Precinct Snack Table Union Votes 9-2 to Strike Over ‘Store-Brand Pretzel Situation’

OAKDALE — The newly formed Precinct Snack Table Workers Union, Local 12, voted 9-2 Monday to authorize a strike over what its charter calls “the store-brand pretzel situation,” escalating the most contentious labor dispute in the county’s electoral history.

“We are the backbone of democracy, and we are being fed pretzels that taste like packing material,” said union president Marla Finch, whose official title is Shop Steward of Sustenance. “The break room at Precinct 3 has name-brand crackers. Name. Brand. We have seen the box. We cannot unsee the box.”

The union’s demands, delivered to the County Clerk in a 40-page document bound with a bagel twist tie, include name-brand pretzels, a second coffee urn, and formal recognition of the 2:15 p.m. “slump” as a protected rest period.

County Clerk Wanda Brill expressed sympathy but noted budget constraints. “The snack budget is $47 per precinct,” Brill said. “That covers pretzels, one (1) fruit tray, and the emotional support cookies we give the machine technicians.”

The two dissenting votes came from union members who, according to meeting minutes, “did not want to make a whole thing out of it” and “actually kind of like the store-brand ones.”

Mediation is scheduled for Wednesday, catered — pointedly — by the union itself. “We’re bringing the good pretzels,” Finch said. “Let the record show what democracy tastes like when it’s properly funded.”

The Regional Buffet Authority sent a sympathy fruit tray on Tuesday, which Finch called “an escalation” and management called “just a fruit tray.” The Authority’s president, who asked to be identified only as “a concerned party with melon,” said “no worker should face democracy on an empty stomach, or a store-brand pretzel.” Brill has formally requested the Authority “stay in its lane, which is buffets, not labor relations,” a sentence she admitted she never expected to write.

The two dissenting members have formed a caucus — “Pretzels Are Fine, Actually” — and are selling t-shirts. Finch called the shirts “a betrayal in cotton form.” The caucus responded that Finch is “dramatic but correct about the coffee urn.” A unity summit is planned, catered, pointedly, with both pretzel tiers.

Brill has proposed a compromise: “pretzel parity” — name-brand pretzels at half the precincts, rotated yearly “like crops.” Finch called it “a good start and a terrible metaphor.” The union votes Thursday. The coffee urn question remains “delicately unresolved.”

If no agreement is reached, the strike would begin at 6 a.m. on Election Day, leaving poll workers to face fourteen hours of democracy on an empty stomach. “We don’t want that,” Finch said. “Nobody wants that. The voters least of all — have you ever seen a hungry poll worker explain a provisional ballot? It’s not pretty.”