#511 - Andrew Bernheimer, Founding Principal of Bernheimer Architecture

Introducing the First Unionized Architecture Office

0:00This is the second studio hosted by the Architecture and Design Office fame. My name is David Lee, an architect, partner at the office, and of course, host of the show. And today our guest is Andrew Bernheimer. Andy is the founding principal of Bernheimer Architecture, also known as BA. And with Andy, we talk about his office creating the first ever union in architecture. So those who are in the profession have been following the news the last number of years of a series of unions that have been attempted to be created with an architecture

0:30practices. And within his office was the first one ever created. And so we talked to him about some of the specific details and practicalities of how it works, what it meant to him as the business owner to have a union formed, and the positive benefits of it, some of the challenges they had, how the negotiations take place, and then toward the end, Andy's larger thoughts about the profession, and also in the academic space of what it means to create healthy work and environments and productive work environments in both areas. This was a fascinating conversation. I think you guys are going to get a lot out of it. And I hope you enjoy. Sponsors.

The Origin Story of the BA Union

1:29This is the second studio with myself and Andy. Here we go. We've been going back and forth via email for a few years about this subject. Take us all the way back. Back to when did this idea first come around within your office, and how did it start?

2:07So that's a very good question. Part of it is the answer will be me speculating, because I wasn't involved in the organizing of the union, because I'm the owner. What I do know is that my own interest in labor dates back to before the union was formed at BA. There are a couple of people in my office who had been active in something called the architecture lobby, which was started by a retired faculty member named Peggy Deamer and others.

2:43And a couple of the people who are now actually in management and principals were members of an active in the architecture lobby. The lobby was an organization that sought to, I think, examine issues of labor and equity in both academics and in the workplace. And so I hadn't had my curiosity peaked by the efforts of the lobby, though I wasn't a really active member. A couple of people here were. And I think that that started to create interest, generally speaking, within the labor of the practice in organizing.

3:20So that is a little bit about kind of the foundational interest in it. In terms of the organizing, I can take you through a little bit of a timeline of how I found out about it. So let's see. It's 2026. So now I'm now I'm in the process of of like trying to remember the years that this all happened. It was. Let's see. I want to say it was four years ago. That sounds like a start of a presidential speech.

3:51Four years ago, at the end of the school year, I finished my teaching. I teach at Parsons at the new school. I we finished. We have our commencement ceremony and graduation ceremonies mid May. And I think it was a day after my last engagement at school, I got a letter from the staff at the A that they had formed. They had formed a union and they were asking for voluntary recognition.

4:23That was four years ago in 2022, in in late May of 2022. So that was when I found out that they hadn't been organizing. I believe that they had spent several months all speaking to each other and understanding what it meant to form a union. They had talked to Architectural Workers United, AWU, which is one of the grassroots, the grassroots group that's that's helping firms organize.

4:54And they were also in contact with the the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, IAMAW, which was the union that they became and were affiliated with. So that's when I that's when I found out that they were organizing four years ago, just about four years ago.

Receiving the Letter from Staff

5:12So for some context, how large is your office or was your office at that? The office at the time was I want to say it was 21 people. Oh, it's big. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it wasn't one of these six person firms. It wasn't it wasn't a 60 or 80 person firm. It was a small to me, you know, small to medium size, I would say, like we're not we're not we're not giant. But twenty one, twenty two people is it's it's not it's a body of it's a body of people.

5:43It is. It is. And the letter came from everybody. That was, I think, one of the interesting things. Actually, that's not true. It came from everybody but two of us. It came from everyone but me, obviously. And it came the other person who was not a signatory to the letter was the the one person in the office who's not an architect who does financial financial related issues. Sure. So she was she had access to information that excluded her from being part of a workers union.

6:19Yeah. I'm set. And so it was from 20 of the, you know, the other 20 people in the office, everyone, including people who were senior here. That so that was that was, I think, one of the interesting things. I think that the letter came from everybody. So they had obviously all been been speaking to each other. That is. And so talk us through that. So it the from the outsider's perspective. So I know a little bit about unions, but just like barely anything. And I think most listeners who are architects or non architects also don't know much about it.

6:52But the the assumption that we have is that if you're a business owner and you have all the employees signed the same that you're. It means that you've done something wrong or that, you know, you would be the ego would be like, well, what the why the fuck is this happening? You know, I mean, I know you we've converse. You're you're a stand up guy. But like, just talk us through. Were you kind of like were you like offended or or I don't know? No. OK, so let's see what other I'm trying to think of some other context that I can establish to give you a sense.

7:23One was that obviously there had been some efforts in New York City and other firms to unionize. There was one high profile effort that had had not worked, did not succeed.

7:40One of the people who actually had led that effort at this other practice was someone I had hired not long, you know, several months beforehand. So I hired somebody and I had been talking to this person for a couple of years about coming to work here, someone who is friends with one of the senior people at the office and someone who's an excellent architect and who I hired knowing that they were involved in the unionizing effort at this other firm.

8:10So I knew someone was very, very labor interested, interested in organizing, and it was something that I actually had thought about, about unionization. So I wasn't completely naive to the possibility of this happening at my practice. Yeah. Now, I think you raise a really good question about, like, why do people unionize, right? Under what parameters and what context is unionization beneficial?

8:45And what can it help abate or alleviate? What can it help solidify and strengthen? And I think there's one of the mythologies that I had to sort of learn about myself, but also which I think I knew a little bit about, maybe the untruth of the mythology, was that the only place that you should unionize or the only places that do unionize are places where things are shitty. Right, right.

9:42But it's certainly not always true. So that was something. When I found out about the unionization, my first response was surprise, not a surprise like, how did this ever happen? It was more surprise like, it just was something brand new that happened at my practice, right? It was not a surprise like someone suffer punches you, which is a different kind of surprise because it wasn't painful in the slightest.

10:15It was more like, I've never had a surprise party. So I don't know if this is the right metaphor, but I think when you like, maybe when you walk through that door and you're surprised to see all the people there, like that kind of surprise, it's not maybe there's a little bit of embarrassment. Maybe there's a little bit of happiness that so many people are interested in you. And so there was surprise in a way that it happened. And I think part of that surprise, David, is because there weren't any.

10:48Like, it's, I have to say, it is a very strange, it's a very strange feeling to think that something happens that might have, might be the first time it's ever happened to anyone. Yeah. And that is a, that's something to process, right? Because I knew there were no other unions in any other firms. Yeah. I knew that the only time it had been tried, it did not succeed. Um, I knew that if this was a process that I was interested in gauging, which I was interested in gauging it, that there was a chance that it was, I don't want to say historic to sound pompous, but it would have been, it was going to be the first one kind of ever in, in at least the last hundred years.

11:37Yeah. And so there is a kind of surprise and a bit of a shock to that, but not a shock in the way where I'm like, what's gone wrong here? Like, what, like, what do I need to change to make this better? Right. Though that is actually part of what you discuss. Like that's, that's the reality. That's a fact that people are trying to make things better by doing this. So, and I'm sure we'll, we'll get to this more, but is, is, was part of your thinking like, well, if you guys want to improve stuff, just come talk to me.

12:10Like, why do we have to go do this formal, go through this formal apparatus?

Processing the Request and Legal Reality

12:14Yeah. The, so one of the first things I did after getting this letter was I talked to a few people, right? I, I talked to a couple of colleagues. So actually, so let me take a step back. When I got the letter, I was a little bit of, I was a little bit surprised. And then I, I sort of moved into excitement because it had been something that I had been thinking about and what it would mean if it happened. Again, because I had hired someone who had been part of an organizing effort. I had, if you would ask me, if you'd asked me the day before I got the letter, if people at my firm were going to unionize,

12:52I probably would have said, yes, I think it will happen at my practice. That's, I don't say, I might say that in hindsight, but I think my answer would have been, yes. If you had said, when are they going to unionize? My answer would have been, I have no idea. It could be, I probably wouldn't have even said in the next month or tomorrow for sure. But I might've said in the year, two years, maybe in the next couple of years, like I didn't think about timescales and I didn't think about immediacy.

13:24But I would have, I think I would have said, yes, I think this place will unionize. So the first thing I did was I pretty rapidly had to understand like what it meant, right? I did some Google searches. What happens when your firm unionizes? But there's no precedent. There's like, there's the generic rules of like, what can you do when a workplace unionizes? So I spoke to a, I spoke to a college classmate, college classmate who has a unionized shop, uh, in a different industry, but a construction related industry.

14:04I spoke to a couple of other architects, uh, to ask them what they thought, like, what does it mean? Like, what would it mean if I did it? Um, I spoke to my parents, um, a little history. My father, his family business was a printing and mailing, uh, outfit in Boston. Uh, so he had, you know, he had a plant, uh, with printing presses. I worked there one summer in college, uh, you know, working lithography, working, you know, the, the, the offset printers, inking things, making plates.

14:43I worked on what's called a guillotine, which is a big paper cutter, which is the single most scary piece of equipment I've ever encountered in my life. Um, having been on construction sites, where it says a lot, but it's literally a guillotine. It's literally a guillotine. It can cut through, you know, it's like 2000 sheets of paper. Oh gosh. So it's, it's anyways. But so I called my dad, my dad and my mom, my dad and mom are old fashioned Massachusetts liberals. Um, and I called my dad and I said, cause he, he had run his family business for many years.

15:19And I said, so I got this letter and my staff was asking me to recognize him as a unit. And I thought my dad would say, that's amazing. That's great. Like you should do it. Right. Like good liberal person. And he said the same thing you did, which is he said, well, why would they need to do that? Well, why don't you just talk to them? Like what, what is he, what do you need a union for? What do they need a union for? Right. So I got that question and I spoke to an attorney, right?

15:49That's another thing. Sure. Cause I, part of it was just like, what, what can't I do? Cause there are all things, all sorts of things you can't do, right? You can't promise things. You can't threaten. You can't try to coerce people. There are, there are really important legal restrictions on what you can do as a business owner when your firm tries to unionize to protect people. Right. Um, sure. And so I talked to an attorney. Uh, I asked a friend of mine if they had an attorney who, uh,

16:20wasn't the typical management labor attorney. And that was because there are a couple of ways you can go with this because one, I had a fundamental interest in the unionization effort. Um, and two, I didn't want to create animosity or an adversarial environment. I needed to learn from an attorney. What, what could I do? What couldn't I do? But I also wanted someone who understood the interests of labor in that process.

16:53Sure. So I spoke to some friends of mine from college who are attorneys and got the name of someone who is, who had worked on behalf of both management and labor and spoke to this person about what it meant to you guys. And this person also asked me that same question right off the bat, which is why, why are they unionizing? Like, why do they need to? What do you want this? And why can't you give them what they might want without the union? Like, is it a structure you want to place because it has all sorts of ramifications?

17:27And it was good to work through that. So it was good to process that. So I learned, I spent about two to three months learning, reading, talking to people, writing things down, writing my thoughts down, and also speaking to other people here because of the fundamental strangeness of the structure of the request for voluntary recognition, which was that it was everybody but two of us were requesting this, including people who, in my

17:57mind, were helping manage the practice, right? So we spent about two to three months with some meetings internally. And again, the process of this is there's like a bit of caginess because you can't say things, right? You're expressly forbidden from saying certain things. So you have to find language that doesn't run afoul of the law, but also tries to probe and understand what's happening. So what would be an example of like something that you can't say, but naturally you'd want

18:32to? I'm trying to remember like some of the examples. Like there are things like, you can't say things like, like, do you, are you trying to get this? Are you trying to, are you trying, I can't ask things like, do you want more of this? Like, what do you really want? Like there are ways to, it was just very, it felt like the requirements for security of the workforce, which is again, really important, means that I have to be very careful about how

19:07I ask questions and what I say.

19:11And it took some time to figure out like how to craft conversations that would help me understand things without running afoul of those requirements. I imagine that's, that's a difficult thing to do in general, but also for a medium, small architecture practice where everything's very intimate. And like, yeah, we work together every day. Yeah, exactly. And architecture is a very challenging, you know, profession.

19:41You're talking about all kinds of stuff. Like your, your, your, your family is like an off, your, your office is like a family in a certain sense. And then now to, to have to phrase in a certain way would be an adjustment for sure. Yeah. And also like what the paradox of we're in a profession and also many of us teach and work in, in academia, we're in a, we're in a world where we're talking, like talk, maybe saying too much sometimes or, or being really bluntly honest about what we're thinking.

20:12And then you have to pre-filter that again for good reasons. But we spent those two to three months. Um, for me, the biggest thing was understanding because I, um, after about, well, my, my first response, like three weeks, two to three weeks in internally in my own brain was like, I'm going to do this. Like, I'm going to, I'm, I had decided I was trying not to, um, what again, jump to a

20:44conclusion, um, about what to do. So I really did have earnest conversations with a number of people quickly within the first two, three, four weeks of this happening. But I think in about that two, three, four week mark, which is pretty fast. Yeah. I had decided that I was, I had sort of decided that I was going to recognize the union. Yeah. I, uh, I'm guessing you have the capacity to also not do that and just shut it down. Oh, yeah, you can, yeah, you can just, you can, you can, so there's, there's another like

21:17option of the discussion, which is like, well, if you're not the, the tactics of management dealing with labor. And again, I'm really, I'm really oversimplifying this. Um, one is you voluntarily recognize, which means you, you have a union, right? And then you start negotiating your CBA. You do it. That's done with it. It's that's non-adversarial. That's right. You're, you're recognizing them. It's just what it sounds like. You're saying, yes, I, I recognize you as union. Let's, let's go to the next step.

21:48And the other side was to, you can't reject it. You can say, I will recognize you, um, and you can push people to a vote, right? So pushing them to a vote doesn't mean that it won't be a union, but the standard practice is you use the time between the time you tell them they need to vote on this and come up with a majority. There's a duration of time that passes between the moment of request and the moment of, of

22:19vote voting. And that time is typically used by management to, so discord, to pit people against each other, to slow the process down, to kind of stratify the groups and build opposition. Right. Sure. Um, and I, there, that was pretty much the least interesting thing you could have ever proposed to me was to do that. Projects stop and then therefore, oh no, some people have to go for it.

22:51Yeah. That kind of stuff. So there, there was, there was not even there, that wasn't even remotely, not even remotely uninteresting. It was, I didn't even pass my mind to do that. Um, also like the simple fact was they were going to be at union because 20 people out of 22 were registered. There was not going to be, this wasn't a giant practice where the lawyers could do their work, um, if there was even interest in that happening. So I decided like a month in that I was going to recognize it, but there was one kind of

Defining Management Versus Labor

23:22stumbling block, which was like, what is the structure of the practice in a place that has a union? Right. There's quite distinctly management and labor. Like that's what you create. You create a divide. Um, you can look at it as a negative, as a division, uh, or you can look at it as a structure without judgment, which is sort of how I thought of it. But in the latter case where it's a structure with two different parties, management and labor, there needs to be a structure within management.

23:56And so there are also, you know, definitions about who qualifies as management and who qualifies as a member of the unit, the labor unit. And because everyone, but the one person who wasn't an architect had signed on the letter, there were then further discussions between me and some others about what it really meant to be, were people managers? Like were people who were seniors in the practice actually not really part of the unit? And were they, they were management like their needs, because how can management be just

24:31the owner and everyone else? There's, there's, the idea is that there's layers of management. Um, and so the, probably the second month to third month of that three months lag between recognition from the time of the notification, part of that time, the last, I'd say at least the last half of that was trying to figure out, um, how to, how to create, um, like a consensual support amongst the senior people that there was a management layer that they

25:06were part of. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so therefore they would not be part of the labor force. They would not be part of the union. And I think there was an emotional component to that because a couple of the people who are in management now, who are principals at the practice, were instrumental in helping organize, right? And they were going to be part of the first thing that had ever happened on the labor front in contemporary United States architectural practice. And so I think there was, um, that's a hard thing to, to ask of someone, um, to say, hey,

25:39you were, you were really important in organizing, but you can't be part of the group, right? That's effectively what I was saying without saying that in those specific terms. And I, I, I had a, I have a lot of empathy for that sort of ask of someone, um, which is to spend a lot of time and emotional energy and commitment. Some of the people had, again, worked for the lobby and spent many, many months, if not years thinking about what it would mean for architecture if there was a practice that

26:10had a union and to be part of that was important. But then to be asked in, in some ways told that that wasn't really how it would work if we did this because we need, they were managers that that's, that was, um, a sensitive moment in my mind. Yeah. I, I can appreciate that. And I think this is where also the nature of architecture and I'm going to say smaller, smallish practices. It's, it's, there's this gray area because I've, I've been at offices that are at your

26:43scale, but in offices that are smaller and bigger and I, and I've seen offices grow and shrink and there's, when you get to a certain point, like your size, you, you do naturally have to have some management, lest the office be just a shit show all the time. Well, it might still be a shit show. Like any good architecture practice. And so, you know, but there's this, or at least there's an attempt to create management, but it kind of needs to be there. So that was actually my, my first question was, how did you have everybody be part of the union?

27:14Um, but in, in maybe, I mean, I don't know, I'm just thinking maybe it's actually quite an interesting and maybe more productive relationship because people who started the union ended up not being part of the union. Like it probably creates a, a, a sense of fairness, you know, implied fairness because of that. Um, yeah, I think that, um, I think that it was really helpful and I think it was pretty

27:46brave of the people who were in, who are now in management to, I don't want to say accept, but have that conversation and come to an understanding again, whether they accepted it or not is not for me to say, um, I think it's implicit that they accepted it, but that they process through what it would mean as a collective and not just the collective of the unit or the labor unit, but the collective of the entire practice to actually follow through and make this happen.

28:17I think that was an unselfish act and pretty brave of those people to both organizing, to both organize and then in a way, step aside from that organization. Um, and so I think it did, I think it builds respect, um, for those, it built respect for those people, even, even as I acknowledge that it creates, it creates a division. And I think that was another, that was definitely another discussion we had and there were differing

28:49opinions amongst some of the more senior people about like, what does it mean to divide the office? Right. And for me there, there's, there's the actual legal, there's the legal divide, right? There's the unit and there's management. So there's the contractual divide that exists, but there's also sort of implicit divides in any of an office because of model structure, right? Senior versus junior, you know, project manager versus product designer, uh, non-architectural staff versus architectural staff. There's, there's always some level of divide that exists.

29:21So the question is not like, how do we keep it from being undivided? Because there's always some level of division. And I don't mean that in the, in the negative division as a, as a fractious term. I just mean, there are, there are layers and there are, there are different categories of, of, of types of people, um, from a professional standpoint. Um, but what does it mean to divide the office structurally and legally while trying to maintain collaboration, transparency?

29:54And so there, there, there was, there were discussions about that, but there was also like a lot of learning about like perception versus reality about where are divisions existing? Are some of them not as good as they might, like, are the divisions actually because of, of difficulty and not because of natural, the natural order of architectural offices? So there was, there was quite a bit of learning there too. Um, and I think that goes back to the whole, like your first, one of your first questions

30:26about like, why at an office does this happen? And my office had been, and was, and is a healthy work environment. Like it has, it has, I won't say it's always been, I'm not, I'm not saying it's perfect. That's not what I'm saying, but on the spectrum of architectural offices, yeah, it had been, and it has been a stable and supportive, and again, I'm, I'm saying

31:00this as the, with owner's bias. So like everyone who's listening can, can take that. Yeah. But I, I think, um, I have not worked at your office, so I can't see what it's like to be there, but you're right though. On the spectrum of architecture offices, you know, I've, I've been at places that were horrible workplaces from, in every metric you could think of, you know, except for design quality. Design quality is always good, but like health, work, life balance, salary, you know, treatment of employees, toxicity, all that's like bad. And I've been at offices that are the opposite and that they're all high marks.

31:32And, and unfortunately it's, it's, it's pre, it's more common than we wish it were that offices don't perform in the way that they should. And all the, not all, a lot of the well-known architecture offices, we all know those are terrible places to work at. I'm not going to name them now. I'll do that in another episode, but like everyone in New York city knows this. Like it's not, it's not new information. Uh, but you have always had a reputation of being like the opposite of that, um, at the

32:02school, at the private, like throughout New York, everyone knows that like, Andy's like the standup guy and you know, you guys do good work. So anyway, that's my attempt to, to, to support what you're saying for listeners who are like skeptical. I'm like, no, Andy's a good guy. This is not some, some shady individual we're having on the show. The thing is, David, like it's, it's, it's gratifying to hear that. And it's, and there is a degree where I, I know that we, that we and I have run a, a safer, healthier office. And at the same time, the process still reveals places for improvement, right?

32:38Self-criticism and, and understanding like, where did you maybe not do something nearly as well as you could? Where did you step on someone's toes? So, but in the, in the realm of that original question, like why here, I do think that the people who were interested in, in helping, um, labor establish a foothold and, um, show that this could be done and show that this could be done in a practice that where it would not damage the practice. Right. So that I, and right, but I, I think that the people who organized were confident that

33:16they had my receptiveness to the organization and that of any place where, well, they were working at the place, so not any place, but this was a place where we could show that this would succeed. Right. Right. So that's, that's different than we need to establish a union because the boss is treating us like shit. Right.

33:47And we're overworked and we're underpaid and we don't have benefits and we have no predictability and no job security. We're all at, you know, at well employees. Like there, that's not to say that those issues of health, welfare, job security, upward mobility, et cetera, were not of interest throughout the discussions and the negotiations. That's not to say that those were off the table or separate from anyone's interests, but I think the motivating factor or a very strong motivating factor among many motivating factors

34:19was if we do this here, we can prove that it works. Was part of your decision to recognize the union informed by this larger perspective of the profession and witnessing the struggles the profession has with the workplaces not being great and you think to yourself, like I myself can help contribute to this larger effort and that's another part of the, you know, one reason to say yes, as opposed to not.

34:51Yes, definitely. For me, it goes beyond just practice and it moves backwards into the formative years of academic environments because I teach, I've been teaching for 25 years and I've been a full-time faculty member at the new school since 2012 and I, you can see where it starts. You can see where the, you know, you've, you've had many, many people on your podcasts from

35:22all walks of the profession and academics and you've probably heard the stories, you know, the stories, you've lived them yourself. I did too. I perpetuated some of the bullshit in studio culture as I taught, you know, over 25 years. It took me a long time to be honest, to really think through critically what kind of environment I was creating and what kind of environment the schools are creating for students and still see it when I go to other schools reviews.

35:50And so for me, there was very much an interest in taking both what has happened at BA, but also bringing some of that back to where I teach and thinking holistically from the start of someone's life as a learning designer to the world of practice that we need to make fundamental changes to how this profession works. So yes, there was a bit of, um, pie in the sky mission driven interest in this, not, not just

36:24local business concerns and, you know, insulated siloed. But what's it like for BA was actually, I had thoughts that this would be able to cascade outward. Yeah. So I'm scaling it down now. Um, when you have, when you have meetings with the union leaders or representatives in the office, is, is it just like the management and them? Do you have to have like attorneys present?

36:54Like how does it, how does it work?

Navigating First-Contract Negotiations

36:56I don't know. How does it work? Right. So, uh, maybe, and you can, uh, like, um, cut me off at a certain point cause this might take a little bit of time. Um, so you recognize the union, then they're a union, right? You file, uh, you file the forms with the NLRB, uh, you explain who's in the union, who's not in the union, you recognize them. And then at that point you have to start negotiating contract, right? So at the time of recognition, it's really just the big group of the people that you recognize within the union and the people who are left as management.

37:29Like, it's pretty, pretty simple. It's not, uh, it's not like a specific, there's not like, um, like the leadership group in the union, right? You, you then have to decide how you're going to get to actually having a collective bargaining arena, which is the contract between the practice and the union. Oh, that's the CBA. That's the CBA. So you have a union, but like, what does the union have? Basically what we've done is you've effectively given them protections. They've gotten protections under the law relative to their union status, which is really important.

38:03But there are no terms of employment other than effectively the protections of what they have in place, their benefits, their, there's nothing that establishes like we have a, we had an office handbook, which talked about hours of work and holidays, like, but there's, there's no con, there was, there was no contract. So they have the new protections of the union, but they don't have a contract that establishes all their rights and the terms of their employment. So at that point, you then have to negotiate a contract, right?

38:36So that's the next step. So you, you recognize them, big moment, it's really exciting. And then you have to get actually to the hard work of figuring out what the hell the contract is going to look like. And that's tricky because it was especially tricky with us, because if you're, if you're establishing what's called a first contract, a first contract for a union is typically like the first contract of any union in a place. So if a teacher, if a town, if a bunch of school, public schools in a town, the teachers decide

39:11they want to unionize, they, that might be the first contract for them. And that's their first contract, but it might be the first contract with the town that they're establishing the union in, but it's not a first contract of teachers, right? It's, it's a first, it's their first contract. So they have to go through a first contract negotiation, but they have dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds of other contracts as precedent to utilize, to negotiate their union contract. Sure.

39:41Architects, there is no first contract for us to look at anywhere. So not only are we negotiating a first contract at the practice, we're actually negotiating a first contract in an industry. So you can go online in New York city and you can see all the police officers, sanitation workers, teacher, you can see all the contracts. If, if, if the university that you're working at decides to unionize faculty, you can go look at another union, faculty unions contract and say, this is where we want to start.

40:13Let's start talking. So we had to negotiate a first ever contract, not a first contract for an industry. So that's like a whole, that's a whole other level of what the fuck, um, kind of complexity. So are there attorneys present? I had no interest in having attorneys present for a couple of reasons. One bluntly financially, they're expensive and sure.

40:46They're smart. Um, I, I had a very, I had an excellent attorney advising me. Like I, I, he gave me great advice. Um, he didn't tell me not to do something. He only asked me questions about why and things like that. So I got some excellent attorneys advice, but I didn't want him negotiating contract also because he had never negotiated the first ever architect contract. He didn't, he didn't know, he didn't know, like, I would have had to spend literally days hours or hours just trying to walk him through what the hell architectural practice is. And it just seemed like starting the process with an intermediary was in a place where we

41:25were trying to establish a first ever contract was contradictory to the desires of the process. So no, there were no attorneys present, a really great guy, um, David DeMaria, he is, um, at IAMAW. So he was the union representative for, um, the BA union and David, I think David was an attorney himself or trained as an attorney, but he works now at IAMAW.

Interest-Based Bargaining in Practice

41:55David suggested a method of bargaining called interest-based bargaining. And it was, it sounded immediately interesting. So it was a way to negotiate and write a first contract by establishing first all the quote unquote interests that each party had. And it was a way of negotiating that was much more, I think, intimate and connective and not

42:34arm's length using intermediaries. So we did, we decided when we learned about interest-based bargaining that we would, we first had to learn how to negotiate. So there were a lot of steps here. I think it's so funny that there's a sort of, there's some, some humor or something comical about the, there's these two sides, right? Yeah. And in a sort of sense, but you're both also in the same boat and trying to figure out how this works. That concept of two sides is actually quite important. So one of the most interesting things about IBD, um, was that we learned that there's, there

43:13is a real spatial component to the concept of negotiation, right? So there's the, there's the catchphrase or the, the idea of sitting across the table from somebody, right? Right. And there's the, you know, there's the cinematic, uh, exchange of, here's a piece of paper with what I want and just slide it across the table. You slide it over. Right. Slide it over the table. And then the person looks at it and they crumple it up into a ball and they throw it in the corner

43:44and they line some expletives at you. And then, or they like write something down that the camera can't see and they slide it back across the table to the other person. Right. So there's people across the table from each other. Well, we were trained by an outfit called the, uh, FMCS. So David DeMaria said, well, look, we want to learn about IBD. We have, you know, we should consider it. If we're going to consider it, we should get trained in how to negotiate. And so the federal mediation and conciliation services, uh, was, was brought in.

44:18This is a federal, this is part of the labor department and it's a federal office. Uh, which may be, may have been gutted by, um, the creeps gutting our government. And, um, we got a couple of people to come out, one from Long Island, one from Cincinnati. Uh, really great people to help us learn how to negotiate and to walk us through the process of interest-based bargaining. What's also kind of funny is that the FMCS is what it, what it, what it, what it sounds

44:51like. It's the federal mediation and conciliation services. So they're brought in typically when negotiations have gone awry, right? They're conciliators. They're there to help bridge gaps. They're the, they're there to help people go from sitting across the table in a, a kind of antagonistic environment to working through differences and reaching consensus, right? That's, that's their job is to help conciliate. So they were brought in because they know how to teach interest-based bargaining, which is typically not done on, on at the beginning of a process, but done when things go sideways.

45:26Right. And, um, so they came in and they did like three days of training with us, uh, or four days over the course of a few weeks. And we're kind of like, I think looked at us kind of confusingly, like, why are you guys like, you guys seem to get along. Why are you using, why are you using mediators? Like, but it was, it was great. They were, they were so helpful because we didn't know what we were doing. So when we got to like, they would watch us for the first couple of days of negotiation and they would say like, well, here's what you, you have to pause here because you're getting

46:00ahead of yourself and you have to go back and start to talk about the issues. Right. So interest-based bargaining is you, you first set up all the interests. So an interest could be something like, um, hybrid work environment. Okay. Like you're, or, or the interest is actually healthy workplace, right? Okay. The interest is we want a healthy workplace. So what are the means by which you have a healthy workplace? Well, one person might say like, I need the fastest computer. Right. Which then gets put in a separate bucket from someone might say, I don't want to ever have

46:32to sit in a desk inside an office space, which gets put into another bucket. And so you have to set out all these interests of what are you negotiating? What's contractual? What's not contractual? Um, so FMCS helped us understand how to do that. And what it goes back to is the spatial, the spatial condition, which is that you don't sit across the table from each other. It's literal. You sit around the table, you sit around the table, you would sit around the table and it wouldn't be four people on this end of the table and four people on this side of

47:02the square, you know, half on each square on each part of the square. It was, I would sit next to Chris Beck, um, who was part of the labor unit, who would sit next to, um, Will, who's a principal, who would sit next to Ann, who's in the unit. We'd just sit wherever we wanted and talk through these things and work through the interests and start to develop all the parameters for the, that the things that would go into the contract before we developed contractual language that would spell out the, the actual, the actual

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48:09and costly errors. Share your work in various formats from PDF to client-friendly, up-to-date online dashboards. Join the ranks of leading studios using Programma today. Click the Programma link in our show notes to start for free. This episode is brought to you by Chaos. They make award-winning design and visualization tools, and they're really pushing the boundaries with AI. Now, AI is shaking up the architecture and design world, and Chaos is taking a responsible approach. Their tools are built to help architects, designers, and visualization specialists to work faster and explore more ideas without replacing creativity.

48:43Basically, Chaos wants AI to make your imagination stronger, not take over. So you get to design with more freedom, create stunning visuals, and stay in control of your work. If you want to see what that looks like, tap the Chaos link in our show notes. This might sound arrogant to people who are not architects, but do you think that because you're all architects, it allowed you to negotiate more successfully and better? Because I find, as you're talking, I'm thinking like, we're kind of trained, if we learn, hopefully,

49:15through school, to learn how to be very rational when we're presenting, to think things through rationally, to start with an idea and explain it, and then to parse out information and just work through conversations, and in a certain way, negotiations, but in the context of designing architecture, sort of in that way. Do you think that helps give you guys a leg up compared to, I don't know, if you didn't have that training collectively?

49:42My initial answer was no. Like, I don't think that gave us an advantage. Interesting. That was my first, I was thinking through while you were asking, like, the answer is no, because architects have tried this and it didn't work, right? Fair. There was like a high profile failure of, they're all architects. It didn't work. That's true. The management said no, they divided the labor force, it failed, right?

50:15It's happened a few times. So I think that the answer at the highest level is no. Architects and our education and how we think about space and how we think about collaboration, I don't think it gives us any kind of advantage until you find people who have shared interests, right? And those interests may be, they may be shared in the center of the Venn diagram. They're not all the same. It's not two overlapping circles, right? It's, as long as you have people who have enough shared interests and they have what you're

50:51describing, David, I think once you have that, then yes, the answer goes from no to no and we had enough people and we had enough shared consensual interest in certain parts of this process to make that sense of criticality and collaboration supportive of their process. Yep. So I do think, so the answer went from no to yes, but I think it has to do very much with where the interests of all the people involved land. Yeah. Land. Yeah.

51:22Yeah. Once you're at the table together, making conservative effort, that's where it takes in. But if you're not going to be at the table, then. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Interesting.

51:35So is there a next step after that? I mean, I imagine training the CBA has got to take a long time or get to terms, you know. So we started training and I think it was February of 23 and so it took us a while from the recognition, which was in the late summer of 22. It took us from then until February to get through how are we going to negotiate? We started, you know, we had to go back as management and as the union to talk about like where the interests lie before we talked together about where the interests lie.

52:07We talked to IAMAW and the BA union about the method of negotiation. We talked to FMCS about scheduling training. We reached consensus on that reasonably quickly, but we still had to schedule them. We had to go through the training. We started negotiation March, April of 23 and we signed the contract. The contract was ratified, you know, for the, uh, around the following the lie. So it took almost 14 months to negotiate the contract.

52:37Wow. Um, and that happened. So it happened during work hours. He never, you know, we never met outside of work hours. It was actually an important, both symbolic and practical part of this was that we weren't asking, nor were any of us, including me interested in doing this like late at night, like as extracurricular activity over time. Like, no, like we do this as part of our work. Yeah. Um, so we carved out time, which made it take longer because we couldn't just like spend

53:10a month not working on projects. So it meant that we would meet for a day or two and then we might come back in two weeks and we would do some work separately. We would, we worked on a shared Miro, uh, you know, online Miro board where we would dump everything. We'd solve this great, huge sort of messy Miro board where we, you would first lay out interests. Then you would start to describe what would be in the contract. Then you would all together, um, decide about feasibility of certain proposals.

53:43So you would then develop proposals from the interests. Um, and then you would, you might develop like from a, for one example, like, uh, hours of work. Right. So one of the big questions was how many hours are in a work week, right? Like 40 hour work week we had during the pandemic, we had actually gone down to like a 38 hour work week. Cause we just, we did like summer Fridays in the pandemic, but then we just never stopped

54:14doing summer Fridays. So like Friday ended at like work ended like at three or four o'clock on Friday, every Friday. And then it just kept going after that, the pandemic. So we had like sort of a natural 38 hour work week basically. And then when we got to the negotiations about a work week, we were talking about a, like, where do you work? So work week ties into so many issues. Like, where do you work? Are you in office? Are you hybrid? Are you remote? Cause we were doing this relatively proximate to the kind of, I don't want to say the end

54:45of, but the kind of waning impact of the work styles of the pandemic. Yeah. So there was like, where do you work? There's hours of work. Like we didn't work 40 hours before we had like a comp time policy, but no formal like overtime policy. So like what constitutes a work week? Where do you work? Like everyone was working at home. Very few people were still back in the office. We had never really established a, like a return to work policy either. Like you should be here two days sitting at your desk.

55:17Like there was no, we never dealt with it throughout the pandemic, post pandemic until we got to negotiations. So we had to have discussions about that. So like you'd have like a discussion about work place, hybridity, remoteness. We have an employee in California. We have an employee in Boston. We have an employee in New Haven. And there were questions about like, well, if someone's not required to be in the office because they live in California, why is someone in Brooklyn required to be in the office, even if the office is in Brooklyn? Like where's the equity in that?

55:47If someone is able to work at home over there, can't they work at home here? Like why does it, why? That's like a little bit of a strange situation, right? So these are all discussions that we had about like what makes a healthy, collaborative, hybridized office that provides equity. So different proposals, like were there days where you have to be here? We ultimately like went through all the interests and all the proposals and decided that no one was ever required to be in the office ever, unless we as management decided that it was

56:21essential and was reasonable. So, right, right, which in two years now, some of the ratification, there've only been a couple of times where like, if everyone can come in for a meeting, that would be great. And it's only happened like twice and it was not project related. It's just like, can we get together? Right.

Agreeing on Work Hours and Flexibility

56:38There were hours of work. So there was the 40 hour work week. There was an initial proposal from the room was to go to a four day work week. Mm hmm. And there was a discussion about that because that's complicated. Right. Not because any of us are uninterested in a four day work week. Right. Like, of course, my own desire is like, sure, let's do a four day work week. That would be I would love to be able to do a four week 40 work week.

57:08Like, yeah, like there are lots of studies and we talked about those and we read those studies that were presented to us about the benefits of health, productivity measurements, et cetera, about a four day work week. Right. But the reality is that architecture, construction and allied consultants are not on a four day work week. Job sites, especially construction, do not work on four day work weeks. So how do you how do you acknowledge the benefits of flexibility, maybe a more compacted work

57:39week? How do you rectify that with what our industry expects, what our clients expect and what our work sites, especially with projects under construction might demand of an architect? So we went through proposals and there were financial ramifications for a 32 hour work week. If it's a true four day work week, it wasn't a four day, 10 hour day work week, because that's also kind of like it's extreme on people's health. So a true four day work week means for a effectively for eight hour days.

58:12Yeah. But that means that one day is not covered. So what happens if we're open Monday to Thursday, but then Friday on a construction site? Or there's a city meeting. Like, how do you deal with all the relations? So we had discussions about how to work that. What we ended up on was we reached an understanding consensus and everything had to be reached like consensus. It wasn't like you had to have an interest based bargaining. You have to have consensus, which means if someone says no to something, you keep talking.

58:42So it could be seven of us are yes to something and one person is no. No, you don't advance a policy in the contract until that no turns into a, an okay. It doesn't have to be a yes. Right. But it can't be a no. Interesting. So we went through a whole bunch of these proposals. We ended up reaching consensus on a 36 hour work week. So we have a 36 hour work week. Okay. We have a five day schedule. Yeah. So effectively people work seven and a quarter hours a week approximately.

59:16However, the contract spells out flexibility, which is that with approval, if someone says, Hey, this week I want to work my 36 hours in four days because I mean Friday for whatever reason, whether it's to take care of a child or to go away or because they're tired, they want to day off, day off, not as PTO, but they just need some space, right? Who knows what the reasons are? We agreed that that would provide. We're typically open.

59:47We're always open five days a week with prior approval and communication with managers and teammates. You're allowed to do that with approval in four days if you want. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Hey, well, it works. No problem. Right? I could work 10 hours one day, 10 hours the next day, eight hours, six hours for it, whatever that adds up to the 36 hours. Right. As long as my teammates know, as long as I'm communicating, and as long as we're like effectively

1:00:19it implies and requires support from each other. It means that job sites are covered, right? So if we have a construction site and someone's like, I'm going to be working a four-day week, it means that others who are involved in that know that that Friday, they shouldn't take the day off. Right. Right. Right. It's just communication. And it's interesting because some of the things you're describing, and a lot of others that I'm kind of visualizing, they sort of naturally happen in smaller practices, but

1:00:52they're just not formalized. Right. So that's- And it also kind of is a bad thing sometimes because it creates a lot of confusion and then a sense of unfairness. But I think to that first part of not being formalized, I think that goes again back to your very beginning question about like why, why is it necessary? And it's because none of these things are formalized. So you could say like, as the boss, I could say, here's our policy.

1:01:22I'm going to change our office handbook, right? And I'm going to say, this is our new policy. Five-day work week, 36 hours. Great. That's good. Okay. That's super. That would be a progress. That would be a progressive move and really great for the employees. But without a contract, it doesn't have any weight. I could change it tomorrow. I could just change it back. And I could also terminate somebody if they didn't like it, right?

1:01:53Like, because they're at will employees. So without the contract, it's all great. Like, yes, it's good. More people who aren't unionized should be doing some of these things, like without a question, because there aren't going to be unions at every architecture firm. There's only two of us, right? Oh, there's two? I didn't know there's another. There's two. Yeah. Sage and another firm in New York, Sage and Coom, which is about 13 people. They ratified their contract, I think, about two months ago. So there's two of us, right? So I'm not deluded. This isn't running amok amongst the architecture industry.

1:02:25There aren't going to be dozens and dozens of architectural unions, though I wish there were. There are many other firms should institute some of these practices for the health and welfare of their employees and their own health and welfare. But frankly, them instituting that and adopting these policies does not create any security for the labor force. The only thing that creates security and certainty for the labor force is the contractual obligation that the CBA establishes. So that's why the union is important.

1:02:57Yeah, that's a great answer. And it does clarify things. So once the contract, I'm zooming forward now. So once the contract is made, how can it be changed? It can be changed by addendum, which is through mutual change. It can be changed upon renegotiation. We're coming up on the third year, so our contract expires next April 30th. So we'll probably begin renegotiating the contract starting sometime, I think, late summer, early

1:03:29fall. And hopefully it's sort of on the margins where things get negotiated, because most of it seems to be working well. But we realized kind of quickly that we didn't consider it. Like, it's like 32 pages or something. And there are some things in there that we didn't actually even talk about or that we didn't consider. Like, we have the flexibility for people to go to, you know, partial schedules.

1:04:00It's like, people might want to go from full time to 60% full time, right? Because they're beyond like a parental leave or a family leave, right? They just might be like, you know what, I really want to teach. So can I still work here? Like, is it okay if I did 60%, but I need the other hours to teach, right? So, and that's the kind of stuff that I actually think is really important for us to do, is

1:04:32to provide that opportunity. One, because I teach. So like, I was like, you can't teach. That's kind of hypocritical. It's like, no, you can't do what I do. That's sort of, maybe that's like an originary sin of architects is to not permit their employees to do what they themselves are doing. It's a hypocrisy. Um, but we, and part of it is like, actually, I think some, some owners think of that as an affront or, um, selfishness on the part of their employee to say like, can I go to

1:05:0760% so I can teach? When in fact, actually what it was doing is it's creating goodwill. It's creating, it's maintaining continuity, right? Institutional knowledge. It's expanding someone's, their own knowledge base because they're both teaching and learning from their students. They're actually promoting the practice by being part of an academy and also part of your practice. Right. So, so that, that was in our contract that that could be done, but we didn't actually ever connect that to like PTO policy.

1:05:40Right. Like, like if you go to part-time, does your PTO get proportionally allocated? Like, do you get the same amount of days off if you're working 60%, if you're working a hundred percent? Like we never even, we were so like consumed with writing this first contract. We never thought about any of those interconnected or not, not any, but some of those interconnected things. Yeah. Like we didn't think about that. So the next contract negotiation, we're starting to like, I think they, both the union and management were starting to like make lists of the things that there were basically

1:06:10gaps in, and it's not about trying to claw back things on ownership side. It's like someone will ask about something and we're like, oh, we don't actually, we don't know if the contract doesn't actually deal with that. We better, we need to write something about that.

Renewing the Contract and Managing Gaps

1:06:27And you said the contract lasts for three, three years? It was a three, that was the recommendation was like that you do the first period for three years because two years is over fast, which we just passed two years and it went by really fast. And then three years gives you like a little bit of runway to start the understanding of what might re-immigration you did. And then four years is kind of long because it was a first contract. So like any gaps, so three years was recommended and it has gone by really fast and yeah, it's, it's, we have some things to address, but it's mostly that kind of gap filling in my mind.

1:07:04In the next couple of months, as we talk about it, someone might be like, oh, we should talk about this and it might be a whole new issue that we actually never even thought about. Sure. But we haven't gotten, we haven't gotten to that point here. So how has the, from your lens, how does the studio change since, since all of this

Shifts in Studio Transparency and Health

1:07:21has, has been established? Um, is it, is it a, does it seem happier and brighter? Does it seem awkward because there is this division? Did you guys have that awkwardness and then you moved past it? Like how has it been through? There are some things which have, that have steeped for me again, like, again, it would be, it would be great to talk to labor because their position will be fundamentally different than mine. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I can't speak on, I can always speak from my own perspective, which is that for

1:07:54me, a lot has remained the same, right? We had a healthy, collaborative, supportive workplace before. We still have that. From my standpoint, some things that have changed, and I think significantly is that I started to be more comfortable with, uh, a level of transparency that I wasn't previously. Um, I have regular monthly updates. We do office meetings, regular monthly office meetings, where I try to update everyone on

1:08:25like the work pipeline, which again, sounds kind of silly. Like how can you not tell your employees like where the work's coming from? Yeah. But you know, I, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. A lot of offices don't. I didn't do it for a long time. And now every month when we meet, I explain like, here's what we set proposals out for. Here's who contacted us. Cause they should know like, what does the landscape look like? And also sometimes it's been telling them bad news, like, which is like, this project has stopped. This project has stopped. This means this, this means this, this is what our year looked like last year.

1:08:58Stuff I didn't do previously with any kind of, um, level of disclosure that I've learned how to do. So I think that's helpful in creating some trust that may have been there, but not at a level of, um, intensity that it is now, but also trust about certain issues that didn't exist at all before, because I wasn't talking about certain things. Um, I think our office environment is, I think we're learning still how to be this hybridized

1:09:28because we're pretty much in the office only when you want to be. I'm in the physical, we have a physical office in Brooklyn. I'm here pretty frequently because I like to be at the office. Um, I use it as a way station between here and teaching. So geographically, it's kind of midpoint. Um, I like seeing people, we show the office with a really great graphic designer. So I get to see people from there to practice. Um, and on any given day, there might be me here today versus me. Um, but yesterday there were five people here. Again, we're only 15 and three people are remote.

1:10:01So there were 12 people in New York. So on a really, really crazy day, there might be five or six people here. Um, so I think that the, in, we're still learning about the kind of in the office environment, um, and the transformation from sort of post pandemic to now. Um, I think the office, the office has remained quite stable, right? So I think that's an indication of, of a healthy workplace in some ways. Um, people, I think are content to continue working here.

1:10:33Um, it's helped me figure out how to market the practice more robustly. Um, yeah. And, and I, I don't say that just like from a financial standpoint, but it's, it's one of those things where like, I think the formality of the contract has like, it's not a lot of it's not a shadow weight. It's like a real weight. Like there is a contract.

1:11:04Like it means it's a, I always felt a lot of pressure and an obligation to be supportive of my employees previously before the union. Um, it wasn't like that didn't exist and I was kind of loose about it, but I really do think that having the contract formalizes the obligation of the business to its own. And I think that's really important actually. And so I don't feel more pressure, um, from that, but I, I feel more aware of the obligation.

1:11:41Um, so from my standpoint, those are some changes and I will say for me, and this, this is hard to explain, it's owning a business, owning an architecture firm is pretty brutal.

1:12:00You know, the deal, right? Like it's, there's a lot, there is a lot of, there is a lot of pressure because you're making payroll and you're providing benefits and all those things financially. So there's a lot of pressure. Um, but since this happened, my mental health has improved markedly. Like interesting. Yeah. So, you know, I, I was in partnership for 15 years.

1:12:33I had my own practice without the union for nine years, 10 years. So for 25 years in more conventional small practice environment, having been through at least two recessions and a pandemic and dealing with the struggles of that teaching, balancing teaching and practicing since the union was formed and becoming more comfortable in transparency and having other people in management to work with together collaboratively on how to make

1:13:10the practice shuddle along well, my, my own level of stress still high is much more, much more manageable. And I would say that I'm a much happier person from it. And I was always a pretty happy person, but I'm, I'm happier because of it. And is that also because, you know, you mentioned having, um, X number of managers, which help you work through things, but also what I've, what I'm visualizing is that if you're a person

1:13:41who cares about people, which you are, that now, you know, exactly, and you've agreed upon terms with employees in a formal way. So there's no guesswork. Like I think for people who care about others, you're always a little bit wondering, like, do they really feel that way? Are they okay? Even though they seem okay. And that, you know, multiplied over 20 people or whatever people, it does create a level of, of, uh, I guess stress would be the word. Yeah.

1:14:11And there's like, I, again, I can't speak for the union members, but like they're a collective, right? So they're a collective. They work with, and for each other and that can't help, but inform how we in management should work too. So normally you might think that examples are set by leadership, right? Like that's the, you know, you look to the, you look to the leaders to model behavior or

1:14:47model practice, but actually, you know, maybe we in management in our shape should be looking to the workers for the model of how to practice and be here. Right. If they have their shit together, then. Right. No, that's right. And I think that's really, really important. Again, I think it's something that our, our academic world and our professional world are way behind on, way behind still.

1:15:19Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of the, there's many benefits to, to, to, to all of this, but one of them is just bringing the, the things that we all know and think about, but to the surface. So finally there's an actual, an honest, first an honest conversation. And then it, like in translating to something formal, um, it's, it's, it's interesting because there is a lot of unspoken, um, challenges or requests or wants or interests and whatever else in the professional setting, but also in the academic setting. And it's just not, sometimes it's not talked about.

1:15:49Actually, a lot of times it's not talked about directly. Yeah. It's just, it's tacitly accepted just the way it is. Has any of this, um, shaped or changed how you guys do your work? So I'm not talking about like the workplace and the days off and the, the, and the, the culture, but like their work itself. I don't know how you negotiate with clients, how you design things, how you talk to each other at the design table.

1:16:17Yeah. I think it's, it's made us, I think, okay, I'll, I'll speak for myself. I, I'd say it's, it hasn't been a, like a sea change, um, because I, I fancied myself a reasonably decent listener prior. Um, I think it has made us, I think it's made things more collaborative. I think there's a willingness to, um, listen to each other in a way that is healthy.

1:16:52Um, but I never had a practice, like, you know, like the stereotypical practice where like the architect, um, walks up to the desk here, he makes a sketch, leaves it for someone us to figure out what the fuck they drew, like, that's just not like, that's just not how it works. Like, like, it's just like TV bullshit or it's either TV bullshit or it's, um, the rarefied air of a couple of obnoxious practitioners. Right. And, and, um, we work on big projects with big teams where we have to wrestle with each

1:17:27other and think things through. And we have to, we have to work collaboratively. If anyone wants to work as a individualists, it's probably not going to work well in a project where there might be 30 or 40 people involved. That doesn't mean people can't have their own ideas. That's not what I'm saying. But I think that it's really more strengthened. What were the ways that we already worked were rather than be transformative in terms of

1:18:00like day-to-day work practices? Yep. Yep. Because we're still an architecture firm, you know, we still draw in Revit. We still, you know, crank out a bunch of different iterations, um, in in state to look at and decide what materials to use. Like there's still a lot of, there's still convention to what architects do and how we draw and how we work, which hasn't fundamentally changed. So I don't want to overstate that, but I think, I think it's strengthened more than transformed how we work. Yep. Yep.

Reforming Architecture Education and Studios

1:18:30And then sort of the same question has, how is it, has any of this impacted, um, the academic side of things? I don't know. It could be either that your studies you teach or the, the school or I don't know, whatever else. So the school is interesting because schools are big places, right? I teach, I teach, uh, three classes a year, um, two studios and typically a seminar and, you know, we're a small school, but there still may be like in the undergraduate program across the three years, there might be what, three, six, nine, nine studio sections across

1:19:10the three years. I'm teaching one of them, right? So like the question of impact is a, is a good one. And there's all sorts of, um, institutional and educational habits that teachers have of all different ages about how they run studios. But like, one thing I've learned is, is the students, you learn how to work in a practice when you're learning in school, which is why it took me like 25 years to figure out that I was doing some things incorrectly and without much, without enough care for the health of

1:19:45these, the people I was teaching. Right. So I went through school in the early nineties and I was so happy to, you know, pull all nighters like badge of honor. You know, it's not bullshit. It's like, like I did it. I liked it. I can't, I will not revise history and say I didn't enjoy that because I did enjoy it. Like I found it kind of fun. Right. I also like did not treat myself well at all doing that. Like I was unhealthy because of that. I told my daughter, like she just finished her first year of college last week or two

1:20:17weeks ago. And I said, she got sick. And I was like, that's because you were working so hard. Like that always happened to me at the end of every semester. I would, I would finish the semester, final reviews. And then as soon as the semester ended, I would get like really sick for like three or four days. I've been like probably four or five to six semesters when I was in school. And it was because my body just didn't handle it to stop. I stopped moving in the body, just got flummoxed by that. Um, and then I started teaching and you know, I'm, I'm a pretty, I think I'm a humane teacher,

1:20:53but I never really talked to my students about like how many hours they worked on their projects. And I would give them lists of drawings to do. This is for decades, right? For 20 something years, like do these drawings. And if they didn't finish a drawing, I never held them. I never took them to task for it. Like that was where my humanity came in was that if someone didn't finish the drawing list, I didn't chastise them. I didn't make them feel bad. I would never insult my students ever at a review, like ever, even from the start. But I didn't think, Hey, maybe I should not assign so much to them.

1:21:31Right. I never thought about, I never thought about like the scale of a building project and their knowledge level. Like, was it appropriate for what they're learning? Like, I should have done these things. These sound like common sense things that teachers can do, but I didn't because my teachers didn't do with me. I love my teachers. I love my teachers. I had great teachers, but I never thought about that side of things. So in the last few years, I started to ask some questions. I actually asked the director of the program, like three years ago, I said, Hey, what is

1:22:05like, how many hours of work are students supposed to do outside of class? Like, what's the requirement under accreditation for how many hours they're supposed to do to fulfill their assignments? Like, I never asked that question before. Is that like a crazy question not asked? So I got the answer of like, in a 12 hour studio, you do X, you have to fulfill, you have to be able to satisfactorily fulfill an assignment in X hours of work. I can't, no, I have to look at my syllabus. It was like, it was like, it was like a 12 hour studio.

1:22:35I think it was like 12 hours outside of class. Wow. That's an efficient student. Jeez. Well, right. Right. So like, but that's like, that's what, that's not what they are. That's, that's not what either you expect them to do or what an assignment might take, but it's what they shouldn't be able to do to complete an assignment to a passable level. Yeah. It's not like, what would an A plus student do? But it's like, that's the healthy, that's for undergraduates. And I was like, sorry, I asked the students the first day I got that information.

1:23:07And I was like, how many of you guys know what the learning envelope is for this class? It was the true learning envelope. Nobody knew it. Yeah. I was like, do you know how many hours you're supposed to put in to pass, like to finish an assignment? And nobody knew it. I hadn't even done it. So now I go through that with all my students and I tell them explicitly, like, I'm going to write an assignment because I write pretty much new assignments every semester. I don't repeat studios. I don't try to repeat classes and assignments. I said, if you're finding that this is taking too long to just get through what I'm asking

1:23:43of you at the basic level, please tell me so I can adjust the assignment. That's one thing, which I never do.

1:23:50Two is I tell them I don't ever want them pulling an all-nighter, ever. Like, I don't want them doing it. Like, I can't police it. I can't punish them if they do. I said, but I don't want them doing it. I said, I know school is hard and I can't control what your other teachers assign you. So your time management is subject to things that are completely out of my control. But for my class, I don't want that to be driving you to these moments of stress and difficulty. So communicate with me.

1:24:20And my students still occasionally pull all-nighters. Like, I'm not naive to this. I've seen some very tired students. But I'm hoping that it is rare and that it's for reasons of their being driven to do something that is outside of what I've ever asked them to do, even implicitly. Like, they think I want something because I'm passive-aggressively saying, you should try this.

1:24:52Like, I have to be very careful about not doing that. But the students have expressed appreciation to me for that. And what I think it's doing, in concert with them knowing about my practice, is that they know that they are entitled to a healthy environment.

1:25:14Full stuff. Full stuff. That's it. And I hope it makes them question maybe what some of the other faculty are doing with them and assigning them. But I think that's, for me, that's the biggest struggle is seeing that there are still environments that are created that are not healthy. And that there isn't really, I don't think that there's, like, an overarching desire to change that. Not at the new school, but generally.

1:25:46Because I go out of schools to sit on reviews. I think generally there's still the idea that architecture school is what it is. Yeah. And it's supposed to be that way, right? They should be leaving school having experienced a healthy environment where they're challenged and they're learning and it's intense and they are given freedom and encouraged to experiment and are working their butts off, but healthfully.

1:26:19They should be moving into the profession knowing that the profession is going to provide them a similar environment. Yeah. Not an abusive, unhealthy, exploitative, dehumanized environment. Yeah. I love that. So it's an uphill battle. It's an uphill battle. And again, I want to be careful. Like, I'm not perfect. I don't mean this to sound arrogant. Right. No, I don't mean to put myself on a pedestal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just know from seeing, like, okay, so here's an example.

1:26:51We have an overtime policy in our contract. Like, you can't work overtime unless you request it. Hmm. Right? That's not, that's not, uh, that's to protect the worker. Right? To protect us too because we have to bill for, we should be able to bill for overtime. Yeah. Um, but because we have to pay, compensate employees for overtime, we have to make sure that it's approvable before we do that because we have to have the money to pay it. Right? Yeah.

1:27:22So we work on big projects. We have developer clients. We're doing large scale affordable housing. We're doing private residences. We had, I think, one overtime request in the last calendar year. That's amazing. We're hitting our deadlines, right? So architects have to work 60 hour weeks. Please, you do not have to work 60 hour weeks. You're just dumb. You choose to do that or you choose to ask your employees to do that or you make your employees do that. But you do not need to do that to still do good work.

1:27:54Yeah. It's a, it's utter bullshit. So if architecture firm owners can understand that there's required discipline that helps provide healthy environment, that actually makes the work better and focused, that helps them not work overtime and not have to ask clients for more money. What's the problem here? Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I like your point as well, that this stems from school.

1:28:28You know, if you're conditioned in school to do these crazy hours and to kill yourself and to please people who are kind of like assholes, then when you get into the workplace, when you experience that, you're like, this is normal. And when you, for myself, when I went to an office that didn't do that, I was like, this is weird. Oh my God, they paid me to, they paid me to work. Like I had just been in school paying to work this many hours. Now they're paying me. Yeah. I wouldn't, I, my first job, I was like, sure, I'll stay late. I'm getting paid. I wasn't getting paid a lot, but I was getting paid.

1:28:59Yeah. Yeah. I was conditioned. I was totally conditioned. And it wasn't like nefarious. It just was the way it was. But I think you're right also that, that there's this tendency to, for those who want the profession and the education to stay as it was, there's a tendency for the subject to be oversimplified and to be kind of like binary. Like it, like the concern always is, well, if we don't do long nights, if we don't do all

1:29:30of these things and the work is not good. Right. And that's like, it's either this or that, but not really. I mean, part of what you should be learning how to do when you're a student is learning how to be efficient with your time. Like, how is that not something you should be learning? But I mean, how many teachers have, have, have, have I seen in my, my, you know, career who are actually engaging students to try and help them be more efficient at working? It's just not really a subject that's talked about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And, uh, yeah. Um, anyway, uh, we were through the time super quickly.

Business Impacts and Moving Forward

1:30:02Any closing thoughts or remarks before we, we wrap it up and continue on? No, I just, thank you for, for talking to me. Um, it's, um, it's a fascinating, um, it's been a fascinating experience. It's like an ongoing experience, um, for us. Like, I think the, the, the next sort of, um, the next thing for me to continue to learn and understand also is like, and another topic for discussion, which is probably a long one,

1:30:33which is like, where does it, how does it impact the business side of things? Ooh. Um, like, so like, as we're understanding the shorter work week and flexibility and, um,

1:30:45project workload and project scale, like how does it affect the business? I've, I've found that so far the business is at the mercy of our industry, right? Like, do I have enough work or do I not have enough work? Not the, the union as the union in the terms of the contract have had almost no, if not no impact on the business side of things. Like we haven't lost any work because we were unionized. We've in fact, we've probably gotten a little bit of work because we're unionized, but like how much profit there is has more to do with like, are we busy or are we not busy?

1:31:20Yeah, sure. Like, that's it. Like, like, are we, we, we, we were struggling for a bit because all of our projects were in CA. Like we had four buildings in CA at the same time, which was a much bigger, had a much bigger impact on the bottom line than any other issue because we were fully employed and very busy, but you know what, you know what fee is like during CA, it's, it's the least of the fee. Yeah. Right. So I think now that we've, we're two years in the contract, I think the next two or three

1:31:51years, it'll be really interesting to find out more about the business side of things and where does it lead both from, um, from a financial standpoint, but also from like a collective financial standpoint. Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, part two. Yeah. And a little bit of time from now. But yeah, thank you for, for talking to me about this. I, I, I hope, I hope more people open up their minds to what this can mean for, for

1:32:21themselves as owners or for their staff, if they are the employer. Um, and in particularly, in particular related to really the health, welfare and security, because that all makes our creative more stronger. Yeah. Like that's, that's in the end, what it does, that's what it does for us. I love it. Well, thank you, Andy. Thanks for making the time and for the transparency and the honesty. Uh, I think folks should really enjoy this and you know, the conversations will continue. Thanks, David.

1:32:51If you're listening to the show and you like what we're doing, then please consider supporting us by leaving a review of the podcast in the Apple podcast app. You can also find us on Spotify and YouTube and, uh, we have an Instagram handle, which is second to studio pod, and we have about 90 something thousand people following. So join that leave comments, um, on there we post video clips, work images, quotes, announcements, all kinds of fun stuff. We also have a website, which is second to studio pod.com and a hotline. So if you have any guest suggestions or topics we should talk about, then you can text the

1:33:23hotline, which is 213-222-6950. Thanks everyone for listening. Lots of great stuff coming up and we'll talk soon. Bye.