It Could Happen Here Weekly 244

**Robert Evans** (0:03)
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know, this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

**Emilio Hwang** (0:28)
Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart, putting them back together again, and occasionally discovering that there is in fact a second union. I am your host, Emilio Hwang. Now, a little while back, I did an interview with a group of electrolysis workers who were working for a company called Real U Electrolysis, and we talked about their unionization efforts and the horror show that was going on there. Now, what I didn't mention at the time was that in the process of talking to those workers and that union, I learned that there was in fact a second union that had been organized kind of unrelated to the first union at the other location. And that is who we are talking to today to get an update on what has been going on in general with the entire situation, and also talk about their union, and a thing that you will kind of commonly experience randomly unionizing places, which is that sometimes there is another organizing effort at another one of the locations at the same place that you were organizing and you don't know about it because everyone's keeping it secret.
So, yeah, to talk about this, I'm joined by Lake and Andy from Gender Affirming Care Workers Alliance. Yeah, both of you two, welcome to the show.

**Lake** (1:49)
Hi, thank you for having us. Thank you.

**Emilio Hwang** (1:52)
Yeah, I'm very excited to talk to you both. And I guess before we get into the initial organizing, what was it like finding out that the other shop was also unionizing?

**Lake** (2:02)
Oh my God, it was terrifying.
So like our number one priority during our liquid campaign was secrecy. We absolutely knew how hostile management was towards any kind of improvement of workplace conditions. So going from almost spy versus spy level of OPSEC to figuring out that Vancouver was also unionizing and was doing a walkout. Like I think that was when we learned.

**Emilio Hwang** (2:35)
Oh God.

**Lake** (2:36)
Was when the day that they kind of imploded and we were terrified. Like we did not think there would be any way out of that for Lakewood. Yeah.

**Emilio Hwang** (2:47)
Yeah. That's a rough way to find out when, yeah, the other union is like, oh God, okay, we have to do a walkout and we have to go on strike because they're firing us.

**Lake** (2:58)
Yeah. I mean, it was certainly understandable. I wouldn't say we knew why the walkout was happening. When we found out that the walkout happened and that a strike was starting, our campaign came to a halt.
Realizing there was another campaign happening, made us had to reconsider what we were doing. We had our own grievances and we were really just in the process of getting people on board. We had maybe a core group of five, but we had up to 13 in the end, but we had 10 to 12 to be electrologists, because that number was constantly changing. We had to stop and reassess.

**Emilio Hwang** (3:43)
Yeah, that makes sense.

**Lake** (3:44)
And obviously we wanted solidarity with Vancouver. We wanted to do whatever we could to support them, but we also didn't want to lose our jobs.
One of the first things we decided at Lakewood is that we weren't going to ask anyone to lose their job in order to unionize. We weren't going to put anyone in a position where they would then become unstable. Almost every single worker at Lakewood desperately needed this job. Without it, we would risk homelessness or other things. So we kind of got stuck. I mean, it was a tough situation to be in, knowing that we would have been on their side, and with more information and more planning, we would have probably joined them, but we weren't there yet.

**Emilio Hwang** (4:27)
Yeah. And this is, I guess, partially also, like, you know, one of the things that's difficult about doing campaigns is that sometimes, like, sometimes campaigns move at the speed that the workers are organizing at, and then sometimes they move at the speed of, like, oh, my god, the boss is firing everyone. We just have to go now.