What's Going On in Philly? Talking Union Updates with Malek Hudson of ReAnimator Coffee
In the words of Malek Hudson, "Philly is a union town"—and in our conversation, he breaks down the latest wave of specialty coffee union drives in the City of Brotherly Love.
On February 21, 2024, workers at two Ultimo Coffee locations in Philadelphia called for customers to boycott the cafes. “The workers of Ultimo are asking you to fight with your dollar and BOYCOTT ULTIMO COFFEE until they reach contract settlement,” an Instagram post from @phillyworkersunited read.
All four Ultimo locations voted to unionize in December 2022. Two of the stores voted to decertify their union in January 2024, but the organized workers at the store’s Rittenhouse and Newbold stores carried on negotiations with the store’s owners, Aaron and Elizabeth Ultimo. After more than a year, the two parties had yet to finalize a contract.
But just one week after the boycott, both parties finally agreed on a contract.
Ultimo is not the only Philadelphia-based shop that’s organized; the city has been a hotbed of union activity within the coffee industry. Shops like ReAnimator and Elixr have signed first contracts and organized with support from Local 80, which is part of the Philadelphia Joint Board Workers United, and is dedicated to helping organize workers in the food service industry. While the union continues to win victories, the city has also seen movement in the other direction—those two Ultimo locations voted to decertify their union, and others, like Good Karma Cafe, have also done the same.
So what’s going on in Philly? Last year, my Fresh Cup colleague, Fionn Pooler, wrote an incredible piece detailing the history of labor activity in the city, and today, we’re featuring a Q&A with Malek Hudson, a production roaster at ReAnimator Coffee. ReAnimator agreed to a contract after workers authorized a strike—and after a quote from owner Mark Capriotti saying “We are not the same people as you,” in response to being asked if ReAnimator’s owners could live off the $10.75 starting wage the company was offering, began circulating online.
So today, we’re chatting with Hudson about what’s brewing in Philadelphia and how you can borrow the energy of the City of Brotherly Love to unionize your own space.
Cover photo features, from left to right, Hudson, Frances Cordelia Beaver, Claire Kinnel (barista at ReAnimator Coffee), and Tom Larosa (production team member at ReAnimator Coffee). Photo by Beaver.
I was wondering: When did you first hear or learn about unions? When did you first think that this was something you wanted to be part of?
The first clear memories I have of unions were my dad’s constant referral to work as, “the job.” My dad worked in construction and asbestos removal for most of my life and on occasion, I would stay with him at my grandmother’s house in North Philly.
He would take me around the city and tell me about all the different “jobs,” from the first Comcast Center (the second broke ground the year he retired) to all of Temple [University]’s various dorms, to the big Mormon temple on Vine Street. What he meant by “jobs” were various union job sites across the city. My dad wound up getting injured on the job a couple years away from retirement and his union tried to argue against him getting his pension; that soured me toward unions for some time.
I started paying closer attention to union activity in Philly back in 2018/19 with my own small involvement in underground coffee agitation (which I’ll talk more about later). More importantly, union activity became apparent to me through the work my sister, Jenna Mechalas, was doing as a nurse at Hahnemann University Hospital. Hahnemann got bought by some wealthy real estate moguls who were rumored to be planning to shut it down and turn it into luxury apartments.
The workers, including my sister, organized in protest of its closing, which was written about in articles at the time. It was the first time in my life I remember someone I loved being a part of collective action against their boss and I remember thinking about how powerful that was.
It seems like there were tons of informal conversations and organizing work happening before you unionized at ReAnimator—what did that look like?
The majority of union organizing is done during informal conversations. In the latter half of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, I joined a sort of underground movement that started organizing the specialty coffee industry in Philly. We were made up of workers from shops all around the city and our goal was to better the lives of coffee professionals in Philadelphia.
This is where the first informal conversations started happening and where I had my first experiences engaging in one-on-ones. The group created a wage survey that went around to most coffee workers in the city to get an idea of what people were making, and if I remember correctly, it got around 150 responses. I remember the wages being wildly different company-to-company, but even worker-to-worker within some companies. That wage survey was enlightening and I’m pretty sure some workers fought for better pay because of it.
That group fell apart either right before the pandemic hit or during it, I don’t really remember. I had checked out for one reason or another. But in the last week of July 2022 I ran into one of the workers I was organizing with back then at a farmer’s market in West Philly. She asked if I was still interested in organizing, and I said yes.
She gave me the number of a staffer at Workers United and the rest is history really. I had already been having informal conversations with my coworkers about working conditions, wages, and quality and training issues. Those conversations laid the groundwork for all the formal organizing conversations I had over the course of the campaign.
Why do you think so much union activity in the coffee sector is happening in Philly?
I can’t really speak to why union activity isn’t happening as much in other cities compared to here, but Philly is a union town. We are all used to seeing “Scabby” on the street, we are all used to union guys yelling in front of non-union work sites; it’s a part of the city and our culture.
I think also the people who started a lot of these campaigns were friends, a lot of us have been involved in Philly coffee for years. We have seen the decline/stagnation of these companies. Whether that be wages, coffee quality, or training. We have seen these business owners send their kids to schools that cost more than they pay employees per year, buy second or third homes, become landlords, open and close other businesses, all while our quality of living remained the same.
Not to downplay how special this city is, but these are common things all over our industry and across the country. We had already built a strong community of friends who were willing to fight for each other.
Can you talk about the time between winning your union vote and waiting to negotiate a contract—did you get the sense that things were stalling? At what point did you folks decide to consider striking?
We won voluntary recognition on October 21st of 2022 and our first session didn’t happen until February 15th, 2023. I don’t necessarily think they were stalling at that point but there were definitely other times over the course of negotiations that they were. Contract negotiations take exactly how long the bosses want them to take, so it is in their best interests to do as little work in the negotiation sessions and between them as possible.
The only way it seems, to me at least, that you can get them to do anything is by forcing them. And the way you force them is through collective action and escalation of actions. Striking is often the last step to get a contract over the line because it is the only thing that can hurt the boss where it matters: them pockets. A good amount of our workforce didn’t consider actually going on strike until Mark Capriotti said those now-infamous words. But striking was always on the table and should be in any campaign that wants to be successful.
Did things change after you authorized the strike?
Some things changed and some stayed the same. Things didn’t really change in regards to how ownership treated me after strike authorization. They had barely talked to me at all in the 18 months we had been in negotiations and they barely talk to me now that the contract has been signed. Middle management was definitely on edge after we gave authorization, due to the potential that they’d be asked to cross our picket or something of that nature. I think workers realized, more than at other points in the campaign, how powerful they were and how much power we had as a group.
Were you there when Mark Capriotti said, “We are not the same people as you?” What did that feel like? It seems to me that this quote is kind of ownership saying the quiet part out loud: that they know the wages they pay aren’t enough, but they think they deserve more than workers.
So that was said at a session that was held over the phone, and no I was not on that call. I agree that it is saying the quiet part out loud, but to me it’s not necessarily about wages, it’s about class.
The quiet part is the admission that they are not the same class as us anymore. We are the laborers and they are the people who exploit our labor. The workers vs. the owners. It wasn’t and isn’t surprising to me because that’s how he thinks. If anything it was refreshingly honest. Upsetting yes, surprising no. If anything it made organizing a bit easier afterward, so in a way I am thankful he said it.
What has worked for you folks? What has kept the union strong?
A union is just a collection of people at the end of the day. The same things that keep friendships and relationships strong are the same things that keep our union strong. It’s hanging out with each other, planning events, celebrating birthdays, and showing up for each other.
Our Local is very new and we are still figuring out how we want things to be, but we are figuring it out together. Hopefully we are building something strong for future coffee workers to look at and try to emulate.
What were some of the wins in your contract? What have you been able to codify in the contract?
Increased wages were definitely the biggest thing for most workers. We got a $3 base wage increase and increased PTO accrual. Yearly pay increases, which didn’t exist for baristas before, and full-time workers got a better healthcare stipend. We got eight weeks of Family Medical Leave, and a really good non-discrimination policy. We now have union stewards at each shop and a Labor Management Committee that is going to meet with ownership multiple times a year, which will increase union representation within the shops and on the shop floors.
There have been so many union victories, but it also seems there’s been a targeted attempt to decertify unions: What’s happening with that? What are you observing?
Personally, decertification is something I can’t wrap my head around. To decertify shows you either have a fundamental misunderstanding of the worker-owner relationship, or a fundamental misunderstanding of our union. If workers don’t understand our union or the Local we are trying to build, then that’s our fault as members for not reaching out to whoever filed the decert.
In some of these cases the owners have created a true “family” feel to their companies. They have workers over at their house for holidays, they throw big parties and they even work shifts with you. It’s hard to see them as someone who is exploiting you and as someone who doesn’t have your best interest at heart. If a worker sees the union as coming between them and someone they see as “family,” for better or worse, the chances of decertification goes up.
Some shops have such high turnover that the people who filed the initial union vote have all left and the people who are still there have no connection at all to the union, so they see no reason to be in negotiations at all. I won’t speak to which shops these are referring to but I think that covers the decertifications that have happened.
What can people learn from looking at what’s happening in Philly?
What I hope people learn from what’s happening in our city is that change is possible. Whether it be at your job or in the world in general, when you collectively organize with people you care about, you can change things. There is a desire for people to accept that this world is the way it is and that it won’t change.
For the most part, I agree with that but with one big caveat: It won’t change if you won’t change it. I know that there are people out there that think baristas shouldn’t be fighting their small business owner bosses for better working conditions, but I want those people to look at what’s happening here and realize they are naive. Everyone has a right, and in my opinion an obligation, to fight for a better world for the person standing next to them. Whether that person is working on bar with you, or filling coffee bags, or just riding the El with you, you should want to fight for them.
It’s fascinating to see how the coffee scene in Philly is intertwined with such vibrant union activity. Malek Hudson's perspective really sheds light on the community spirit driving these efforts.
As a Coffee lover who often enjoys a cup of ReAnimator Coffee after returning from my job at https://carpetcleaningphiladelphiapro.com, I can appreciate the hard work and dedication that goes into both our local coffee shops and the labor movements within them. It’s a reminder of the power of collective action and the importance of advocating for fair working conditions.
I was particularly struck by the connection between workers and their employers—how personal relationships can sometimes blur the lines in understanding the worker-owner dynamic. This post truly highlights the need for strong support networks among workers.