sharks + planes as formerly seen on Twitter

Today is the first Bandcamp Friday of 2024, which means musicians on the platform get 100% of their earnings. There's been a pretty noticeable drop in Bandcamp sales in the last year or so, but direct album/CD sales are a big part of what keeps me making music without having to start to rely on the small percentages of a penny per play that streaming services continue to pay musicians (spoiler: I have already started to rely on the small percentages of a penny per play). Streaming services want musicians to work 2-3 times as harder with multiple releases per year and rely on a discography getting larger, whereas direct sales give a large burst of support that allows one release every once in a while to be impactful.

But again, musicians get 100% today, it's not going to anyone else
https://2mellomakes.bandcamp.com/music

And I have an online store that always directly supports me 100%
https://2mello.net/store

In other exciting union news, workers at The Bazaar—one of several restaurants owned by José Andrés—received word today that their request for voluntary recognition will be granted! Approximately 100 workers at the restaurant announced their intent to unionize publicly earlier this week, receiving quite a flurry of media attention for doing so. Although it's only been open for about a year The Bazaar is a frequent stop for many important people in Washington D.C. and this is rather evident scanning the union's Twitter page. A few days ago they touted the support of, among others, Representatives Jim Clyburn and Steny Hoyer, Senators Ed Markey and John Fetterman, and the White House director of public engagement.

Workers at the restaurant are hoping to receive benefits comparable to their Waldorf Astoria Hotel contemporaries, according to DCist. Currently some employees of The Bazaar make only about $9/hr plus tips which is just above minimum wage, while other restaurants within the Waldorf Astoria Hotel see rates closer to $20/hr plus tips—obviously quite a large disparity. They're also hoping to win health insurance, paid time off, and just cause employment provisions.

Philly Cultural Workers United, an AFSCME-affiliated union which covers the Phildadelphia Museum of Art, the Penn Museum, and Please Touch Museum—have a new union going into the new year: the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Staff there, who are in a wide variety of positions due to the nature of the Center's work, have formed Schuylkill Center Staff United and are asking for voluntary recognition from the Center this week.

The Schuylkill Center, for those unfamiliar, is a self-described urban environmental education center located in one of Philadelphia's northern peripheries. They do a pretty wide array of things, ranging from environmental education to land stewardship to wildlife rehabilitation; they currently privately steward 365 acres of city land surrounding the Center itself. Most recently they were in the news for 24 acres of that land which they were granted the right to sell off in case of emergency. They intended to do this, but the surrounding community successfully mobilized to keep the land in the Center's possession, which was announced last month.

Hopefully—and optimistically—the Center will quickly recognize the union, as voluntary recognition does tend to be more common among environmental and conservation nonprofits. They're usually progressively-oriented and more receptive to letting their staff collectively bargain with them. However, the bad environmental nonprofits tend to be some of the most vicious union busters. The IWW's experience with unionizing the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the aftermath of that comes to mind as one such example—the organization literally dissolved rather than negotiate a contract and then was charged with a labor violation for doing so. (Although something that extreme is almost certainly not in the cards here.)

Schuylkill Center Staff United has released the following statement talking about what the Center has been up to since I made this post—the answer, mostly, is leaning on union busting consultants and lies about unions: