Last week, workers at Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco took the occasion of an all-hands meeting to announce that they are unionizing (they worried management would mute them or end the meeting, but that did not happen). They estimate around fifty people at the company’s four locations will be in the bargaining unit. While Dandelion’s CEO Todd Masonis told Mission Local that he was receptive to “anyone who’s working hard to make for a better company,” Dandelion did not respond to the union’s request for voluntary recognition. As a result, Dandelion Union has filed for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election.

Dandelion is organizing with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), an independent union with a storied history in the Bay Area. They’ll be part of Local 6, which includes other recently organized food and beverage workers such as those employed at Anchor Brewing, which unionized two years ago, and Tartine Bakery, which organized last year, as well as those whose unions go back decades, such as Guittard Chocolate, another chocolate factory that has been with ILWU for more than forty years.

Jacobin’s Alex N. Press spoke with Christine Keating, who has worked at Dandelion for seven years, and Catherine Liu, who has been there for a year and a half. Both are members of Dandelion’s “chocolate experiences” team. Pre-COVID-19, they gave factory tours, taught classes, led tastings, and ran off-site events. Now, they still do some of that, but remotely: teaching truffle-making classes from their kitchens, mailing kits to participants’ homes.