renee]

Or just having your sick hours rejected on the app.

[Mia Wong]

What? This is an app? Oh my God.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah, that's right.

[Mia Wong]

If your sick hours can get rejected, you don't have sick hours. Like.

[Renee]

Yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

What? And there's more too. It doesn't end there. They apply policies. We have this employee handbook that has this list of requirements and expectations and it is not really a huge part of our employment typically. But the policies that they have listed there are applied inconsistently. Stuff like the Uniform Code is one of the biggest examples of this where they will more heavily enforce the Uniform Code against people of color or people with alternative styles of dress or even they can be fairly fat phobic. There have been multiple people that have said that the managers will pressure them to essentially cover up parts of their body that they will allow skinnier people to show.

[Mia Wong]

What? Jesus Christ. Oh my God. That is so incredibly shitty. And that's got to be illegal somehow. Even under, like, unhinged American labor law. That just feels like. It feels like a very open form of discrimination, but. Jesus Christ. Oh, my God.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah. Do you have anything to add, Rene, along those lines?

[Renee]

Just sort of like being asked to profile people. All employees can be scheduled to cover the security's breaks, which basically just involves standing around one of the entrances and reporting anything, quote, fishy on the radios, anything suspicious. They say suspicious.

[Mia Wong]

So wait, so they could just co opt you into being a security guard?

[Muji Worker Representative]

What?

[Renee]

Yeah, the security guard doesn't have any duties regarding, like, loss prevention. All the managers do that as part of their duties, I guess. But yeah, so they just sort of say suspicious people.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And on that note, too, there have been times where people have been maybe not strictly disciplined. I actually don't know for sure if there's been an incident of someone being written up, but there have been times where the managers have approached people and essentially just yelled at them for allowing someone to get out of the store with merchandise. Even though loss prevention is very specifically not part of our job description and that the official store policy actively discourages staff from engaging in active loss prevention like that.

[Mia Wong]

So you're getting yelled at for doing the thing you were told to do that is explicitly not part of your job. That's supposed to be the manager's job. And the managers are pissed off that you're not doing what's nominally their job that you also, in the written thing, you're not supposed to do.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Exactly.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible. Incredible, incredible. Catch 22 Logic here. It's real. Just. Oh, yeah, you're explicitly not supposed to do this. So you could get punished if you do it, but also if you don't do it, we're gonna yell at you. It's gone. Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Naturally, there's not really anything that we can do about this besides unionize and besides start taking actions on our own because the law certainly isn't going to help us for this. Yeah, Even Oregon state law, which is. Which tends to be more protective of workers than other states are. They're incredibly overwhelmed right now with requests. And going through the bully Bureau of Oregon labor and Industries, I think is the acronym going down the bully website lists. There's a complaints box, but it says on the website that they have an incredibly high backlog of complaints that they're trying to process and that they're going through a triage system. And none of the things that we've listed so far would be placed very highly on that triage. In addition to that, we don't have access to direct access to our HR department at work. They ask us to go through a third party reporting company called Lighthouse. And as far as I know, no one has ever heard anything about Lighthouse doing anything to resolve a situation between them and management when management is treating them unfairly.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And it essentially feels like just shouting into the void. Interacting with Lighthouse because you're just sending a complaint to a body that you don't have any access to and just hoping that they fix something.

[Mia Wong]

So they've contracted out their HR department so you're just like talking to their. Or is it that you can't communicate with them directly? And that's very weird.

[Muji Worker Representative]

So they have an HR department. The workers at the physical location cannot communicate with hr. We are not given their phone numbers or their emails or anything like that. All of our HR communication has to be done through our general store manager. So when we have problems with the general store manager or assistant store managers, we can't really go to HR because we have to go through the very people that we're having problems with in order to reach our hr.

[Mia Wong]

Incredible. They so much make HR even faker, which is incredible. Oh good Lord.

[Muji Worker Representative]

It would also be remiss, I guess, to forget about the sexual assault.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, Jesus Christ.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Maybe not specifically sexual assault, but definitely sexual harassment. Possible sexual assault that has been raised to management before where the management supposedly pushed those complaints to hr but then HR would wait for weeks before doing anything about it.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Muji Worker Representative]

This, this happened a year or two ago. No, it was probably more in the realm of two to three years ago, if my memory is correct, where we had a co worker that was not just profiling people and calling security on people that were doing nothing, but he was also sexually harassing other coworkers.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus Christ.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And the store managers told us that they had pushed these complaints to hr, but HR wasn't doing anything. And it took them about a month, I believe, to fire this person. And essentially what they were doing before is they were telling people that if they talked about the situation or created drama about the situation that they would retaliate against the people that were talking about the situation.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God. Jesus.

[Muji Worker Representative]

They didn't say outright, but they implied everything up to job loss for the people that were talking about this.

[Mia Wong]

Oh my God.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And they started pulling people into the office and essentially having one on one conversations that were honestly quite scary to the people that were trying to spread the word about this. And it created quite a hostile store environment for a long time. Around that time was Actually the first time that we had attempted to try and get a push to unionize, but that ended up dissolving and that was essentially the end of that up until this most recent push.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. God, that's really hideous. Both the way in which they just pushed it up the ladder to HR and then just didn't do anything about it for like a fucking month. And that also just the only thing they did do about it was retaliating against the people who were trying to talk about it. That is. Jesus, that's disgusting.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah. About the most that they did during that month to the actual co worker in question that was doing the harassment was they tried to maintain some degree of physical separation between him and the other co workers and that was it. They kept him on the roster. They kept him at the same positions that other people were working. He had essentially all the same job responsibilities as other people and still had a pretty high degree of contact with other co workers during this whole time.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. So the people who were trying to speak out against it until this guy was fired were getting punished more than he was essentially.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Muji Worker Representative]

All the way up until he was finally fired. And I don't know what it was that actually got them to do at this time, but they wanted to wait until they had got something actually on camera, I believe. But it's kind of hard for you to catch something like harassment words on camera.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

If their bar for sexual harassment is stuff that they can catch on camera, they're never going to get most instances of harassment and they're not doing their proper job investigating these accusations.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. And that also means that their deliberate strategy is to wait for someone to get hurt again.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Exactly. That's right.

[Mia Wong]

They're just throwing them to the fucking lion's den. Your strategy to detect that a bus is about to hit someone is to push someone in front of the bus and take a picture of it, which is just so unbelievably unacceptable.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah. And I want to be clear too, that this whole list is very much non exhaustive. There have been so many cases of just patterns of abuse from management and it's not possible for me to go down the entire list of things. I mean, as I mentioned previously, it would be two to three hours of people complaining about stuff that they had gone through at work during these meetings. And occasionally you get some repetition. But this is something that is very consistent. It's just a part of working at the store.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. Every day there's just another unique horror that someone is experiencing. And I guess this brings us to. Okay, so how do you make the horror stop? And that is unionizing. So, yeah, let's talk about what's been happening recently in terms of, like, how the union is immobilizing and about the upcoming election, which will be a few days after you're hearing this, assuming you're listening to this the day it comes out.

[Renee]

Yeah, so we've been sort of ramping up a little bit. It's been ebbing and flowing since we started, you know, last, like, November. But we're really trying to kick it into gear, get people aware, get. Get people back engaged. So we have a few things we've been doing on May 1st for May Day, we tabled with the IWW and just started a petition just for signatures from the community for support, for acknowledgement. If we ever need to, you know, pull it out and show our bosses that, you know, this is no light endeavor. This is not like something they can laugh off.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Renee]

But it ended up being sort of successful beyond what I imagined. We got lots of attention. Lots of people saying that they didn't know that we were unionizing. People taking lots of pictures of us, our big banner. We got one inquiry for a journal report that I think is out now. And we were also written about in. What was it? Was it Oregon Live or was it the Oregonian? Do you remember, Luna?

[Muji Worker Representative]

We had a small article published about us by the Northwest Labor Press that was then picked up by the Portland Mercury.

[Renee]

That's right. Yeah. So we did that. And then other than that, we're sort of fighting some recently published propaganda from our bosses with just a hilarious amount of misinformation.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, no. Yeah. An average boss communicates.

[Muji Worker Representative]

The other big thing that's been happening is that the reason that the election is happening so long after our initial march and declaration of intent to unionize is that the bosses have been trying to divide up the bargaining unit in a fairly strange case where the employer has been contending that the merchandising staff, which is essentially the back of the house staff, but only like a subsection of the back of the house staff, are not eligible for unionization under the same union as the rest of the staff are. They did this under the notion that the merchandising staff don't share a community of interest with the rest of the staff. And the other thing that they tried to do is they tried to take the key holders, which are sort of like a shift lead position, away from the bargaining unit by trying to get them designated as supervisors. Specifically section 211 supervisors under the National Labor Relations Act. And we managed to shoot down both of those contests in a board hearing with the National Labor Relations Board. Hell yeah. And the process took a little bit over a month if I remember correctly. And without going too heavily into detail about it, the community of interest rule basically says that if employees don't share a community of interest with members of a bargaining unit, they have to unionize under a different union. And then the other thing is that the NLRA says that if you have supervisory authority and there's a whole laundry list of authorities that are defined in the act, if you are a supervisor, then you don't get to unionize legally, period. And so what made this case strange is that typically employers try and add groups of employees onto the unit they believe are on the side of the employer, the anti union side. And the union generally has to contend that these people don't share community of interest or are supervisors or whatever. So it was kind of a bit of a strange situation where it's turned on its head where instead the employer is having to prove that these people are not sharing community of interest or are supervisors. And so even though we couldn't afford proper legal counsel, and so the union representatives were myself and a friend of ours who is a member of the iww. We were able to essentially represent ourselves in this board hearing. And the case was decided in our favor on both counts.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah. That rocks.

[Muji Worker Representative]

It really does. I was not shocked to find out that the case was decided in our favor on the community of interest issue, because that would be like saying that the back of the house workers at a restaurant can't unionize with the front of the house workers just because they have different job descriptions.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, gibberish, right?

[Muji Worker Representative]

However, I was surprised at first, I was surprised at least that we managed to win on the issues of supervisory authority with the key holders. I thought that it would take a pretty solid case in order for us to defend against that. And huge props to our friend who I'm not sure if they're comfortable being name dropped as an iww member like 5 to the world. So I'm not going to name them. But it is large thanks to this friend of ours that we won that case.

[Mia Wong]

Oh,

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[Mia Wong]

Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? Huge news. We created our own podcast called hey Jonas.

[Muji Worker Representative]

We invented a podcast.

[Mia Wong]

Well, we didn't invent it.

[Muji Worker Representative]

We.

[Mia Wong]

We just contributed to first people to do podcasts. Pretty. Yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts, but this one's extra special. So how did we. How do we actually come up with

[Muji Worker Representative]

the name hey Jonas?

[Mia Wong]

Guys, I honestly don't remember.

[Muji Worker Representative]

I think it was on a call

[Mia Wong]

about what we should call it and, well, we were thinking, I'm originally calling it it. One of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers was. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes, I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, hey Jonas. And offered it up as a potential

[Muji Worker Representative]

title for the podcast.

[Mia Wong]

But thanks for remembering that. Guys, listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or, or wherever

[Muji Worker Representative]

you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. This is Saigon. The story of my family and of the country that shaped us. The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country.

[Mia Wong]

From iHeart podcasts, Saigon, please allow me

[Renee]

to introduce Joseph Sherman.

[Mia Wong]

You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much.

[Muji Worker Representative]

I like hearing you talk.

[Mia Wong]

One city, a divided country and the war that tore America apart. This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese brown fire. Do you read me?

[Muji Worker Representative]

They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches.

[Mia Wong]

I'm on a landmine. For freedom. Let's get out. Freedom for Vietnam. Saigon. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. Staying here's madness.

[Muji Worker Representative]

The world should hear about this. There's a fire coming to this country

[Mia Wong]

and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Muji Worker Representative]

In 2023, a story gripped the UK evoking horror and disbelief.

[Mia Wong]

The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict. A villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole

[Mia Wong]

picture, the case collapses.

[Muji Worker Representative]

I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast the Case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby. You can binge all episodes now on iHeart podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So that's where we stand now. And the board hearing was to decided in our favor and the election has been decided for next week and both sides are now just trying to have our campaigns in preparation.

[Renee]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah. It's a sort of different version of like the very common tactic of because bosses want there to be more time in between when you like file your paperwork to unionize and the election because it gives them more time to do intimidation and fear tactics. And like that period in between deciding to unionize and getting to actually do the vote is one of the periods where union is most vulnerable. And it's also really impressive that. Yeah, you just sort of walked into the board hearing and beat them by just reading a bunch of labor law stuff. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Workers of the world too fucking anti union lawyers. Zero.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah, basically.

[Renee]

Yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

It was very strange. Cross examining my manager under oath.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And then going to work. I didn't manage to attend the entirety of either of the days of the hearing because I had to close. I had to go to work at noon on both days that the hearing was.

[Mia Wong]

That's so nuts.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Which is why I wasn't there for the full hearing for either of the days. So I ended up having to log on in the morning onto the Zoom meeting and attend the first two and a half hours and then hop off, call and leave, and then go to work and see my managers at work.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God. After you dinner. Oh, my God. It's also. That's so nuts that you didn't get time off to go to the union hearing.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Exactly.

[Renee]

Yeah. I mean, they were getting paid, right?

[Mia Wong]

That's wild.

[Muji Worker Representative]

They were getting paid.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God.

[Muji Worker Representative]

The managers that were testifying in favor of the employer capitalism.

[Mia Wong]

Bad system. Wow. Who could possibly have expected this?

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah, it was actively a challenge to find witnesses to testify for us because the people who we'd be able to call as witnesses or co workers are people who are maybe working the days of the hearing and can't actually get time off to come testify because they have to be at work.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, my God. That's so fucked.

[Muji Worker Representative]

There was one person who we approached because we were hoping that they would testify for us who couldn't because she was working that day. And it's too complicated of a process to want to try and, like, subpoena them and illegally get them to have the time off to come to the hearing.

[Mia Wong]

Jesus.

[Muji Worker Representative]

So we ended up just having to figure out a way to present different witnesses and have a slightly weaker case because of it. And thankfully that didn't end up mattering. But for a minute, I was worried that we wouldn't be able to have as good of a case as we could have because we were not able to get a key holder on the stand like we were hoping.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. I'm glad you were able to pull it together. That's really impressive. And yeah. That you still just beat them even though they had. And I guess that is one of the lessons of this is like, yeah, if you're willing to put the work in and work together and figure out how to navigate the system and figure out where you can apply pressure. Yeah. You can beat a bunch of people who have way, way, way, way more resources than you do, because they're usually just wrong.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Muji Worker Representative]

I want to actually really drive that point home that neither I or my co representative have experience in any sort of, like, legal fields. Neither of us are even law students. We are just the people that decided to step up and take on this role. And I don't think that there is some, like, special, unique quality about us that allowed us to do it. It was just putting in the work that was required. It's a scary thing being asked to essentially represent yourself in a legal setting. And I think it's a testament to how people are capable of things that they're not necessarily trained to do. And that this whole process of unionization does not necessarily require the vast resour that you might think it entails. It requires some planning, it requires some tactics, but it is something that everyone is able to do.

[Mia Wong]

Hell yeah. I guess if I was really on my game here, I would have something about like the concept of the organic, intellectual, etc. Etc. But I don't even think that's really what's going on here. It's just like in the same way that, like, economics is designed to be esoteric and, you know, like, finance is designed to be difficult to understand. But in the immortal words of Dan Olson, there are plenty of C students who've gotten economics degrees. Like, you can understand this. It's just. It just takes some work and it takes some dedication to fighting together. And it takes, yeah, people working together. But these people are not smarter than you, they're not better than you. They have more money. But that's ultimately not the factor that decides everything.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And I don't want to discount the amount of support that we receive from the rest of our co workers as well. Yeah, this was truly a group effort and everyone helped out in their own small ways. Whether it was helping take care of social media posts, whether it was helping cook for us host meeting locations. I've been dealing with a pest problem at my apartment, so I've been unable for about the amount of time that all this legal process has been going on. So I haven't been able to host potlucks anymore.

[Mia Wong]

Oh, no.

[Muji Worker Representative]

And a former co worker of ours has been hosting instead and putting in the work for that. It really is something that works when everyone comes together and takes part in the process. Hell yeah.

[Mia Wong]

So speaking of everyone coming together and helping to work for the process, if people want to help y', all, what can they do?

[Muji Worker Representative]

We are looking actually at a bit of a financial struggle right now. The biggest thing is that we don't have the funds at the moment to go on strike. Not for any significant duration at least. Yeah, we have a GoFundMe Muji Workers United.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah, we will put that in the description.

[Muji Worker Representative]

The other thing is that we are looking for a lot of social media support. Actually. Muji is a very media driven company and we are trying to set up an Instagram account that has a lot of visibility. You can follow Us Also Muji Workers United on Instagram. And it seems like people have been sharing our articles across the Internet, both the NWLP article about us and then now you're interviewing us, which is an enormous help to us. Mia, thank you. We super appreciate it.

[Renee]

Yeah, thank you so much.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Of course.

[Mia Wong]

Happy to.

[Muji Worker Representative]

I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Renee.

[Renee]

Yeah, just the Instagram. We have lots of very talented artists working at Muji, like everyone, great graphic designers, a lot of just very fun and cool people. So, yeah, I'm sure that will be expressed in our future social media posts. Yeah.

[Mia Wong]

Oh yeah, we'll link that in the description too.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Awesome. Thank you, Mia.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah. One final thing. You want to plug direct action?

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yes, I do. We've spent a lot of time talking about the legal side of unionization because our union is currently seeking federal recognition with the nlrb. I want to emphasize that this is not the end of unionization. The goal is not a contract. The goal is to use direct action to enact the changes that you want to see in your workplace. For what are probably obvious reasons. I don't want to talk about specifically stuff that we have planned, or maybe not even stuff that we've done in the past. But for example, one thing that I can talk about is that we have an ICE response plan. Like what do we do if ICE shows up at our workplace and tries to raid us? We have a plan for that. And I obviously don't want to go further into detail about that, but that is something that we did as an example of a direct action. There's also other stuff. There's lots of historical examples of workers getting gains in their workplace. You have examples of stuff like Just a Simple march on the boss has historically worked to sway the boss, even without necessarily a change in the contract. Or you can have stuff that's all very legal and above board, obviously of people just agreeing to not be as friendly with their boss at work and emotionally sway their boss that way. Or having smaller outside of work actions where people are helping each other out and having a workplace mutual aid project, or even something as simple as implementing a workplace fitness plan. That's something that we've discussed a couple of times at meetings very loosely, like just going on hikes together or having the community sports and stuff just to keep each other in shape and keep our communities healthy. All of this stuff is stuff that exists beyond the contract. We're currently emphasizing the contract because that's what we are at the moment seeking, because the contract helps this feel more real for people who aren't quite on board with the idea of unionization yet. But unionization at a workplace gets you much more than just a better contract with your employer. And you can enact changes at your workplace faster if you work together with your co workers and organize your co workers. Hell, yeah. Anything to add, Renee?

[Renee]

Everyone in the union is very aware of, you know, regarding their respective capacities to help.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Renee]

What they can, you know, and cannot do their limits. And I think just after, you know, working together enough, everything marries in a very effective way. And. And yeah, even just like. Like all of these sort of direct actions that. That Luna was naming are just came out of our meetings. Just ideas that people think might be fun to do or, you know, people sharing their hobbies and want to share them with other people.

[Mia Wong]

Yeah.

[Renee]

And so, yeah, it really is just sort of a fun hangout. I don't want to trivialize it, but it's like, extreme hanging out.

[Mia Wong]

Well, yeah, I think it touches on something that's really important about all of this, which is, you know, people will in the abstract talk about unions as, like, social institutions, but, like, what. What that actually means is it's like, yeah, it's a place where you and your friends and the people you work with go and do stuff together. And, you know, I guess. I guess I want to wrap up on, like, if you want a way out of the stultifying boredom and isolation and crushing poverty of the modern capitalist experience, you too can create. You too could create a union and resist all of those things simultaneously.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Yeah.

[Renee]

Yeah,

[Mia Wong]

it could happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you

[Muji Worker Representative]

can now find sources for. It could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

[Mia Wong]

Hey, guys, it's us, the Jonas brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called hey Jonas.

[Muji Worker Representative]

We invented a podcast.

[Mia Wong]

Well, we didn't invent it.

[Muji Worker Representative]

We.

[Mia Wong]

We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts.

[Muji Worker Representative]

We get to ask other people questions

[Mia Wong]

because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick. Listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Muji Worker Representative]

Just listen.

[Renee]

We don't care where you hear it. Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it. So by stopping at the education section

[Muji Worker Representative]

of a resume, you might throw away

[Renee]

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[Muji Worker Representative]

is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.

[Jenny Garth]

Your identity is formed by a secret history.

[Muji Worker Representative]

I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him.

[Jenny Garth]

Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets

[Muji Worker Representative]

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is is getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akilah Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come

[Mia Wong]

down, I was thinking about what it

[Muji Worker Representative]

meant that I grew up in a majority black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslaved people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.