She Wolves Eat Their Young

Just last week Eater reported on an unfortunate incident at She Wolf Bakery, a naturally-leavened bakery that focuses on using local grains in Brooklyn. It is a part of the Marlow Collective, the name of Andrew Tarlow’s hospitality group. It is not a collective, rather a collection of businesses as the enterprise has grown since the inception of the first restaurant, Diner, on New Year’s Eve, 1998. There is a whole animal butcher shop, a natural wine store, four restaurants in total, an events and catering branch and a clothing and handbag business. A new restaurant is slated to open in Manhattan in the future.¹

Workers at She Wolf are trying to unionize, the vote is this Tuesday, February 13th. Management refused to recognize the union in early February. Last week, two workers made a pro-union zine left in the bakery’s break room, a legal place for workers to discuss unionization. Melissa McCart, Eater New York editor, reports.²

“On Tuesday, February 6, Tarlow says he discovered information pamphlets for English-speaking workers (which were not translated for Spanish workers) about tactics management might use ‘to dissuade workers from organizing.’ Then on page six of the zine, an image of a hook-nosed, top-hat-wearing, disapproving employer appears next to the text, ‘Don’t be manipulated into passivity.’ 

The image seems to represent Tarlow by way of the hooked-nose stereotype, the kind of depiction explained via the Media Diversity Institute, that ‘goes back to antisemitic and Nazi propaganda from the 1930s and since then has gone on to become a common trope—and, whether intentionally or not—pushes antisemitic stereotype to this day.’”

Tarlow, who is Jewish, sent a letter addressing the image to She Wolf employees and the head of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, who is representing the union. “I am working from the charitable assumption that the person who created the illustrations were unaware that this caricature is antisemitic…This is a violation of our policies against harassment and discrimination, and is hardly consistent with the equitable and inclusive environment we strive to create and you claim to want.” 

The people who made the zine emailed him, apologizing and writing “We now recognize how that image is hurtful and offensive. That was not our intent, but we understand the impact…Throughout this process, we’ve made it a priority to never attack you or our managers because we honestly have nothing but respect and admiration towards the management team. We hope we can continue this process of unionizing together with care and forgiveness.” Apparently they found the image in a “random book of images” (Eater) without understanding its history, disturbing proof of how racism and hate permeates our culture in, for some people, invisible ways.

On his personal Instagram account, which is public, Tarlow addressed the Eater article, discussing the divisiveness of the characterization and the union. It’s long, but necessary to read:

“I haven’t said anything publicly about the unionization effort at She Wolf, but I have something to say about this. It’s interesting to me that the responses from staff, She Wolf Union and RWDSU Strong have mainly focused on intent—we didn’t know the image was offensive, the pamphlets have been destroyed, we’re sorry, let’s move on. I actually believe that they didn’t know it was discriminatory and anti-Semitic, and I also don’t think that’s really the point. The image is a depiction of how they see me and want their coworkers to see me, too. It is ugly and mean, meant to other, dehumanize, and separate me from the people I deeply care about and work alongside every day. Because once the union has achieved that, it’s much easier to attack and attach stereotypes to me, whether they’re accurate depictions of how I run my company or not. And it’s not just personal. The union organizers, led predominately by young, highly-educated, white employees, have also excluded all of our Spanish-speaking staff–many of whom have direct experience with unions and don’t want one in the bakery. The organizers have said very publicly that they want a seat at the table, to have a louder voice; I don’t know that a contract can deliver those things, but I do know that the path they’re taking to achieve their goals is divisive, and that some of what they’ve said when handed the microphone is factually incorrect and lacking in accountability. Each one of us knows all too well how easy it is to move your message by dividing people and setting them against one another. But true belonging and transformation will require us to build a table big enough to hold all of our differences in lived experiences, languages, needs, and dreams that exists in this business, and for everyone at that table to take responsibility for the care of the whole. And that is a much, much harder thing to do.” 

I was so sad and pissed off when I read this Eater article, angry at the stupid casual use of this image, the reproduction of it, and the history, and present-day, it represents. I also thought this union might have a chance of existence, but this kind of inflammatory, emotional situation is very influential. The flippant and clueless use of this antisemitic figure jeopardizes their union efforts, when it was to bolster them, so yeah, it’s dumb. It accomplished the exact opposite of what it set out to do. And it allowed Tarlow to legally speak to and about the union without officially breaking the law by union-busting. 

The well has been poisoned, and in these fraught times where we only understand the world through what side we are on, voting for the union would align you with antisemitism, in cahoots with smart white people who disregard their Latinx co-workers to the point of exclusion …That’s the air, right? That’s my initial reaction, I felt like all was lost, but a reaction is just the initial moment, it’s usually not the place to live in permanently. I also felt like mistakes like this cannot be made, that you only get one shot, especially if you’re not in a position of power.

Tarlow’s post is very nice, political speech about how we can all be together if we work together and the table is big enough to seat everyone. I want to believe the end of it, but it’s 2024, these words offer no clear path forward, just a dinner at a long table, with neoliberal word salad on the menu. They feel like a nice patriarch’s sentiment. Tarlow calls the organizers “young, well-educated and white,” giving them the benefit of the doubt for their ignorance, but referring to their organizing efforts as divisive. The ugly image others him, making dehumanization easy. He’s right about this, whether that was the intention or not. They made a dumb mistake.

I am pro-union because I am pro-worker. In my lifetime, I have witnessed the respect for the American Worker diminish because, since Ronald Reagan’s presidency from 1980-1988³, so much manufacturing has left this country to places where more money can be made. Businesses’ books are balanced on the backs of workers. The minimum wage has been stagnant for decades, just up until December 31, 2016, it was $11/hour in New York City. Everything else has risen, except for worker, consumer and renter protections. I don’t think that representing workers is inherently divisive in the manner Tarlow does. I think trying to prove what I am worth more to an employer is demeaning, and that feeling is very divisive. Workers have less power. They organize to better represent themselves, to have more presence in the power dynamic. An established company with a large management team is difficult to negotiate with, changing policies is not a priority, that’s why they are policies. These young workers, and a lot of other ones, are experienced in their individual fields, not negotiations.

New York is an “employment-at-will” state, meaning an employer may terminate an employee at any time, for any legal reason, or none at all. That speaks to power. For people to go through the effort of unionizing, something that takes a long time and effort, it means previous attempts to get the things they asked for did not work. This is why people unionize, for collective representation, to be something other than a disposable cog in the machine. There is a ceiling of pay at this bakery, but there is no ceiling for our bills, our rent, our utilities or anything else. 

The talking points of workers trying to unionize always surprise me, they speak to the daily challenges of a specific workplace. At She Wolf, they discuss safer working conditions, both in the bakery where temperatures in the warmer months can exceed 100°, during deliveries and working at the city’s greenmarkets, where the workers are exposed to the elements. Climate change has made these outdoor markets untenable, depending on the season, which you can’t depend on. They also want their health insurance co-pay to be more affordable, because if you can’t afford it, then you won’t use it. The body is finite. These workers want a future at the bakery and for their investment in it, to be considered as much as the sourcing of grains and the methods they use to make bread. That can’t happen if there is a ceiling to hourly wages that is $22.50 an hour, which sounds like a lot, and sadly doesn’t meet the living wage in New York City according to the MIT living wage calculator⁴ (that one is $25.65, but I don’t think it’s been updated for a minute.) This living hourly wage is based on one person supporting themself. 

There certainly is a future for She Wolf Bakery, it will be moving into the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is owned and operated by the city as an industrial revitalization project. The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a non-profit that offers a lot of financial incentives, including and not limited to not paying property tax for businesses.⁵ The new She Wolf will be both wholesale and retail, “the goal is to convert 6,900 square-feet into a code compliant, industrial bakery with temperature-controlled storage, a retail space, an area for receiving supplies, an administrative office, an employee break room with lockers, and a space for assembling shipments and orders.” This information is available by just googling the bakery, posted on the website of the project’s architecture firm, Spacesmith.⁶ This is exactly the moment when these workers should organize, to have a say in how this new enterprise will affect their work and lives. 

Let me tell you something about restaurant work—workers leave themselves behind everywhere, bits of their brains, “well-educated” or not, in systems, methods and recipes that stay in the building and business, beyond the physical space they occupy during their paid shift. Workers are told to move on if they can’t make more money, if they’re not happy or don’t see a future with their job. Starting over means starting over at the bottom, over and over again. Starting over is having to accept that your investment in your work is not reciprocated equally. The idea that a worker isn’t invested in a business because they are not an owner is disrespectful to the labor, just because you want to treat us like we are disposable doesn’t mean we are. Our society values the business person the most, the entrepreneur with an idea or vision. The innovation we need most right now is how to make businesses sustainable for everyone, not just the top earners. Because the thing is, without workers, you don’t have shit.

1. I have worked for this company over the years for special events. I have written for the now-defunct Diner Journal and DJ’ed at some of the businesses. I know a lot of the staff, some of good friends, and I also have known Andrew Tarlow for years. Everything I reference here is public information available on this great internet.

2. https://ny.eater.com/2024/2/9/24066559/andrew-tarlow-she-wolf-union-antisemitic-zine-apology

3. You have no idea how many “Since Reagan” thoughts you have been spared from up until this exact moment in my writing.

4. https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36047

5. https://www.brooklynnavyyard.org/leasing-incentives/

6. https://www.spacesmith.com/she-wolf-bakery