Union for Starbucks Workers Expands to Chicago

[Omaha Steve]

FULL story: http://www.iww.org/en/node/2822



Union for Starbucks Workers Expands to Chicago
Submitted by intexile on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 2:54am.

First Group of Baristas Outside of New York City Joins the IWW Starbucks Workers Union

Chicago, IL- Baristas at Chicago’s Logan Square Starbucks store announced last night their membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union (www.starbucksunion.org), becoming the first U.S. workers outside of New York City to declare union membership at the world's largest coffee chain.

Workers served Starbucks management at the café, located on 2759 W Logan Blvd., with a declaration of union membership and a set of demands including a living wage, guaranteed work hours, reinstatement of IWW baristas fired for organizing activity, and respect for an independent voice on the job through union membership.



"I work hard every day for an extremely profitable company yet I have to scrounge to make ends meet," said Joe Tessone, an IWW barista at the Logan Square store. “Across the country, Starbucks workers are inspired by the victories achieved by IWW Starbucks Workers Union members in New York, and here in Chicago we are using direct action against the company to improve our working conditions.”

Based on Starbucks' surveillance of union activity, senior level management was prepared for the workers' surprise action. In an unprecedented move, the store manager was joined by the district manager, regional director, and "partner" resources manager to disparage the union and intimidate workers from asserting their rights. Becky Critch of "partner" resources even went so far as to say the union doesn't exist to which workers replied, "we're dues-paying members of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union." Starbucks also handed out the preamble to the IWW constitution which outlines the union's long-term vision for economic change.

[wtmusic]

1. Boo hoo -- Joe has to "scrounge to make ends meet"

join the club, Joe :cry:

[Omaha Steve]

5. President Ronald Reagan didn't care about the working poor either!

That is when things started to go bad for the less fortunate. I thought people on this board cared more for their fellow human beings. And as the anti Wal-marters will tell you, if an employer doesn't offer reasonably attainable benefit package, we ALL pay the consequences. Democratic math 101.

You should look up the story of a registered user from just a few weeks ago that posted about the job they had at Starbucks. Or look up the story about OSHA closing a couple of NY Starbucks for rats and bugs in the last week. Try looking up how Starbucks violated NLRB law and paid the fines etc...

[wtmusic]

7. Starbucks has consistently been rated among the top

in employee satisfaction, has great bennies, and is a model of a corporation that is socially and environmentally responsible. Oh, and it happens to be extremely successful too.

"Less fortunate"? Hardly. Joe is going to have to put up with a LOT more than an uneven work schedule and minimum-wage pay to get my sympathy.

[Omaha Steve]

14. WOW you R just like R R

80% of Americans ( I presume you are one) want the minimum wage raised. You don't care if a single parent uses this job to feed kids while working 2 or more part time low wage jobs. As for benefits, Walmart has a better package. And about labor, here is the two year old case I asked you to look up earlier. Not a very fair employer at all!

http://www.nlrb.gov/nlrb/shared_files/decisions/dde/2004/2-RC-22852(6-30-04).pdf


And this: http://www.laborradio.org/node/391

NLRB rules in favor of Starbucks union

It's been a rough start to the year for Starbucks. In Florida, a federal court judge granted collective action status to a lawsuit filed by two managers who say they are entitled to overtime pay because they are actually "glorified baristas" and not true managers. The status gives the attorneys filing the suit permission to find other managers throughout the country who have similar complaints. Meanwhile in New York City, workers represented by the Industrial Workers of the World watched as the National Labor Relations Board agreed with their charges that the coffee chain has been "interfering with, restraining and coercing employees" who have attempted to unionize.

: The labor board also alleges in their complaint that Starbucks made outright bribes, created the impression of surveillance and much, much more.

Daniel Gross is an employee at the new York store. According to the board, seven Starbucks officials, including Senior Vice President Martin Annesse engaged in union intimidation. Gross says now that the board has ruled, other Starbucks employees are being encouraged to join:

: No majority of workers is required. Anyone can join at anytime and get started with other Starbucks folks around the country, imposing real economic, political and social costs on this company until they do the right thing and every single Starbucks worker rises out of poverty.



Starbucks says it pays FARMERS $1.20 per pound for coffee, and that is close to fair trade. Actually Starbucks pays the middleman, not the farmer. So compare 10,000 pounds of coffee at $1.27 a pound, vs .80. Which would you prefer as a farmer?

And this: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:f8kYmg0mOnIJ:www.starbucksunion.org/node/713+nlrb+starbucks&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4

Union Scores Big Victory Against Starbucks at Labor Board
Submitted by SWU on Wed, 03/08/2006 - 4:04am.

IWW Starbucks Workers Union

March 8, 2006

Union Scores Big Victory Against Starbucks at Labor Board

Coffee Giant Must Rehire Fired Baristas and Rescind National Anti-Union Policies

New York, NY- The IWW Starbucks Workers Union won a watershed victory yesterday in the first National Labor Relations Board conflict over unfair labor practices between the world's largest coffee chain and the baristas who work there. Faced with the prospect of having its widespread union-busting campaign exposed in a public hearing, Starbucks agreed to remedy all of the myriad violations committed against workers who have organized a union.

"We hope Starbucks' decision to settle reflects a strategic assessment to cease what has been a relentless anti-union campaign and accept the right of baristas to gain a voice on the job by joining together," said Laura De Anda, one of the union members that prevailed in the proceedings. "The IWW Starbucks Workers Union is here to stay."

Some highlights of the National Labor Relations Board settlement with Starbucks include:

* The reinstatement of IWW members, Sarah Bender and Anthony Polanco, who had been discharged for their union activity in order to discourage other workers from making a free and fair choice about whether to join the union.
* The invalidation of Starbucks' national policy that prohibited the sharing of written union information and joining the union on company property.
* The invalidation of Starbucks' national no-pin policy. Workers had been banned from wearing IWW pins and had been sent home from work without pay for refusing to take them off.
* An agreement by Starbucks to end threats, bribes, and surveillance of union members.
* What would have been a relatively hefty backpay award against Starbucks was reduced because the IWW assisted its discharged members in obtaining other employment which mitigates damages under the National Labor Relations Act. Still, the company will pay out almost $2,000.
* And much more. To view the settlement agreement log on to node/712.

The union was represented by its General Counsel, Stuart Lichten, of Schwartz, Lichten & Bright. The NLRB attorneys on the case were Audrey Eveillard and Burt Pearlstone.

"I'm pleased that Starbucks' blatant violation of the law has been remedied in my case," said reinstated barista Sarah Bender. "And now I'm just eager to get back to work to continue the organizing drive and chalk up more gains in wages and security of hours with the Starbucks Workers Union."

"All I have to say to Starbucks is: I'm back," added discharged barista, Anthony Polanco.

"The long-standing right to proudly display our union pins has finally been reaffirmed," said Pete Montalbano, an IWW barista whose disciplinary record was expunged by the settlement and who received compensation for being wrongfully kicked out of work. "This is an important visual expression of solidarity for co-workers and customers alike."

The NLRB complaint against Starbucks which resulted in this settlement outlined a widespread anti-union effort that extended to upper level management, including a Starbucks Senior Vice President. Fifteen Starbucks employees were named in the complaint.

The IWW Starbucks Workers Union is a grassroots organization of Starbucks employees united to improve life on and off the job. The campaign to organize Starbucks is based on the solidarity unionism model, unionism in its purest form: a group of workers directly pressuring a corporation without getting entangled in the cumbersome government certification process or the alienating business-union approach. Since its founding in May 2004, the Starbucks Workers Union has chalked up three wage increases, more secure work hours, and some modest safety improvements in the area of repetitive strain injuries. Union members also work together to remedy individual grievances such as fixing errors in pay and eliminating exhausting scheduling demands.

"Though we would have preferred to vindicate our rights in an open hearing, winning a remedy for all of our well-documented charges against Starbucks is certainly gratifying," said Daniel Gross, an IWW organizer and Starbucks barista whose 'final warning before termination' was nullified by the settlement. "It's critical to point out that while the conclusion of this battle took place in a legal setting, the fight was won in the streets and through actions on the job. The union couldn't have done it without grassroots solidarity from around the world from places as far off as Edinburgh, Scotland and Auckland, New Zealand to places as close to home as New Brunswick, New Jersey and the streets of Manhattan."

The Labor Board's standard practice is to settle complaints without the charged party, Starbucks in this case, admitting guilt. Because of this, as a symbolic matter, the IWW refused to sign on to the settlement. The IWW believes there was ample evidence to conclude that Starbucks was guilty of breaking the law. Nonetheless, the settlement stands as is with all of the union's charges resolved.

[wtmusic]

15. Starbucks has 5,500 stores worldwide

and you're whining about unfair treatment for TWO workers? It's completely amazing there aren't hundreds at a company of that size. BTW, Starbucks baristas earn $8/hr + tips to serve coffee, which ain't bad. If you don't like having to feed three kids on that, maybe you should have thought about birth control beforehand, eh? :eyes:

[Omaha Steve]

22. And everybody that works at Walmart is happy too I suppose?

I take it you didn't read ANY of the NLRB decision. Rose colored glasses.

[gulfcoastliberal]

2. UNION YES! K&R! nt

[Omaha Steve]

3. The AP version on this

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14590929/

Chicago Starbucks workers join union
Baristas becomes first unionized employees outside New York City



Updated: 6:43 p.m. ET Aug 30, 2006

CHICAGO - The union representing Starbucks Corp. workers said Wednesday that employees of a Chicago store have declared their membership, becoming the first unionized employees outside New York City of the world’s largest coffee chain.

The baristas at the Logan Square Starbucks store joined the IWW Starbucks Workers Union Tuesday night, the union said. They issued a set of demands that included a living wage, guaranteed work hours and the reinstatement of IWW baristas fired for organizing activity.

Starbucks often is lauded for offering generous benefits that include health insurance for part-time workers. But the 2-year-old union, which has members at seven Starbucks locations, contends that workers face low wages and barriers to health care and other benefits.

Seattle-based Starbucks did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

In March, Starbucks settled an unfair labor practice charge the union filed with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company of violating federal law by creating a national policy prohibiting workers from sharing written union information or wearing buttons.

The company admitted no wrongdoing in its settlement, but was forced to post at three stores named in the complaint detailed notices explaining workers’ rights to organize. It also offered two workers their jobs back and gave three employees back pay totaling less than $2,000.

[Fierce]

4. Starbucks baristas are unionized under UNITE-HERE

at a hotel in Rochester, Minnesota, and some baristas at airport Starbucks are union under agreements with the airports.

[MikeyJones]

6. Methinks Starbucks is already looking for union-busters

Wait till it happens. Service Worker unions are filled with illegal aliens and therefore are always at risk of seeing large numbers of their workers drop off the roles. I'm hating seeing the fact that these are the only unions advancing nowadays.

And again, I also find it strange and troubling that somebody would view Starbucks as a permanent or semi-permanent career worth fighting for giving the crap pay and low benefits in comparison to the cost of living in their usual urban environs.

After all -- aren't service jobs supposed to only be stepping-stones for our more professional careers? I am by no means in favor of worker exploitation or excessive owner profit but it just seems odd that one would throw their entire career aspirations into such a niche company and field.

[InkAddict]

8. The problem being that

upward mobility is being seen as difficult to near-impossible on a ladder on which rungs have been purposely removed. However, at the very least, the ability to maintain ways to continue eating and staying dry in the face of rung-pulling is the basis for this rationale. The thinking is something like being/becoming certified in hospitality management and, at the very least, keeping a bedmaking/housekeeping hotel job when perceived nepotism and arbitrary choices from other "management" fields fill spots above where the rungs are missing.

[MikeyJones]

10. Again, if the rungs are missing, start your own business.......

I've heard of hoards of small-business success stories just 2-3 years after initally starting them up. The only thing I was criticizing was a sad mentality I've found with so many Americans. That is a lack of self-reliance and a definite lack of common sense. People want the government to do everything for them and that's simply what socialist capitalism isn't about. Socialism is about giving somebody a help up when they're down, not making semi-permanent pension holders out of the recepients. After all, the more businesses you have, the more tax revenue you're going to have to help out the poor on their way up.

In the same way I don't like how one would view a job as shitty as Starbucks or as a hotel maid to look forward to doing for the rest of one's life. One should look to be one's own boss. Small business is the backbone of this country after all.

[InkAddict]

12. If they're not going to employ you,

do you think they'll give you a loan, or fund the education necessary to "certify" credibility that you know how to make chocolate chip cookies. Ridiculous regulations already assume that one will fail at attempts to compete with Mr. Amos unless you feed the right person what? a cookie, a roll in the hay. One can starve before "search and ye shall find..." has the intended effect. At what stage should one accept one's terminal position given the time it takes and the dollars necessary to attain the goal of self-sufficiency in the absence of employment and/or training opportunities.

[SammyWinstonJack]

13. !

:wow:

[Doremus]

17. "Let them eat cake"

Let them start a business? And just how are they going to do that with little or no capital? Let's get real. Sure, telling someone to go into business for themselves is appropriate for certain individuals, but not everyone possesses the skill sets, opportunity or cash.

It's about freaking time service jobs get unionized. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing at alarming rates, either going overseas or just plain evaporating. With college degrees requiring a king's ransom today, for a large segment of the middle class there are NO ladder rungs, period. Starbucks-type jobs are the blue-collar jobs of this generation. A family could survive on the income from yesterday's blue collar jobs. No so in our so-called service economy.

It's way past time to pare down the huge discrepancy between rank-and-file and executive salaries.

Besides, apparently Starbucks wasn't all it was cracked up to be or their employees wouldn't have felt it necessary to risk the loss of their jobs and fork over union dues.

[wtmusic]

18. A family can survive on the income from today's service jobs, too

and they have to "scrounge to make ends meet", just like they did fifty years ago. The only difference is that today they whine about it.

[Doremus]

19. Yesterday's union jobs didn't become such by staying quiet either.

Management doesn't willingly throw open the doors to unions. Our forefathers sacrificed their livelihoods and often their lives to organize for job security, higher wages and safer workplaces. I'm sure there was plenty of "whining" to be heard in those days.

Is it just the whining you're adverse to or do you also wish those uppity Starbucks workers would toe the company line like good little citizens?

[wtmusic]

24. And right they were

to make those sacrifices, when there were legit gripes at hand. Then the unions started to take advantage of a good thing--just like the corporate bosses. Human nature is funny that way.

Many unions have fucked themselves, and dragged their members down with them. I was a union musician in the 80's, and it was very good to me. They made sure I got paid, they paid me reuse for commercials spots that I played on, they contributed to a pension. None of that would have come about out of the goodness of sleazy-Hollywood-producer hearts.

Then they got greedy. I was a keyboard player, and AFM Local 47 rules said that for every new sound I played on my synthesizer, I had to charge as a completely different musician. If I played a pseudo-flute sound it was $170/hr on top of my $170/hr, a clarinet sound, another $170/hr, and so forth. If I played 10 different sounds, an easy and common thing to do on those sessions, suddenly I'm making over $1000/hr for doing little more than pushing a button. And of course Local 47 got their cut in work dues.

It didn't last long. Producers got wise and started doing "black dates" under the radar. I brought up the issue at union meetings several times, insisting that there had to be some realistic scale for situations like mine, but they wouldn't budge. Not only that, but they tried to fine me for not ratting on non-union sessions which I claimed I knew about.

Now the AFM here is in tatters--what once occupied an entire two-story building on Vine St. now occupies a corner of the first floor, with the rest rented out to pay the mortgage.

The unskilled Starbucks baristas making $8/hr + tips + health + dental + a pound of coffee each week don't get one tear from my dry eyes, especially the ones with an overblown sense of entitlement.

[mountainvue]

20. Bullshit. My father raised six kids on

his service industry job in the 50's and 60's. Try doing that today. The minimum wage for a waiter/waitress is $2.13. It's been that since I used to work in the industry back in the 80's. At least at my HERE Union job in the 90's I made about six bucks an hour plus tips and had health insurance as long as I worked a minimum of 20 hours per week.

[wtmusic]

23. Sounds like you were making even less than Starbucks employees

who are non-union, so I don't see what your point is.

[mountainvue]

25. No, I was making more than them and had better

benefits. I take it you've never been in the service industry?

[wtmusic]

27. Unskilled Starbucks baristas start at $8/hr

+tips+health+dental+1 lb of coffee/week, even if they work 20 hrs, when you made $6/hr and probably worked harder. They deserve something more...why? :shrug:

[colonel odis]

9. i, too, had always heard starbucks pays well and offers health insurance

to employees at the 20 hours a week threshhold.

it's a coffee shop. the hours suck. you don't get rich working there. that's sort of the nature of the beast.

if starbucks isn't paying fair wage, then let people quit, let starbucks hire cheapass labor, and let customers migrate to other coffee shops. there's no shortage of coffee houses, chain or locally-owned.

but i'd hate to see starbucks try to bust a union and in doing so hire a bunch of numbnuts, which will affect customer service and, in turn, kill sales.

[MikeyJones]

11. I've also heard they give stock options......

Starbucks in the end sadly is still a corporation and that's why they're union-busting. As I noted earlier, it's sad these are the only types of unions advancing any more. The good union jobs are all evaporating with the decline of the American automobile industry and the outsourcing of simple factory jobs.

The one thing about globalism that has truly shocked me is the speed at which it has outsourced so many production jobs. It's very sad.

[Omaha Steve]

16. Great only if you are a manager

Look past the company PR, and do a little searching for info, it is out there. Don't take them at face value. Most people here wouldn't take that from a Republican. Don't take it from Starbucks without question either.

[mountainvue]

21. That's not the point. The point is to bring

back jobs that pay a living wage in this country, offers benefits and builds a strong middle class. I'm old enough to remember life before the Reagan administration fucked all that up. And I liked it.

[tammywammy]

26. I worked for Starbucks for 3 years

I started at $7.25/hr (I think) and when I left 3 years later I was being paid $9.43/hr. This is excluding tips which were split evenly per hour worked (They were totalled up at the end of the week, and divided by number of total hours worked.) I got on average $2/hr of tips.

You can get health insurance if you work 20 hrs a week. I never had it, because I was covered under my parents (I was a college student). I had a co-worker that was still there a year or so after I left, that was married and pregnant. She said the health insurance was great.

I also got free stock options when I was there. I could have invested in the 401K, but really when I was 19-21 it was the last thing on my mind.

I never felt that the managers understaffed on purpose. A handful of times, in the 3 years, we would be understaffed, but mostly it happened when someone called in sick or quit unexpectedly. I worked in two of the busiest stores in the DFW area and during the morning rush we had 5 or 6 employees working at a time.

I also never saw anyone with repetitive motion injuries.

Overall, I had a good experience working for Starbucks. I worked at 3 different stores and had a few different managers, some I liked and some I didn't like so much. And I tend to think my experience is very similar to others, at least in the DFW area.

BTW I worked there from Oct. 99 to Oct 02.

edited to add tip info.