She Wolf Bakery workers rally after two years of bargaining

Workers at She Wolf Bakery in Brooklyn rallied outside of their Navy Yard workplace Sept. 18 to protest management's refusal to acquiesce to their union's demands on healthcare, wages and more after two years of negotiating for their first collective bargaining agreement. The bakers, porters, drivers, baristas, pastry chefs, cleaners and market sellers in the union of around 40 workers are pushing for management to agree to a shop-wide $21 minimum wage and to enroll workers in the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union's healthcare plan.  

Workers also want management at the Marlow Collective, a hospitality and restaurant company owned by Andrew Tarlow that owns several different brands in Brooklyn including She Wolf, to agree to seniority bonuses and commit to union neutrality for its other properties. But none of those four demands were included in a last, best and final offer that management sent to the union earlier this month, workers told The Chief.  

Nick Murray, a market vendor on the union's bargaining committee, said that workers hoped the rally showed management that employees were determined to secure a fair agreement. He argued that RWDSU's healthcare plan would be better for both workers and the company. 

"We've shown that switching to the plan is cost-neutral for the company," he said. "The coverage is much better, much more affordable on the workers side, but they've refused to do it." 

Workers argue that switching to the RWDSU's healthcare plan would be beneficial for both workers and management, but feel that their bosses are refusing to do so because it will encourage workers at other Marlow Collective businesses to unionize.

Harper Freeman/ The Chief

A lack of urgency in bargaining

The union and management have made progress on key health and safety provisions in the first contract, Murray added, but said it was particularly important to ensure that the lowest-paid workers in the bakery - baristas and porters - secure their $21 minimum wage. 

"We have been able to make a lot of progress," said Ezra Hudson, a barista at She Wolf. "The amount of movement we've been able to make has slowed down."   

She Wolf currently has two job listings for driver and baker positions with a salary range that starts at $20 and $19 respectively.  

Peter Montalbano, an RWDSU staffer who helps workers negotiate their contract, said there's been a lack of urgency from the employer that clearly doesn't want the benefits that union workers secure to set a benchmark for their other, non-union properties.  

"They don't want the unionized workers to have healthcare that’s head and shoulders better than what the non-union workers at other businesses have because it would be an incentive to unionize," Montalbano said. 

A spokesperson for the Marlow Collective did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

She Wolf Bakery moved from its original Greenpoint location to a larger space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Workers are hoping that management makes an investment in them as well through a first union contract.

Harper Freeman/ The Chief

A contentious push from the beginning

A group of eight local elected officials, several of whom were at the Sept. 18 rally, sent a letter to Tarlow last week urging him to agree to several of the union's demands. "We believe that a collective bargaining agreement that includes these items would be a tremendous win for the Marlow Collective as a flagship Brooklyn business," the officials wrote.

The workers' unionization process has faced pushback since they announced their unionization petition in January 2024. The week after that announcement, Tarlow personally held what workers called “captive audience meetings" with a consultant and managers with groups of two or three workers inside of the workplace.  

He made direct emotional appeals to the workers in those meetings and provided information about unionization that one worker called a "cocktail of misinformation, manipulation and some intimidation." In the wake of the meetings, two union members created a zine to warn about management's anti-union tactics that included an image of an employer with a top hat and hooked nose that Tarlow found antisemitic.  

He took to Instagram to voice his concerns and wrote to RWDSU's president Stuart Appelbaum to express his outrage over the image. Appelbaum condemned the image and the two workers apologized for creating it, writing in an email to Tarlow that it wasn't their intent to offend him or create an antisemitic caricature.  

But the controversy and captive audience meetings did not, in the end, affect the outcome of the union authorization vote. Workers voted 17-5 in February to join RWDSU and began bargaining their contract soon after.  

Workers' demand for management to remain neutral in unionization drives was informed by those experiences leading up to the vote and by the closure of Achilles Heel, another Marlow Collective property in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, shortly after workers there announced their unionization push. A post on the Achilles Heel Instagram page announcing the bar's closure after 13 years said that a "protracted period of financial hardship" caused its demise, but the timing of the closure fueled widespread speculation. 

Workers at She Wolf hope a neutrality agreement in their contract would prevent Tarlow from taking similar actions in the future.  

Murray views the first contract as a key investment in the workforce during a period of expansion for the company that just moved from its formative Greenpoint location to a larger space in the Navy Yard last year.

"We want them to invest in the workers the same way they invest in the expansion of the business," he said.