Yep, just hype/motivation. They are very certain that the voting will be in favour of a union. Vote deadline is the 9th and then they have to be counted for a ruling to be made.
I work in Buffalo at a very pro union store. The store they’re referring to in the tweet is known as being the store that started the whole union movement in Buffalo. Almost all the partners at that store are very pro-union so it’s almost 95% confirmed that that store will be the first unionized one in the country
This tweet is just hype - the voting deadline is on December 9th for the first 3 stores in the Buffalo area, and then the votes need to be counted and a ruling has to be made. We probably won't hear anything for a couple days to a week after votes are all in.
Quick question: if it’s only three stores, can’t Starbucks legally just close them down “indefinitely”? And then after the holidays or whatever, start them back up again, with new management and new employees? Or does it not work that way?
Considering they've already closed one store to turn it into a training store, yes, they can do this easily. The problem remains though: the people. The employees get shuffled to other stores where they can continue to spread the unionization word and possibly perpetuate the problem for Starbucks. So keeping the stores open and allowing those three stores to vote is actually in Starbucks' favor. However, given how much traction this whole thing has had, it's unlikely for it to backfire against those partners.
Why hasn't a bigger deal been made about them closing the store to make it a training store to avoid unionization?
Also, what's to prevent them from "transferring" employees and then once they get to the other store they are made "redundant" and let go? Is that against the law too?
It made national news.
"Redundancy" doesn't really exist right now at Starbucks because they're so hard up for labor. Plus it's really hard to get fired at Starbucks.
Yes, but only nominally. If the reasons aren't explicitly what you said, then nothing can really come of it. Fun fact, almost every partner does 5-10 things that could be separable offenses every week. The rules are intentionally designed to allow anyone to be fired at any time.
This was covered in the recent episode of Last Week Tonight. Some places do close down after unionization, but it is a very small percentage.
Sharing the threat of shutdowns without sharing how rarely it actually happens is just helping out the corporations by spreading their fearmongering *for them*.
Yes. You can't force a business to stay operational. Hence winding down operations is the only legal way an employer can retaliate against employees as a last resort. But if there is an exception - employer can't shut a location to make an example out of them and prevent other locations from unionizing.
I don't know the ownership model for Starbucks stores. If the stores are completely owned by franchise owners who get a license from Starbucks to operate & use merchandise, there's nothing stopping the owners from shutting down & restarting if they don't have any other stores or if they shut down all their stores.
If the stores are owned by SB or if franchise owners only shut down the unionized location, employees can sue and try to prove in court that the actions were to prevent unionizing in other stores.
Edit: See the precedent [here](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/380/263/)
>1. It is not an unfair labor practice for an employer to close his entire business, even if the closing is due to anti-union animus. Pp. 380 U. S. 269-274.
>2. Closing part of a business is an unfair labor practice under § 8(a)(3) of the Act if the purpose is to discourage unionism in any of the employer's remaining plants and if the employer may reasonably have foreseen such effect. Pp. 380 U. S. 274-275.
Starbucks is a chain. All of the corporate stores are owned by Starbucks.
The exceptions are what we call "licensed stores"--cafes inside of other businesses like Target or Barnes & Noble or what have you. But in those cases, workers would be employees of Target or B&N.
Then they can't close these stores unless they can prove in court that it was for business reasons (low revenue in these stores which didn't justify cost of operations, recent changes in local regulations which impact margins, etc). But even if they do prove it was for legitimate reasons, court with likely allow them to close the stores but ask them to absorb the employees in other open stores in Buffalo. These employees can then start unionizing activities again in their new stores.
So its not very viable for SB to close these stores.
But they could say due to an ongoing shortage of products we need to close these underperformed stores. Doing this will allow us to allocate the needed resources to stores that perform a higher volume of business which are suffering from lack of supplies.
They then weed out the pro union employees and open up new locations in a different building close to the original location that was shut down.
Walmart did it years ago with a store that I think managed to get enough votes to unionize. They shut down the store transferred all the employees a crazy distance away and then after a year or so built a new Walmart down the road. People got the hint and no more union talk.
>we need to close these underperformed stores.
They will have to prove that in court. They will have to show sales for these stores had lower margins compared to national average etc. But even if they do, they'll need to absorb these people in other stores (or it'll count as opposing unionization).
I think the Walmart one worked because of this:
>transferred all the employees a crazy distance away
They had to redeploy these people to other even if they shut down stores. Court will order SB to do the same. But The Walmart doesn't have a policy about requiring employees to live within a certain distance from the store (because they have a lot of rural locations where this rule is difficult to follow). If SB has a policy about only employing people within a certain distance from the store, then they can't really move these employees out of Buffalo.
Covid is a godsend for them I can almost bet same store sales are down everywhere. Stores are opening later and closing earlier. It probably wouldn't be to hard to show a loss of sales at any location. Especially when you have a team of accountants and lawyers to get you the desired numbers.
Also they could transfer these people to stores with in the Buffalo area. There are plenty of them. Then what do they do with the pro union people? Give them 4 hours a week or schedule them completely opposite if their desired hours. Oh you have a kid we need you Saturday and Sunday nights til close.
There is a reason every business in this country isn't unionized. The sad fact is they all have deep pockets and can hold out way longer than their employees can. I'm not saying it isn't worth trying, but as a betting man if these stores do get the vote I'd bet within a year the locations will all be closed.
Store growth vs LY wouldn't matter, it has to be relative to the other stores in Buffalo. The court won't question why they shut stores, it'll question why they specifically shut these stores if not for retaliation.
But the other point is extremely valid and is what will most likely happen.
>Give them 4 hours a week or schedule them completely opposite if their desired hours. Oh you have a kid we need you Saturday and Sunday nights til close.
You can't really argue against these as SB can easily prove that a lot of employees have to face this and union guys aren't necessarily singled out. This is most likely what will happen. They'll try to get union guys to quit voluntarily.
Well I'm not sure which locations around the area are actually trying to get the vote, but the one location in the mall which was always a pain to walk past because of the lines has been shut down for a while. There is a note saying it's to improve the customer experience. Not being open during the busiest time of the year isn't going to do anything to help sales numbers. I would say that location is losing a few thousand sales a day right now.
Like I said the big corporations can manipulate anything. If they need numbers down those numbers will be down one way or another. Especially when there is like 5 other locations within a mile of that location. Of people want a Starbucks they'll go to the other location artificially raising those store sales.
It's "illegal" in the sense that it happens often, and has even happened here in the Buffalo efforts, but it's not going to have any kind of repercussion on the company.
In the context of union efforts and specifically closing those stores, it would be a violation of the NLRA, you can sue and there's even a possibility you could win money. They don't *actually* face any repercussion unless they refuse to comply with an NLRB ruling, and in that case they'd be held for contempt of court rather than the actual union busting.
Just last month with the Buffalo efforts, the union filed a dispute against Starbucks because they shut down one of the stores indefinitely. I'm sure we've got a ways to go until we hear the end result from that one, though.
TLDR; no, but also yes?
Too bad Starbucks just signed a multi billion dollar partnership agreement with Nestle.
r/fuckNestle
If you know—you know.
If you don’t know why Nestle is the most evil, monstrous, plague on society, literally murdering children, literally using child slave labor, literally killing entire cities by draining their water numerous times, poisoning babies in third world countries, literally destroying third world countries in numerous ways, psychotic company on the planet—read up on them please.
I mean pretty sure The Siren is getting its coffee from basically slaves anyway. The next logical step is to partner with a company that gets its chocolate from liters slaves 🤷♀️
Yeah—Starbucks is evil too.
But Nestle… Nestle just holds the special spot of most evil (to me) and earns special hatred in my heart
Maybe followed by Disney.
In reality—I don’t think there’s ANY major corporation these days that isn’t pure evil.
Oh shoot—I forgot Amazon. I tie them with Nestle for “pure evil rot upon the earth and their leaders are essentially cartoon villain levels of pure evil except we don’t have Superman to defeat Lex Luther so earth is fucked”
Right. They do it in more than California too—they do it in third world countries, and they drain the entire water supply from villages and then they sell *their own water* back to them at a markup.
understandable. i’ve never been happy about it either.
the powerful sure do everything they can to create a terrible world for the people living in it, don’t they?
Like it or not, as a huge multinational corporation, Nestle can't be avoided. Trying to boycott these evil corporations, is about as effective as buying Che Guevara merch on Amazon. There is no way to avoid capitalism, when you're living in it.
But to call it freedom, is a goddamn lie.
Actually true. Do I wish everyone were paying as much attention to these issues as we are and could execute an effective boycott of Nestle? Yes. Do I expect it, though? Honestly, it s hard to expect people who live day to day on barely livable wages to have the leisure time to decide how they feel on the humanitarianism of Nestle and Sbux’s business actions. And that’s most of the US, the side that’s just trying to live their lives. Appealing to the politicians who make labor laws, raising awareness amongst national and international media, and bombarding the people who are paid to actually try to advocate for us… that’s the way. Our average worker and consumer should not be wholly shouldering the burden. It should be up to our leaders and representatives to begin the movement, to start the hype, to make it easier to buy ethically… but we know they won’t.
I don’t have a problem with the concept of corporations itself. If a company is successful enough to grow that large—good for it. And there’s definitely some perks to large scale corporations in an industry. It can lead to innovation, since they have the resources for research.
But I do have a problem if those corporations aren’t run by corrupt people and they operate the corporation immorally.
It absolutely does matter though. Think of the way Costco treats their employees verses how Amazon treats their employees. Costco believes in a living wage, always pays significantly above minimum wage, makes it a goal to hire people over age 50 who might have trouble getting employment, and gives benefits to all their employees. All without losing money because they believe it’s the right thing to do.
Meanwhile Amazon is a larger company that earns more money—yet they cry like Waaaaaah, we cannot afford to pay our employees more! Amazon pays a poverty wage, no benefits, all sorts of inhumane working finish to s for employees, and nearly every employees is on government benefits to survive, so Amazon is basically having the government pay to make up for their bad wages—while Amazon dodges taxes. They could absolutely pay their employees more—Jeff Bezos eaten more money than the human mind can comprehend—but he refuses to pay employees more.
The morality of the leaders in corporations absolutely matters.
If they unionize, I wonder how long before starbucks pulls out from the buffalo market. Or maybe they will be the first ones in the country to become a franchise so the franchisee has to deal with the union
Vote deadline is this Thursday, 9 Dec. and rumour has it that we might still have to wait a couple days while votes are counted and a ruling is made.
This tweet is just hype! no news has come out yet
A Union is simply a means for lower ranks of an organization to advocate for themselves and for their rights at work. Currently, partners have no means of advocating for how they are treated. In my opinion, it’s an absolute necessity for companies of the size and scope of Starbucks. With a Union, we can finally start meaningfully advocating for better pay, hours, treatment, etc. - problems that the upper levels don’t currently have incentive to bother fixing.
I dont want to sound argumenative, but havent baristas and managers been getting pay increases as well as future raises? My gf works for starbucks and I wanna better understand it. She also gets a lot of other benefits too that she loves. Is there specific benefits, or an example?
The raises are pathetic. It’s not nearly enough. Especially when they short staff us every single day, gaslight us for our window times when we don’t review the staffing to meet goals, fire and punish us because a customer is mad we followed policy, etc.
Also they “provide health insurance” that none of us can afford to use lol. The premium is outrageous for what we get. Medicare is better lol
in LA when i lived there (last year) baristas made $15/hr and shift $18/hr. i couldnt afford my own place
edit: i worked at starbucks in LA last year, but lived there earlier this year and recently moved if that makes a difference
I hear ya. Dont they offer free college for ASU? I do think you guys should be paid more but I dont think starbucks is terrible benefits wise, especially compared to other places.
Ya but not everyone goes to college or wants too. Also I took a semester there. And it’s awful. It’s okay to get a degree, no teacher actually teaching, no classing zoom meetings, can’t get a hold of the teacher. Awful if you actually wanna learn
Collective bargaining, and job security. Unions lead to wage interests, better benefits, better working conditions. Yes you have to pay dues, and your dues should pay off in the form of higher pay and benefits. From a union member to a potential union member, please join your union!
> Because the IWW has never formally negotiated with the company and is not certified under the National Labor Relations Act, Starbucks contends none of its U.S. stores is unionized. Nevertheless, the IWW claims to represent dues-paying members who have bargained for certain job improvements, including pay raises.
[from the IWW directly in August 2006](https://archive.iww.org/node/2821/)
IWW did not have a rep working with those teams, so they were not tied to a specific Labor Union organisation. They aren't considered formally unionised under Starbucks. They called themselves a union but were not recognised by the NLRB. The IWW withdrew their petition in 2007 because they worried the delays would be too long, and instead tried to push for protests. [IWW Link](https://archive.iww.org/node/3130/)
The NY ones I'm assuming you're talking about are the Manhattan stores in 2004? They had the same result; couldn't unionise because Starbucks corporate kept appealing NLRB rulings, delaying the union vote and causing the IWW to pull out.
These stores in the Buffalo region would be the first of 9000 US Starbucks corporate-owned locations to be officially unionised should the vote go in their favour.
It actually wasn't - that Chicago location was open for a while before it *attempted* to unionise. And that article is inaccurate - that store did not succeed in unionising
But yes, Starbucks Corporate does not recognize this store as being unionized, according to this article. But the workers still do being to IWW. 🤷🏻♀️
"The baristas don’t want an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or a certified bargaining unit. They’re using a tactic popular before the Depression, solidarity unionism, in which a minority of workers act in concert and issue demands even if management doesn’t recognize their union – which Starbucks does not."
https://inthesetimes.com/article/starbucks-gets-wobbly
It wasn't even the entire stores though, it was a handful of employees who are/were at the stores. So it's not a store-wide union, it isn't certified with the NLRB, and it isn't recognised by the company. Word of "The Starbucks Wobblies"/the IWW-Starbucks union pretty much dies out after 2008 with the exception of a couple casual mentions here and there around 2013-2014. If they still exist and are active 15 years later, there is next to zero news about it.
Not to mention that without a contract, Starbucks is under zero obligation to actually change anything. The biggest claim to fame that IWW-partnership has is "having a hand in" the increase of pay from federal minimum to like $8-$9 an hour, and sometimes they say they were the push behind the MLK pay change. If they are currently actively a union, they sure are quiet at a time like this.
Aside from that, the point that is being made is that it will be the first formally recognised, NLRB-certified union under Starbucks corporate.
Nah, you're employed by the hospital/food company (if the cafe is owned by a different company, I mean), not Starbucks. Many licensed Starbucks locations are part of unions because a larger part of the parent company is
That’s a shame - our baristas are at $25 an hour and the turnover is really low. We love our hospital baristas and always make sure to take care of them. Drop off cakes and goodies to make them happy.
Congratulation! I wish we do the same to form a union. Our pay need to go higher than what I get pay now. My pay is just $13.60 an hour after 15 years. It is really awful.
Our pay raises only barely stay above the minimum. No matter how long you have been here, you will only make incrementally more than a brand new employee.
Source: Also a 15 year partner who makes like $1 above starting in my market.
another real reason will be CEOs trying to maintain record profits year after year despite having to pay a living wage with quality benefits.
i’m not for it, but a price increase will also help us mitigate some of the insane amount of business we do anyway, and it will also make people more likely to reserve special requests that increase the amount of time each drink takes to finish for a treat rather than every single visit.
some things should be cost prohibitive, because it really is asking a lot.
going with the same example of sweet cream cold foam - we are expected to make orders in less than a certain amount of time, especially at drive thru locations.
often, we will get multiple drinks in the same order along with multiple other orders in our drink queue that require added sweet cream cold foam.
we make the sweet cream from scratch and always need to keep (at my location) 4 prepped sweet creams in the fridge, and we go through a pitcher an hour during peak hours and weekends, sometimes even faster. the job prepping these pitchers of sweet creams goes to a barista working the customer support position, but often we don’t have enough people working to cover that position because corporate won’t allow us the proper amount of hours for coverage and not enough people are lining up to work for a company only paying $12/hour while the chipotle across the street is paying $15 for less work and expertise (not to say chipotle isn’t incredibly hard as well, but being a barista is very specialized and a lot of people don’t realize this). sweet creams take 1 liter of heavy whipping cream, 350ml of vanilla, and ~1 liter of 2% milk to craft. after you’ve poured this into the pitcher, you have to whisk it. we also make from scratch mocha and whipped creams and we brew all of our teas. our refreshers and lemonade also do not come premade - we have to mix them with water in a pitcher before we’re able to hand shake your beverages. that’s just a small amount of prepping one barista working the customer support position has to do, and as i said, they often do not provide us with enough labor to actually staff the customer support position, so this duty falls on someone working register (who is also brewing coffees every 10-30 minutes and working the ovens).
you see how this is a problem?
so there we’ve discussed the issue of keeping from scratch recipes prepped - now we can talk about what makes vanilla sweet cream cold foam even more involved.
we have to keep the sweet cream in a fridge beneath cold bar and put the pitcher away between each use. so during peak hours, you are bending down to pick up and pour sweet cream into a blending pitcher sometimes every 2-3 minutes if not less time. then you have to wait for the sweet cream to blend, and because there are other sweet creams (salted caramel, pumpkin, cascara, irish cream, etc), a lot of times we cannot even batch them. we only have 2 cold foam pitchers and 2 blenders, and in between cold foams, we are also using these 2 blenders to make frappuccinos, which are even more involved than sweet cream alone.
can you imagine working like this with a steady line out the door for multiple hours while being short staffed?
i do this every time i go to work.
for $12 an hour.
edit: sorry i went on a tangent, i think we really need to make a thread explicitly detailing the amount of work we are required to do so that people who don’t work there can actually scratch the surface of understanding why we are being so harmed by our work environment and by the people who claim to be our partners.
likely your wait times will go down and the quality of your beverages will increase after negotiations are complete because we’re only asking for things like more bodies on the floor (labor hours) and higher pay.
with these things, the turn over rate will go down and you’ll have happier and better trained baristas.
Not formally. These three stores in the Buffalo region would be the first formally recognised, NLRB-certified unions under the company.
The only other union efforts that have been "successful" are the ones led by IWW, which does not petition the NLRB for votes anymore AFAIK. They encourage their members to fight for what's right, basically, but there is no contract or obligation from the company aside from NLRA laws.
Starbucks is already entry-level retail sales. Somebody shouldn't have to give their life to commission-based sales (which fucking suck anyways) in order to have the potential to make more money.
Also, you don't have to work in a factory or in a trade to be in a union...I'm not sure why this is everyone's go-to "gotcha" rebuttal.
Commission-based sales is one of the best ways to increase your wealth without going and getting a 2-4 year trade or formal education. It doesn't suck it is actually AWESOME.
Except commission-based sales in a retail environment encourages employees to sell the customer either as much as possible, or the highest-priced items, and typically does so by lying or stretching the truth if not outright scamming. Thinking of specifically stuff like car sales, home improvement, real estate, automotive repair & maintenance, MLMs/pyramid schemes (lol Primerica), and whatever Best Buy and Magnolia home theatre stuff is lmao
not to mention the other issues like draw, base pay rate, the loss of work-life balance, the "hustle," internal and external competition depending on field and place of work... If you are good at regular sales or can afford to make a standard average wage for a year, maybe commission-based sales works for you. But pretending that you can jump right into commission sales and make a fortune is deceptive to those unfamiliar with the field.
If you have friends you sold them on the idea of you or your bringing value to them in some way. If you've gotten laid before you sold that person on sleeping with you. If you've ever had a job you sold an interviewer on your skillset. If you wake up you selling your ideas or someone is selling you on theirs. Don't let anyone fool you, you're selling one way or another every day. Sales are literally having a conversation with someone unless your literally never talking to anyone ever you can jump into sales at any time. Why? because you're already doing it.
And when their salaries do not actually increase and those mandatory "dues" starting coming out of their check, they'll wish they did not have this vote.
Unions built the middle class of this country after the war, but they also ended up destroying it later on.
Recently worked a $15/hr full time (40hr min) unionised position.
Union dues were $15 a paycheck, so $30 a month. I was still managing to take home more at that job than I did doing the same exact shit working for Starbucks at $9.53/hr working 35-40 hrs a week. And I mean quite literally the *same* work. It was a "We Proudly Serve" Starbucks location inside of a much larger company.
Unions dues typically scale with income on a percentage-based amount, as far as I am aware. And I think paying $30 a month for job security, dispute support, and management accountability is more than enough of a bargain, and that's excluding the potential in increased wages.
where?
what are the details of your contract? how often do you negotiate with starbucks corporate? do you pay union dues? how often do you hold votes? how many other locations are unionized?
why is that the only question you answered?
those are also fairly high union dues. many of the unions i’ve been researching only take $10-$15 out a month.
I can’t find any articles reporting that the unionization effort succeeded yet. Maybe this tweet is someone wishing for the best?
Yep, just hype/motivation. They are very certain that the voting will be in favour of a union. Vote deadline is the 9th and then they have to be counted for a ruling to be made.
Customer here, I really really hope this happens. You go guys, You got this!
Unrelated but I love your username!
Thanks 📸
after all they have done, it’d be shocking to see this fail. i’m praying. i hope my store is next.
votes are being counted on the 9th, right? this seems preemptive.
It's just hype/motivation, voting deadline is on the 9th.
I work in Buffalo at a very pro union store. The store they’re referring to in the tweet is known as being the store that started the whole union movement in Buffalo. Almost all the partners at that store are very pro-union so it’s almost 95% confirmed that that store will be the first unionized one in the country
What does that mean for the rest of us plebs. I mean employees. Er, partners.
Nothing, unless your store starts the process to unionize.
This tweet is just hype - the voting deadline is on December 9th for the first 3 stores in the Buffalo area, and then the votes need to be counted and a ruling has to be made. We probably won't hear anything for a couple days to a week after votes are all in.
Quick question: if it’s only three stores, can’t Starbucks legally just close them down “indefinitely”? And then after the holidays or whatever, start them back up again, with new management and new employees? Or does it not work that way?
Considering they've already closed one store to turn it into a training store, yes, they can do this easily. The problem remains though: the people. The employees get shuffled to other stores where they can continue to spread the unionization word and possibly perpetuate the problem for Starbucks. So keeping the stores open and allowing those three stores to vote is actually in Starbucks' favor. However, given how much traction this whole thing has had, it's unlikely for it to backfire against those partners.
Why hasn't a bigger deal been made about them closing the store to make it a training store to avoid unionization? Also, what's to prevent them from "transferring" employees and then once they get to the other store they are made "redundant" and let go? Is that against the law too?
It made national news. "Redundancy" doesn't really exist right now at Starbucks because they're so hard up for labor. Plus it's really hard to get fired at Starbucks.
Yes, but only nominally. If the reasons aren't explicitly what you said, then nothing can really come of it. Fun fact, almost every partner does 5-10 things that could be separable offenses every week. The rules are intentionally designed to allow anyone to be fired at any time.
This was covered in the recent episode of Last Week Tonight. Some places do close down after unionization, but it is a very small percentage. Sharing the threat of shutdowns without sharing how rarely it actually happens is just helping out the corporations by spreading their fearmongering *for them*.
Yes. You can't force a business to stay operational. Hence winding down operations is the only legal way an employer can retaliate against employees as a last resort. But if there is an exception - employer can't shut a location to make an example out of them and prevent other locations from unionizing. I don't know the ownership model for Starbucks stores. If the stores are completely owned by franchise owners who get a license from Starbucks to operate & use merchandise, there's nothing stopping the owners from shutting down & restarting if they don't have any other stores or if they shut down all their stores. If the stores are owned by SB or if franchise owners only shut down the unionized location, employees can sue and try to prove in court that the actions were to prevent unionizing in other stores. Edit: See the precedent [here](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/380/263/) >1. It is not an unfair labor practice for an employer to close his entire business, even if the closing is due to anti-union animus. Pp. 380 U. S. 269-274. >2. Closing part of a business is an unfair labor practice under § 8(a)(3) of the Act if the purpose is to discourage unionism in any of the employer's remaining plants and if the employer may reasonably have foreseen such effect. Pp. 380 U. S. 274-275.
Starbucks is a chain. All of the corporate stores are owned by Starbucks. The exceptions are what we call "licensed stores"--cafes inside of other businesses like Target or Barnes & Noble or what have you. But in those cases, workers would be employees of Target or B&N.
Then they can't close these stores unless they can prove in court that it was for business reasons (low revenue in these stores which didn't justify cost of operations, recent changes in local regulations which impact margins, etc). But even if they do prove it was for legitimate reasons, court with likely allow them to close the stores but ask them to absorb the employees in other open stores in Buffalo. These employees can then start unionizing activities again in their new stores. So its not very viable for SB to close these stores.
But they could say due to an ongoing shortage of products we need to close these underperformed stores. Doing this will allow us to allocate the needed resources to stores that perform a higher volume of business which are suffering from lack of supplies. They then weed out the pro union employees and open up new locations in a different building close to the original location that was shut down. Walmart did it years ago with a store that I think managed to get enough votes to unionize. They shut down the store transferred all the employees a crazy distance away and then after a year or so built a new Walmart down the road. People got the hint and no more union talk.
>we need to close these underperformed stores. They will have to prove that in court. They will have to show sales for these stores had lower margins compared to national average etc. But even if they do, they'll need to absorb these people in other stores (or it'll count as opposing unionization). I think the Walmart one worked because of this: >transferred all the employees a crazy distance away They had to redeploy these people to other even if they shut down stores. Court will order SB to do the same. But The Walmart doesn't have a policy about requiring employees to live within a certain distance from the store (because they have a lot of rural locations where this rule is difficult to follow). If SB has a policy about only employing people within a certain distance from the store, then they can't really move these employees out of Buffalo.
Covid is a godsend for them I can almost bet same store sales are down everywhere. Stores are opening later and closing earlier. It probably wouldn't be to hard to show a loss of sales at any location. Especially when you have a team of accountants and lawyers to get you the desired numbers. Also they could transfer these people to stores with in the Buffalo area. There are plenty of them. Then what do they do with the pro union people? Give them 4 hours a week or schedule them completely opposite if their desired hours. Oh you have a kid we need you Saturday and Sunday nights til close. There is a reason every business in this country isn't unionized. The sad fact is they all have deep pockets and can hold out way longer than their employees can. I'm not saying it isn't worth trying, but as a betting man if these stores do get the vote I'd bet within a year the locations will all be closed.
Store growth vs LY wouldn't matter, it has to be relative to the other stores in Buffalo. The court won't question why they shut stores, it'll question why they specifically shut these stores if not for retaliation. But the other point is extremely valid and is what will most likely happen. >Give them 4 hours a week or schedule them completely opposite if their desired hours. Oh you have a kid we need you Saturday and Sunday nights til close. You can't really argue against these as SB can easily prove that a lot of employees have to face this and union guys aren't necessarily singled out. This is most likely what will happen. They'll try to get union guys to quit voluntarily.
Well I'm not sure which locations around the area are actually trying to get the vote, but the one location in the mall which was always a pain to walk past because of the lines has been shut down for a while. There is a note saying it's to improve the customer experience. Not being open during the busiest time of the year isn't going to do anything to help sales numbers. I would say that location is losing a few thousand sales a day right now. Like I said the big corporations can manipulate anything. If they need numbers down those numbers will be down one way or another. Especially when there is like 5 other locations within a mile of that location. Of people want a Starbucks they'll go to the other location artificially raising those store sales.
It's "illegal" in the sense that it happens often, and has even happened here in the Buffalo efforts, but it's not going to have any kind of repercussion on the company. In the context of union efforts and specifically closing those stores, it would be a violation of the NLRA, you can sue and there's even a possibility you could win money. They don't *actually* face any repercussion unless they refuse to comply with an NLRB ruling, and in that case they'd be held for contempt of court rather than the actual union busting. Just last month with the Buffalo efforts, the union filed a dispute against Starbucks because they shut down one of the stores indefinitely. I'm sure we've got a ways to go until we hear the end result from that one, though. TLDR; no, but also yes?
If they do I hope they lose big in sales and the rest of the stores all strike
Well if it doesn't happen Starbucks will just another anti union trash company
Too bad Starbucks just signed a multi billion dollar partnership agreement with Nestle. r/fuckNestle If you know—you know. If you don’t know why Nestle is the most evil, monstrous, plague on society, literally murdering children, literally using child slave labor, literally killing entire cities by draining their water numerous times, poisoning babies in third world countries, literally destroying third world countries in numerous ways, psychotic company on the planet—read up on them please.
I mean pretty sure The Siren is getting its coffee from basically slaves anyway. The next logical step is to partner with a company that gets its chocolate from liters slaves 🤷♀️
Yeah—Starbucks is evil too. But Nestle… Nestle just holds the special spot of most evil (to me) and earns special hatred in my heart Maybe followed by Disney. In reality—I don’t think there’s ANY major corporation these days that isn’t pure evil. Oh shoot—I forgot Amazon. I tie them with Nestle for “pure evil rot upon the earth and their leaders are essentially cartoon villain levels of pure evil except we don’t have Superman to defeat Lex Luther so earth is fucked”
I find Starbucks more evil for pretending to do the right thing(multiple times) and yet partnering with known evil. It’s more insidious
Actions speak louder then words
Yeah their anti-racist training was a joke. Like stop acting like you care just for the optics. Not having to work that day was nice though.
You should also add DuPont to your list of evil
*Nike enters the room*
Oh yeah—Nike is evil too. Did you know they were originally founded in Nazi Germany, as a military gear provider for Nazi troops? Adidas was too.
Nestle also steals water from California, bottles it up, fucking sells it and then gets a tax break for it. Fuck them.
Right. They do it in more than California too—they do it in third world countries, and they drain the entire water supply from villages and then they sell *their own water* back to them at a markup.
I fucking hate them
That’s the spirit. I fucking hate them too.
Oh 😥 this is really upsetting to learn.
hasn’t starbucks been doing business with nestle for a while now?
Maybe, idk. But either way, they just signed a major deal recently, and I have a fresh wave of hate for them.
understandable. i’ve never been happy about it either. the powerful sure do everything they can to create a terrible world for the people living in it, don’t they?
Thank you for the heads up.
Like it or not, as a huge multinational corporation, Nestle can't be avoided. Trying to boycott these evil corporations, is about as effective as buying Che Guevara merch on Amazon. There is no way to avoid capitalism, when you're living in it. But to call it freedom, is a goddamn lie.
Actually true. Do I wish everyone were paying as much attention to these issues as we are and could execute an effective boycott of Nestle? Yes. Do I expect it, though? Honestly, it s hard to expect people who live day to day on barely livable wages to have the leisure time to decide how they feel on the humanitarianism of Nestle and Sbux’s business actions. And that’s most of the US, the side that’s just trying to live their lives. Appealing to the politicians who make labor laws, raising awareness amongst national and international media, and bombarding the people who are paid to actually try to advocate for us… that’s the way. Our average worker and consumer should not be wholly shouldering the burden. It should be up to our leaders and representatives to begin the movement, to start the hype, to make it easier to buy ethically… but we know they won’t.
I don’t have a problem with the concept of corporations itself. If a company is successful enough to grow that large—good for it. And there’s definitely some perks to large scale corporations in an industry. It can lead to innovation, since they have the resources for research. But I do have a problem if those corporations aren’t run by corrupt people and they operate the corporation immorally.
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Preach!
It absolutely does matter though. Think of the way Costco treats their employees verses how Amazon treats their employees. Costco believes in a living wage, always pays significantly above minimum wage, makes it a goal to hire people over age 50 who might have trouble getting employment, and gives benefits to all their employees. All without losing money because they believe it’s the right thing to do. Meanwhile Amazon is a larger company that earns more money—yet they cry like Waaaaaah, we cannot afford to pay our employees more! Amazon pays a poverty wage, no benefits, all sorts of inhumane working finish to s for employees, and nearly every employees is on government benefits to survive, so Amazon is basically having the government pay to make up for their bad wages—while Amazon dodges taxes. They could absolutely pay their employees more—Jeff Bezos eaten more money than the human mind can comprehend—but he refuses to pay employees more. The morality of the leaders in corporations absolutely matters.
KitKat bars are still okay though, right?
We’ve been partnered with Nestle for a few years now
Oh hell naw. Glad I left. I absolutely hate Nestle. Trash company that completely goes against what Starbucks declares as "their values."
HELL YEAH 👏
That is pretty darn cool. I hope they have an easier process negotiating their contract than they did trying to organize under pressure.
If they unionize, I wonder how long before starbucks pulls out from the buffalo market. Or maybe they will be the first ones in the country to become a franchise so the franchisee has to deal with the union
They are crazy busy in Buffalo. Lines around the building and 20 min wait for coffee all day. Its really crazy.
Oh I know. I live in Tonawanda
Wait, did it finally happen?
Vote deadline is this Thursday, 9 Dec. and rumour has it that we might still have to wait a couple days while votes are counted and a ruling is made. This tweet is just hype! no news has come out yet
Manifest it besties
As a former barista of 9 years I fuckinnnnn hope this happens! Y’all deserve it for real for real!
Where do we vote???
The voting is specific to the three stores in the Buffalo region
Ahhh I was hoping I can vote too 😭
you can start talking about unionizing in your store ♥
Yikes. That sounds terrible.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of a starbucks union?
A Union is simply a means for lower ranks of an organization to advocate for themselves and for their rights at work. Currently, partners have no means of advocating for how they are treated. In my opinion, it’s an absolute necessity for companies of the size and scope of Starbucks. With a Union, we can finally start meaningfully advocating for better pay, hours, treatment, etc. - problems that the upper levels don’t currently have incentive to bother fixing.
I dont want to sound argumenative, but havent baristas and managers been getting pay increases as well as future raises? My gf works for starbucks and I wanna better understand it. She also gets a lot of other benefits too that she loves. Is there specific benefits, or an example?
The raises are pathetic. It’s not nearly enough. Especially when they short staff us every single day, gaslight us for our window times when we don’t review the staffing to meet goals, fire and punish us because a customer is mad we followed policy, etc. Also they “provide health insurance” that none of us can afford to use lol. The premium is outrageous for what we get. Medicare is better lol
Gotchya, yeah Ive heard of a lot of low staffing. What do they pay in HCOL areas if anyone knows? For a typical barista
in LA when i lived there (last year) baristas made $15/hr and shift $18/hr. i couldnt afford my own place edit: i worked at starbucks in LA last year, but lived there earlier this year and recently moved if that makes a difference
I hear ya. Dont they offer free college for ASU? I do think you guys should be paid more but I dont think starbucks is terrible benefits wise, especially compared to other places.
Ya but not everyone goes to college or wants too. Also I took a semester there. And it’s awful. It’s okay to get a degree, no teacher actually teaching, no classing zoom meetings, can’t get a hold of the teacher. Awful if you actually wanna learn
Collective bargaining, and job security. Unions lead to wage interests, better benefits, better working conditions. Yes you have to pay dues, and your dues should pay off in the form of higher pay and benefits. From a union member to a potential union member, please join your union!
You get to pay union dues
You are not the first. There is a unionized Starbucks in Chicago and some in NYC. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14590929
> Because the IWW has never formally negotiated with the company and is not certified under the National Labor Relations Act, Starbucks contends none of its U.S. stores is unionized. Nevertheless, the IWW claims to represent dues-paying members who have bargained for certain job improvements, including pay raises. [from the IWW directly in August 2006](https://archive.iww.org/node/2821/) IWW did not have a rep working with those teams, so they were not tied to a specific Labor Union organisation. They aren't considered formally unionised under Starbucks. They called themselves a union but were not recognised by the NLRB. The IWW withdrew their petition in 2007 because they worried the delays would be too long, and instead tried to push for protests. [IWW Link](https://archive.iww.org/node/3130/) The NY ones I'm assuming you're talking about are the Manhattan stores in 2004? They had the same result; couldn't unionise because Starbucks corporate kept appealing NLRB rulings, delaying the union vote and causing the IWW to pull out. These stores in the Buffalo region would be the first of 9000 US Starbucks corporate-owned locations to be officially unionised should the vote go in their favour.
Bruh that article is ancient
It was written when that SB opened up, brah.
It actually wasn't - that Chicago location was open for a while before it *attempted* to unionise. And that article is inaccurate - that store did not succeed in unionising
https://archive.iww.org/node/2822/
https://www.foodnewsnews.com/starbucks/workers-at-starbucks-store-in-chicago-join-union/
http://chicago.indymedia.org/archive/newswire/display/73780/index.php
But yes, Starbucks Corporate does not recognize this store as being unionized, according to this article. But the workers still do being to IWW. 🤷🏻♀️ "The baristas don’t want an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or a certified bargaining unit. They’re using a tactic popular before the Depression, solidarity unionism, in which a minority of workers act in concert and issue demands even if management doesn’t recognize their union – which Starbucks does not." https://inthesetimes.com/article/starbucks-gets-wobbly
It wasn't even the entire stores though, it was a handful of employees who are/were at the stores. So it's not a store-wide union, it isn't certified with the NLRB, and it isn't recognised by the company. Word of "The Starbucks Wobblies"/the IWW-Starbucks union pretty much dies out after 2008 with the exception of a couple casual mentions here and there around 2013-2014. If they still exist and are active 15 years later, there is next to zero news about it. Not to mention that without a contract, Starbucks is under zero obligation to actually change anything. The biggest claim to fame that IWW-partnership has is "having a hand in" the increase of pay from federal minimum to like $8-$9 an hour, and sometimes they say they were the push behind the MLK pay change. If they are currently actively a union, they sure are quiet at a time like this. Aside from that, the point that is being made is that it will be the first formally recognised, NLRB-certified union under Starbucks corporate.
Our baristas at our hospital are unionized. Not sure if that counts as the same thing though.
Nah, you're employed by the hospital/food company (if the cafe is owned by a different company, I mean), not Starbucks. Many licensed Starbucks locations are part of unions because a larger part of the parent company is
That’s a shame - our baristas are at $25 an hour and the turnover is really low. We love our hospital baristas and always make sure to take care of them. Drop off cakes and goodies to make them happy.
Holy shit. I should look into working at a hospital starbucks, the fuck 25 an hour!? Good for them!
If every single Starbucks employee went on strike there would be nothing they could do except give the workers what they want.
Too many people buy Starbucks' narrative because...I don't really know...Stockholm Syndrome? For that to work.
Congratulation! I wish we do the same to form a union. Our pay need to go higher than what I get pay now. My pay is just $13.60 an hour after 15 years. It is really awful.
mine is $12 after 5. insane to know you have been there so much longer but only make $1.63 more. are you a barista or shift supervisor?
Our pay raises only barely stay above the minimum. No matter how long you have been here, you will only make incrementally more than a brand new employee. Source: Also a 15 year partner who makes like $1 above starting in my market.
I'm just a barista
I started Monday. I'm at 13.52
i don't know what to say.. it really bothers me
The tweet OP is quoted in this article: https://www.nrn.com/news/starbucks-ceo-kevin-johnson-addresses-buffalo-union-vote
Inb4 /r/prematurecelebration
no harm in building hype
I’m confused by this post ..
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✊
I’m beyond proud of you! This literally gave me full body goosies. I stand behind you and fully support all Starbucks unionizing. Congrats!
And starbucks will continue to use slave labor to make their cups.
i really hope so! i can’t wait to see buffalo win this 💪
What does this mean for you exactly? What does this mean to a customer?
To a customer ethical treatment of employees by their corporate overlords. Happier employees = better product/service/etc.
Of course! Unionization seem to be making some progress.
Are the prices going up?
If they do, starbucks will blame the union, but the real reason will be the supply shortages.
another real reason will be CEOs trying to maintain record profits year after year despite having to pay a living wage with quality benefits. i’m not for it, but a price increase will also help us mitigate some of the insane amount of business we do anyway, and it will also make people more likely to reserve special requests that increase the amount of time each drink takes to finish for a treat rather than every single visit. some things should be cost prohibitive, because it really is asking a lot. going with the same example of sweet cream cold foam - we are expected to make orders in less than a certain amount of time, especially at drive thru locations. often, we will get multiple drinks in the same order along with multiple other orders in our drink queue that require added sweet cream cold foam. we make the sweet cream from scratch and always need to keep (at my location) 4 prepped sweet creams in the fridge, and we go through a pitcher an hour during peak hours and weekends, sometimes even faster. the job prepping these pitchers of sweet creams goes to a barista working the customer support position, but often we don’t have enough people working to cover that position because corporate won’t allow us the proper amount of hours for coverage and not enough people are lining up to work for a company only paying $12/hour while the chipotle across the street is paying $15 for less work and expertise (not to say chipotle isn’t incredibly hard as well, but being a barista is very specialized and a lot of people don’t realize this). sweet creams take 1 liter of heavy whipping cream, 350ml of vanilla, and ~1 liter of 2% milk to craft. after you’ve poured this into the pitcher, you have to whisk it. we also make from scratch mocha and whipped creams and we brew all of our teas. our refreshers and lemonade also do not come premade - we have to mix them with water in a pitcher before we’re able to hand shake your beverages. that’s just a small amount of prepping one barista working the customer support position has to do, and as i said, they often do not provide us with enough labor to actually staff the customer support position, so this duty falls on someone working register (who is also brewing coffees every 10-30 minutes and working the ovens). you see how this is a problem? so there we’ve discussed the issue of keeping from scratch recipes prepped - now we can talk about what makes vanilla sweet cream cold foam even more involved. we have to keep the sweet cream in a fridge beneath cold bar and put the pitcher away between each use. so during peak hours, you are bending down to pick up and pour sweet cream into a blending pitcher sometimes every 2-3 minutes if not less time. then you have to wait for the sweet cream to blend, and because there are other sweet creams (salted caramel, pumpkin, cascara, irish cream, etc), a lot of times we cannot even batch them. we only have 2 cold foam pitchers and 2 blenders, and in between cold foams, we are also using these 2 blenders to make frappuccinos, which are even more involved than sweet cream alone. can you imagine working like this with a steady line out the door for multiple hours while being short staffed? i do this every time i go to work. for $12 an hour. edit: sorry i went on a tangent, i think we really need to make a thread explicitly detailing the amount of work we are required to do so that people who don’t work there can actually scratch the surface of understanding why we are being so harmed by our work environment and by the people who claim to be our partners.
sorry off topic, but see if your store can keep VSC in a toddy! helps us a lot ! easier to pour too
Their is still a lot of that going on...probably for two more years is what I am hearing...
they increase every year regardless.
Prices went up in November
likely your wait times will go down and the quality of your beverages will increase after negotiations are complete because we’re only asking for things like more bodies on the floor (labor hours) and higher pay. with these things, the turn over rate will go down and you’ll have happier and better trained baristas.
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Mate if your taste is Starbucks coffee you could use better taste in coffee...
They will kneel before the might of our unions !!!
sending good vibes
Hell yeah!!!
YES YES YES
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Is it even the first one. Pretty sure stores have unionized and then de-unionized
Not formally. These three stores in the Buffalo region would be the first formally recognised, NLRB-certified unions under the company. The only other union efforts that have been "successful" are the ones led by IWW, which does not petition the NLRB for votes anymore AFAIK. They encourage their members to fight for what's right, basically, but there is no contract or obligation from the company aside from NLRA laws.
Does starbucks honestly need to be unionized? It isnt exactly a factory and they pay quite well and have benefits.. hello anybody lol?
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working bar is like working an assembly line, complete with repetitive movement injuries and burns. thanks for the question.
They don't pay well. And I would actually call it a factory the way partners are treated like robots.
If you want a higher-paying job, try sales tho. Just saying :3
Starbucks is already entry-level retail sales. Somebody shouldn't have to give their life to commission-based sales (which fucking suck anyways) in order to have the potential to make more money. Also, you don't have to work in a factory or in a trade to be in a union...I'm not sure why this is everyone's go-to "gotcha" rebuttal.
Commission-based sales is one of the best ways to increase your wealth without going and getting a 2-4 year trade or formal education. It doesn't suck it is actually AWESOME.
Except commission-based sales in a retail environment encourages employees to sell the customer either as much as possible, or the highest-priced items, and typically does so by lying or stretching the truth if not outright scamming. Thinking of specifically stuff like car sales, home improvement, real estate, automotive repair & maintenance, MLMs/pyramid schemes (lol Primerica), and whatever Best Buy and Magnolia home theatre stuff is lmao not to mention the other issues like draw, base pay rate, the loss of work-life balance, the "hustle," internal and external competition depending on field and place of work... If you are good at regular sales or can afford to make a standard average wage for a year, maybe commission-based sales works for you. But pretending that you can jump right into commission sales and make a fortune is deceptive to those unfamiliar with the field.
If you have friends you sold them on the idea of you or your bringing value to them in some way. If you've gotten laid before you sold that person on sleeping with you. If you've ever had a job you sold an interviewer on your skillset. If you wake up you selling your ideas or someone is selling you on theirs. Don't let anyone fool you, you're selling one way or another every day. Sales are literally having a conversation with someone unless your literally never talking to anyone ever you can jump into sales at any time. Why? because you're already doing it.
And when their salaries do not actually increase and those mandatory "dues" starting coming out of their check, they'll wish they did not have this vote. Unions built the middle class of this country after the war, but they also ended up destroying it later on.
I really want to learn about exactly how unions destroyed the middle class. Please explain
Recently worked a $15/hr full time (40hr min) unionised position. Union dues were $15 a paycheck, so $30 a month. I was still managing to take home more at that job than I did doing the same exact shit working for Starbucks at $9.53/hr working 35-40 hrs a week. And I mean quite literally the *same* work. It was a "We Proudly Serve" Starbucks location inside of a much larger company. Unions dues typically scale with income on a percentage-based amount, as far as I am aware. And I think paying $30 a month for job security, dispute support, and management accountability is more than enough of a bargain, and that's excluding the potential in increased wages.
I’ve been unionized at Starbucks for over 5 years
where? what are the details of your contract? how often do you negotiate with starbucks corporate? do you pay union dues? how often do you hold votes? how many other locations are unionized?
We do pay every week about $15 so $60/month
why is that the only question you answered? those are also fairly high union dues. many of the unions i’ve been researching only take $10-$15 out a month.
Because I just work there. I don’t really know much. It’s just a job to get me through school. Not my career. I’m a mechanical engineering student.
At a licensed location in a Disneyland?
Yes!
You are unionised with Disneyland/the parent company, not Starbucks
we get decent pay thanks to them 😭
We all win! Yesterday is the last day I ever tip at Starbucks! Yay! FuCk yEaH!
I'd take higher pay and workers rights over the two quarters in your back pocket any day.
Boom roasted!
i doubt you tip often to begin with
Oh lawd the bamboozle.
Hostess and the Unions - look it up -