Union Busting at Ceremony Tea!
***Editorial Note: This article has been reposted from the Service Worker. Ceremony is in College Hill, Providence close to Thayer St & Angell St. Originally written June 13th.***
In February of last year, workers at Ceremony Tea had enough and decided to unionize with UFCW Local 328. The owner, Michelle, got wind of it early and immediately changed two student-workers' employment statuses to independent contractor so that they couldn't join the union. When the workers presented to her their intent to unionize, she was already on the phone with her business lawyer trying to worm her way out of recognizing the union, even interrupting workers giving their testimonials to ask her lawyer to silence them. The union representative present was forced to argue with the lawyer until the two workers were allowed to speak again.
Anxiously, the workers described the owner as dismissive when they try to bring up issues to her about the insanely low pay of $9.00/hr plus tips, broken equipment, and negligent managers. Workers at Ceremony also have to take weeks-long unpaid training at New Harvest after being hired. To top it off, instead of healthcare, workers are offered coupons to her father's acupuncture parlor (where he's been accused of inappropriate touching).
Despite background conversation in the video at times being louder than the two workers, Michelle portrayed the walk on the boss as a "battlefield" in "a place not meant for shouting," that she was "hunted," and that "there was no preamble, no 'can we talk,' no conversation." Michelle reluctantly signed the union certification a few days later, and then organized a class-collaborationist town hall, which no workers showed up to.
Soon after, Michelle found a pretext for firing the lead organizer: he had been spying on managers' slack messages through the unlocked company laptop. Michelle and management caught it all on camera over a few months during winter 2025, building their case. In the spring, Michelle confronted the lead organizer directly, without his union representation present, violating the worker's Weingarten Rights per the NLRB to union counsel at disciplinary meetings. Her husband also conducted parts of the interrogation. Michelle fired him immediately after this, so he had UFCW Local 328 file a ULP with the NLRB. But later, they abandoned this worker when they dropped the filing.
According to Michelle they asked for silence about the worker in exchange for dropping the ULP, and acknowledged directly to her that in their opinion firing him wasn't union busting. The other worker who was present at the walk on Michelle went to the UFCW for help, but they told her there 'was nothing anyone could do.' So, let's get this straight: the state union had a credible case that she was union busting by this point in general, yet they dropped the most rebellious worker because he rebelled too far outside legalism. But a real worker's union is a vehicle for the rebellion of workers, not a damper on it.
The fired worker soon began visiting the store to show solidarity with his coworkers, but Michelle filed a police report and a cease-and-desist against him so he could no longer visit the store. Without pause, Michelle began harassing the second lead organizer. This lead had to take the winter off due to health, and Michelle offered her a few extra days to recover. Yet when she returned, Michelle used it against her and threatened to write her up for not providing a doctor's note for the extra days off. When the second lead organizer went to the state union for help, "[She] felt let down by the union and unjustly targeted, and opted to quit."
When the third lead organizer allegedly threw a syrup bottle at a manager where it shattered next to her on the wall, Michelle says the union "distanced themselves from this lead, too." So, the state union, concerned with legality and not with class struggle as it comes, excess and all, abandoned three of its most advanced worker-organizers on the shop floor to capitalist labor discipline.
Negotiations began in May. At first, a few employees would sit in on conversations. Then one. Then just Michelle and her lawyer with the two union representatives. In these negotiations, the union representatives fought for a tiered system of employment where full-time employees were 'senior' to part-time employees and "had more important needs," only negotiating for benefits like PTO and health insurance to full-time workers. This is inexcusable opportunism. While claiming to represent the workers, UFCW Local 328 union representatives were performing backroom deals that would exclude a whole section of workers from benefiting from any potential contract.
By October Michelle had purged the most advanced workers with no fight by the union, and most of the other workers had quit, meaning almost complete turnover. Two original union workers who stayed got managerial roles, and Michelle changed the onboarding training to 'educate' on the pros and cons of unions, like the "inability to talk directly to employees" (meaning the right to fire workers how she wanted). The few remaining original pro-union workers had become disillusioned with and alienated from the state union, and the new workers were ambivalent to it. This gutted staff voluntarily wrote and unanimously signed a letter of intent to de-certify from Local 328.
Only after this the union representatives began visiting the store for prolonged periods, always trying to talk to workers on break or who were leaving their shift on the way to their car. They were trying to convince the workers not to de-certify. How Greedy! First, they do nothing, then when their potential dues are threatened, they suddenly show up!
Not long after, in November, the state union filed an injunction on the social media manager. They claimed she was a "statutory supervisor" even though she had no disciplinary tasks, or the power to hire or fire. But she signed the de-certification letter, so in essence they wanted to disqualify the letter and prolong a de-certification vote by taking her to court, all over a mere nominal title. The NLRB lawyer told Michelle casually over the phone that the whole proceeding could take up to a year.
But in the same week, the state union emailed Michelle one sentence: "Please be advised that UFCW Local 328 disclaims representation of the Ceremony/Beyond Teas LLC bargaining unit." By the way, they sent the injunction a few days before Thanksgiving then waited after the holiday to send this message, agonizing the worker they were about to frame during a family holiday. When the alien nature of the modern state unions presented itself to the majority of the workers, they rejected it on their own; afterwards, the union reps became more persistent, and tried to bully them to stay so they can collect future union dues, before abruptly giving up. Perhaps UFCW Local 328's financial information from 2025 can shed light on their behavior:
Out of Total Net Assets of $5M, $3.5M are in investments, including government bonds. For Cash Receipts, $5.3M out of $6.3M, or 84%, of Revenue was from union dues. This is coming from 9,335 members of Local 328, paying $27 - $51 a month in dues. For Disbursements, "Representational Activities" (union bureaucrat salaries) are $1.4M, Per Capita Tax was $2M, while total disbursements were $6.2M. Benefits (to union members) were $716K, union administration was $550K, government lobbying was over $115K, and strike benefits were $0. In other words Local 328 works to make its bureaucrats fat and happy and gives little in substance back to the workers. Benefits to workers amounted to half of bureaucrat salaries and only slightly more than the salaries of union executives, while the strike fund was nothing.
This should be shocking to all working class activists, and to labor activists and union members in particular. The strike is the indispensable weapon of the working class against capital in the arena of the workplace, and UFCW Local 328 devotes no disbursement to it from a revenue of $6.3M. This, the abandonment of the most advanced workers to bourgeois discipline, the two-tiered contract, and the greedy yet noncommittal bid to retain the Ceremony Tea workers, is all rank and vile opportunism; and no serious partisan of the working class would disagree. The question is whether or not this situation is typical or accidental, whether UFCW Local 328 is a 'bad local' or if the establishment unions tied to the US state are all rotten.
On the one hand, it is unquestionable that Michelle committed union busting. First she changed the designation of student-workers to private contractors so that they'd be excluded from the union. Then she fired the most militant and rebellious workers, who took up active leadership roles in the organizing. She filed a cease-and-desist against the first of them, who continued agitating at the store, and through it all, aired this dirty laundry on the company social media account.
On the other hand, UFCW Local 328 rolled over and helped her do it. First they abandoned three different lead organizers, then during negotiations, they privileged the full-time workers at the expense of the part-time workers. In these negotiations, these rightist demands by the union were advanced as backroom deals with very little input from the workers. Finally when the workers were abandoned and alienated by the state union, and voted to de-certify, the union became active again, and harassed workers so that they would stay with the union, all before framing a higher paid worker so that they could attempt to delay a de-certification vote "up to a year."
To paraphrase Mao, it is only necessary to dissect one sparrow to know the anatomy of all sparrows. What is meant by this is that what is true within the particular case (of this union) is true for the whole genus (of unions in general) as long as the essence is truly grasped. And the essence is this: unions as organizations by and for the workers cannot be truly for them when they aren't composed of workers themselves; And the modern establishment unions are composed exclusively by an army of lawyers and professional bureaucrats concerned only with containing their union members within the laws of the NLRB. The labor aristocracy, which these bureaucrats are, cannot do anything different in any union they control. It is their nature to institute labor peace between the bosses and the workers and act as a second manager in enforcing the contract. By denying class struggle, by denying leadership via direct action on the shop floor, by their conservatism, cautiousness, and conciliation to both sides, the result is that in every circumstance they roll over to the bosses and always secure bad contracts that the power of class struggle could have far surpassed.
Surely the contract system and the NLRB will need to be dealt with even by independent unions made up exclusively of workers on the shop floor, since without a binding written agreement there is no real contract whatsoever. The important thing is that the workers control their union and its independence, to defend its combativeness. It is fully within their independence and initiative to create bargaining units separate from, but composed of authorized independent union members, to negotiate NLRB-compliant contracts. This skillfully and tactfully prevents the commonplace snares of no-strike clauses, managerial rights clauses, Taft-Hartley, and RICO from affecting the activity of the independent union, even if the bargaining unit itself is forced to sign onto them. The complete change in tactics and methodology of independent unionism stresses class struggle, and treats the contract simply as the fait acompli of the results of the struggle, rather than the state unions' sole means of struggle.
To conclude, the fact is that the demands of the workers have gone unmet, and from the beginning these demands were objective and justified. With the defeat of the union we can only assume that business as usual goes on at Ceremony: low pay, broken equipment, no PTO or health insurance, incompetent management and dismissive/delusional ownership. Given the circumstance that an element alien to the workers - the state union - began harassing them to stay, it is unlikely that a campaign to boycott or agitate outside of Ceremony on behalf of UFCW Local 328 would lead to making contacts with the current workers. Therefore to defend these demands is to make contact with current workers and lead them in developing their mass line, not to blindly defend the state union just because union busting against it was real. In order to re-organize the existing and former workers at ceremony, it will instead be necessary to validate their distrust of their former state union. Only in this way will it be possible, by earning the workers' trust and confidence, to encourage them to reorganize a genuine union by and for themselves.