One small step for Starbucks workers, one giant leap for workers across America
Why strikes are sweeping America -- and why that's a good thing
Workers in one Starbucks store, in Buffalo, New York, made history yesterday by becoming Starbuck’s first unionized workplace. It’s a watershed for the biggest coffee seller in the world, which operates 8,953 stores in the United States — and which has done everything in its power to keep its workers from forming a union.
The vote itself was tiny. Nineteen baristas and shift supervisors voted in favor of unionizing, 8 voted against. But it marked a huge victory, nonetheless. Starbucks had waged a massive anti-union campaign in Buffalo — sending out-of-town managers and even executives into stores to discourage unionizing, closing down some stores, and packing remaining stores with new employees in order to dilute pro-union employees’ voting power.
For years, Starbucks workers have complained about the company’s labor practices, claiming that chronic understaffing has created a chaotic work environment, erratic hours, and difficulty in taking sick days. Despite episodic commitments by Starbucks management to change, the complaints have continued. They intensified during the pandemic when overstretched Starbucks employees also had to deal with new health risks and safety protocols.
The union election marks one of the highest-profile union wins in memory for U.S. restaurant workers, who are among the least unionized in the country and whose pay and benefits are among the lowest in all of corporate America. It’s certain to encourage more unionizing efforts among workers in restaurant chains.
What occurred yesterday at one Starbucks store is part of a much larger pattern — a surge in strikes and labor actions across America.
Kellogg’s striking workers are still holding the line and refusing to allow the company to separate employees into tiers (with newer workers getting lower pay and benefits). Today, Kellogg's said it will start hiring permanent replacements for the striking workers. Hiring permanent replacements is technically legal, but rarely done because it can poison labor-management relations for years.
Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama will get another chance to unionize (the National Labor Relations Board found that Amazon used unfair labor practices in the recent election there).
The United Mine Workers have been striking at the Warrior Met Coal company in Alabama for the last eight months, one of the longest strikes this century.
Three thousand student workers at Columbia University have been on strike for six weeks to demand better pay and health care (on Tuesday, at least one hundred members of the Columbia faculty joined them on the picket line).
What’s going on? Partly, low-wage workers have more bargaining leverage now than they’ve had in years. As the pandemic recedes (let’s hope it continues to), consumers are spending at a higher rate than they have in over twenty months. To respond to this surge in pent-up demand, employers are seeking workers.
But at the same time, workers across America are taking a fresh look at their jobs. Record-high “quit” rates and near record low rates of labor-participation suggest that a significant number are asking themselves if they want to go back to their old jobs — and are answering “no.”
Part of the “no” is an unwillingness to settle for their former wages and working conditions — especially in big companies (like Starbucks, Amazon, and Kelloggs) whose profits have been sky-high. (Or even in richly-endowed universities like Columbia.) That “no” is also reverberating across America in the form of strikes.
Many of these workers were on the front lines in the pandemic, and now they feel (with some justification) it’s time for their efforts to be rewarded. At a deeper level, I suspect the pandemic itself has caused many people to reevaluate what they’re doing with their lives and to set different priorities for themselves (although I can’t prove this).
For years, many big corporations like Starbucks have sold themselves as “socially-responsible” — offering consumers the soothing reassurance that in buying their products they’re somehow advancing the common good. That was always bullshit. Corporations exist only to make money. Corporate social responsibility is a jejune form of public relations. Starbucks’s aggressively marketed “socially responsible” business model turns out to be no different.
When corporations like Starbucks fight their workers’ legal right to form a union, the PR veil is lifted for all to see what’s really going on. Starbucks calls its workers “partners,” but they’re not in fact partners. They don’t share in the firm’s profits. Between January and September of this year, Starbuck’s revenue soared to $20.9 billion — compared to $17.3 billion in the same period last year. Its president and chief executive officer, Kevin Johnson, made $14,665,575 in total compensation last year and is on the way to getting a far larger package this year. Yet current average hourly pay at Starbucks is $14, or $28,000 a year.
It’s all about power — the power of workers to join together to gain the bargaining clout they need for better pay and working conditions, up against corporate power to keep wages so low that shareholders and executives can make even more. The victory yesterday at one Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York, is a small step on the long trail toward rebalancing such power in America.
What do you think?
By the way, here’s a video my colleagues and I at Inequality Media just did about labor history that got us to this point. Hope you find it useful.
While it's not unusual for a former Secretary of Labor to come out with a smart, cogent article on the stuttering rebirth of the labor movement in America, it is very much appreciated.
American workers are not slaves, and should not be treated as such by the guys at the top who grant themselves huge salaries and bonuses, have taken over the boards of directors who are supposed to oversee their compensation, among many other things, and have become members of the gilded uber-rich in America.
Meanwhile, the average non-unionized workers all too often suffer from substandard pay that just doesn't cover basic expenses, long work hours, uneven work shifts that add unpredictably to a worker's life, forced overtime often at no extra pay, and other onerous conditions reminiscent in some cases of Dickens' England.
Time off when your spouse or child is ill? Not a chance. Sick leave and sick pay too often not guaranteed. A death in the family? Try getting paid time off for elder care, or for the eventual funeral. Bonuses at the end of a successful work year? Forget about it; the best you might do is a skinny turkey while the bosses are raking in millions in bonuses they've given themselves. A nationwide plague that closes the schools so you either have to leave the kids at home alone - the infamous 'latchkey kid' system - or take time off from work, if possible, at a significant loss of income.
A hundred years ago, scabs and strike-breakers with bully clubs attacked and marginalized striking workers. There was blood in the streets of New York and Pittsburgh and Detroit and every other area where brutal labor conditions ruled the lives of citizens and new immigrants.
It's time for schools to teach the labor history of America, with a focus not only on hundreds of years of slave labor followed up the evils of sharecropping and Jim Crow, but on the labor battles of the early 1900's which gave us (thank you, Organized Labor!) the 40-hour work week, sick leave, and vastly safer working conditions. But the road is still long and hard for the average worker who wants less pain, more respect, better working conditions and for God's sake, a living wage!
Every new union, however small, is a brick in the rebuilding of the edifice of unionization and workers' rights. My wish is that unions flower all across America, and that workers can step out of the darkness and into the sunshine, Americans all, in a society of opportunity, care and mutual respect.
Kevin Johnson should be fired and people should boycott Starbucks. I no longer patronize them and try to find an independent coffee shop for my fix.
Kevin Johnson's qualifications include working at IBM, Microsoft, and Juniper networks. Kevin Johnson's contribution to Starbucks was leveraging technology to allow ordering by cell phone so customers could spend minimal time in the store and just grab their order and leave, often to go back to their offices nearby.
Well, in San Francisco, the offices are empty, and the downtown streets deserted. Starbucks has closed large locations like Fishermans Wharf and the Ferry Building and removed the furniture from others, to make Starbucks a Take-Out only operation, which is making Kevin Johnson salivate.
He can cut the staff to the bone, as all orders will be placed at a window. No bathrooms to clean, no floors to sweep, no Internet to provide for digital nomads. The vision of founder Howard Schultz as a European Coffee House Experience is being ripped to shreds by this greedy CEO.
Trust me, in less than 6 months, Kevin Johnson will close the one store in Buffalo that voted for a union. The union will never live long enough to negotiate its first contract. All the employees of the unionized store will be terminated, and it is all legal.
I wrote all about Kevin Johnson in an article on Medium. With photos, so you can see for yourself what the new Starbucks looks like. Kiosks.
Read the article here: https://sf-native.medium.com/an-open-letter-to-starbucks-shareholders-customers-and-directors-ef8a9e1cbc54