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VOLUME 145, ISSUE 11 | THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2023

HISTORIC UNIONIZATION ELECTION AT PEET’S COFFEE LOCATIONS IN DOWNTOWN AND NORTH DAVIS What you should know about the upcoming unionization election at the two Peet’s Coffee locations in Davis on Jan. 17 and 20 BY ANTHONY W. ZAMMIKIEL city@theaggie.org On Nov. 29, the Peet’s Coffee locations in Downtown and North Davis announced in a joint press release that the cafes have filed a motion with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to schedule an election to decide whether the employees at each location are to unionize. According to the official press release, “Workers are joining a growing wave of unionization at coffee chains across the country, following the precedent set by workers at coffee companies like Colectivo Coffee, Starbucks, and Spot Coffee. Peet’s workers are filing their locations with Workers United-SEIU, the same union that represents Spot Coffee and the Starbucks Workers United campaign. Workers cited being inspired by organizing Starbucks workers as a key motivation for their organizing efforts.” The press release continues, “There are 208 corporate Peet’s locations in the United States, with a vast majority of the stores located in the state of California. If successful, the North Davis and Downtown Davis locations will be the first corporate Peet’s cafes to successfully unionize.” Schroedter Kinman, Alyx Land, Trinity Salazar and Molly Green, the leading organizers of the filing by two Peet’s Coffee locations, explained that there are multiple reasons why the employees at each location are organizing for union representation; however, the primary reasons are their desires for better pay and scheduling practices.

Two Davis Peet’s cafes, including the one downtown on E street, file paperwork to unionize. (Aggie File) “You’re onboarded at minimum wage, and after a month or so of training you’re promoted to barista, which is paid 50 cents above minimum wage,” Kinman explained. “The work we do as baristas — taking orders, preparing food and drinks, filling bean orders, cleaning equipment with special chemicals, keeping the store clean and up to health standards, acting as de facto IT specialists when people have trouble with our mobile app, de-escalating the few customers who are unruly, all while having proficient knowledge in the coffee

roasting process and basic flavor profiles of coffee blends — it deserves more than $15.50 an hour, especially when places like McDonald’s and InN-Out are now offering starting wages at $17.” Kinman said that employees desire an increase of labor hours as well, sharing that ongoing national inflation rates have caused an 8% decrease in wages over the previous year and that employees need more labor hours to continue being able to afford basic necessities. “We’re also so short-staffed, so if

more than a couple of people come down with a cold, we can end up shutting down the whole store because we just do not have the people to stay open,” Kinman shared. “Some readers might remember when we had to shut down [the Downtown Davis location] last month for half of finals week. That was all because a cold was going around and not enough people were available to keep the store open. Those of us who were working those short-staffed days were worked to the bone and received no compensation for doing the work of multiple people

in a shift.” According to Kinman, managers operating at both Peet’s Coffee Davis locations have employed various tactics to discourage unionization activities, like “suddenly promising to revamp the [human resources] HR system so we can get better pay and benefits without a union, sowing fear of unions with personal anecdotes of bad experiences with them, bringing in higher-ups from corporate to watch us while we work and talk to employees one-onone about the dangers of unionizing, promising they can change, etc..,” Kinman said. “Higher-ups have even taken employees out to eat on their dime to talk about their concerns of unionizing.” The unionization elections have been scheduled for Jan. 17th and Jan. 20th. The leading organizers at both Peet’s Coffee locations in the city of Davis asked that supportive community members support their efforts by fostering community engagement. “Come in, order something cheap and easy like a drip coffee or iced tea, tell us how stoked you are to hear we’re unionizing and leave a tip if you’re able,” the organizers said. “It will show your support, keep the store profitable so we don’t get shut down and put a little extra money in our pockets to help fight inflation. Another thing folks can do to support is DM a solidarity statement to @peetsunited on Instagram. We’ve been posting anonymous support for the union, and we’d love to hear more from the community about why they love Peet’s and how much they want to see us unionize.”

UC DAVIS SCHOOL OF LAW WITHDRAWS FROM UC DAVIS PROFESSOR DISPUTES US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT RANKINGS CLAIMS THAT FUNDING FROM The decision follows other schools’ leads, citing concerns over the methodology of the rankings AGGIE FILE

THE LIVESTOCK INDUSTRY BIASES HIS RESEARCH ON METHANE EMISSIONS

A recent New York Times article questioned Professor Frank Mitloehner’s funding from and connections to the livestock industry

BY SYDNEY AMESTOY campus@theaggie.org The UC Davis School of Law will no longer submit data such as postgraduation employment rates and LSAT scores to the U.S. News and World Report’s annual law school ranking, according to a letter from Dean Kevin Johnson issued Nov. 28. Three other UC law schools, including those at UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles and UC Irvine have also announced decisions to stop providing data for use in the rankings, according to an article on law.com, along with the law schools at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Columbia, among others. Cornell Law School and University of Chicago Law School have decided to continue to provide data for the rankings. Johnson’s letter cited concerns about the rankings not involving diversity in their methodology, as well

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as a preference towards private schools with more resources. “We really were frustrated that the rankings didn’t consider things [...] that are particularly important to what we’re trying to do, and important goals for our school,” Johnson said. “[There is] no attention paid to quality of teaching, no attention paid to diversity of the student body [and] faculty, and really [there is] a bias toward private schools with many resources that public universities don’t have.” Concern with the U.S. News and World Report’s handling of diversity within law schools has been central to the discussion around the UC Davis School of Law’s decision to leave, according to Johnson. “Last year, [the U.S. News and World Report] was talking about doing a diversity index for the student body,” Johnson said. “But their initial index would not have included mixed race people [or] Asian Americans as people of color. [...] It seems to many people that when U.S. News came up with this [diversity index], they didn’t know what they were doing.” The U.S. News and World Report ranking’s emphasis on scoring high on the LSAT, a standardized test taken by prospective law school candidates, was another concern for faculty, according to Johnson. “There’s been a great deal of concern for a number of years that standardized tests aren’t fair, and maybe biased against particular groups,” Johnson said. “In fact, that concern with the use of standardized tests is one of the reasons that the University of California doesn’t use them anymore in admissions decisions for undergraduates. We have similar concerns with the way that the LSAT is used.” According to Johnson’s

letter, the decision to withdraw came after long deliberation between the law school’s faculty and the alumni board, as well as the students attending the school of law. Hon. Nancy Wieben Stock, a retired judge from the UC Davis class of 1976 and president of the alumni board at the UC Davis School of Law, has been involved in the process leading up to this decision since it was proposed by Dean Johnson. “Our law school has been climbing those rankings for many years, thanks largely to our success in producing successful lawyers,” Wieben Stock said. “But we realized that pursuit of higher rankings could come at a cost to other factors that make the law school successful, [such as] promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the law school admissions process and [the] recruitment of a diverse faculty.” Admissions was a big part of the internal conversation leading to the decision to withdraw data, according to Johnson, because the U.S. News and World Report rankings are considered a powerful indicator to prospective law students. This means that withdrawing from submitting data for the rankings could have a negative impact on admissions. “If I have a roomful of prospective law students, and ask them how many people have looked at the U.S. News rankings, I can almost guarantee that everybody will raise their hand,” Johnson said. “So they are important.” However, despite the potential drawbacks of the decision, and some dissent from a few faculty and alumni, Johnson said that over 90% of feedback he received was in favor of not participating anymore. LAWPULLSOUT on 8

UC Davis Animal Science Professor Frank Mitloehner. (UC Davis / Courtesy) BY RACHEL GAUER campus@theaggie.org On Oct. 31, 2022, “Unearthed,” Greenpeace UK’s environmental-based journalism project, published a piece titled, “How the livestock industry funds the ‘greenhouse gas guru.’” “Guru” refers to UC Davis Professor Frank Mitloehner, who has built a public platform on Twitter with over 30,000 followers under a similar name – @GHGGuru. Mitloehner works as both a professor and researcher in the Animal Science Department and is the director of the Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR) Center, which, according to its website, strives to “help the animal agriculture sector operate more efficiently in order to meet the demands of a growing population while it lessens its impact on the environment and climate.” Much of the research the center and he conduct concerns methane emissions from livestock. Methane is a greenhouse gas that has a warming potential more than 28 times that of carbon dioxide but is much shorter-lived, according to an

article on the CLEAR Center website. The Greenpeace UK article is an exposé written by journalist Zach Boren which describes close relations between the CLEAR Center and leaders in the livestock industry. The article argues that this relationship influences CLEAR’s research related to the industry’s impact on the environment. Following the article’s publication, The New York Times (NYT) published a separate piece on Oct. 31 about Mitloehner titled, “He’s an Outspoken Defender of Meat. Industry Funds His Research, Files Show.” The CLEAR Center website’s “About” page explains in detail what the center believes is the value of receiving funding from and having relations with the livestock industry. In an interview with The California Aggie, Mitloehner emphasized the transparency that both he and the CLEAR Center maintain in regard to their funding. “All of our funding was publicly disclosed,” Mitloehner said. “Every time I publish something, the funding source is disclosed. There is nothing fishy about it; this is standard operating procedure.” ANIMALSCIPROF on 8