During the pandemic, food service workers faced rapidly plummeting work conditions. These issues were especially felt by the staff of the regional coffee chain Augie’s. It was here where after several meetings, they decided to unionize. After workers told management that they wanted to form a union, management countered with an all staff town hall. In this town hall, management meant for workers to share their grievances and solve them without unionization. This did not go as planned,

“…it was kind of powerful. Every worker showed up…and they all stood in front of their employer and said, ‘We want a union!’ Like, it doesn’t really matter what [they’re] offering, right?… we want to have a say in it.”

All Augie’s workers were fired two days later. 15 of the core members of this movement stuck together and created Slow Bloom Coffee Cooperative,

“A worker co-op is founded on the basic premise of one worker, one vote…there’s profit sharing elements involved…but I think the core of the work for co-ops is the democracy, that decisions about work…working conditions…the business, compensation…everything that affects your labor…is controlled by workers…”

Slow Bloom workers had no model that was followed, instead they relied on a set of principles and the trust they had in each other. Bader reflected on other worker co-ops that his team hadn’t been aware of that they could’ve used as models during their earlier years.

“We didn’t really know what we were doing. We just needed something new and different. And we had some guiding principles and foundations, right? And we modeled ourselves based off of those principles, right? Of worker participation, of democracy, of solidarity, community.”

Slow Bloom joined Teamsters 1932 because they believe the union has the resources and experience to help organize more worker’s cooperatives in the Inland Empire. Bader says that Teamstersapproached them with the same sentiment, believing that Slow Bloom had the resources and experience that the union was looking for to help organize.

“It became a pretty obvious choice for us…It was one of our unanimous votes to join the team…”