Starbucks workers have been winning union elections for a year this week, and in that time more than 250 stores have unionized and more stores continue to file for union elections—but the company is still union-busting and refusing to bargain a contract in good faith with even one of those stores. Starbucks has been cited for more than 900 labor law violations by the National Labor Relations Board, and it’s still at it, from firing union activists to walking out of bargaining sessions.
As they keep up the fight for a good contract at each and every store with a union, the workers are trying to make Starbucks management feel public pressure. And at the holidays, one way to create that public pressure is to not buy Starbucks gift cards. Workers are asking for just that, Saurav Sarkar reports at In These Times. “Starbucks corporate [is] not going to do anything until the customers start making their voices heard about this, because I’ve for years seen people in the stores complaining about all the things that we are asking for, but the only time anything ever changes is when customers start demanding it,” Arlington, Virginia, shift supervisor Samuel Dukore told Sarkar.
That means don’t buy a Starbucks gift card for your kid’s teacher. Or your mail carrier. Or as a stocking stuffer for a family member. You can find other gifts to give.
● The freight rail labor dispute was never about "sick days," Aaron Gordon writes at VICE.
But the short version is the people who actually run the trains have to spend upwards of 90 percent of their lives—including time they’re asleep—either at work or ready to show up at work within 90 minutes. To put this in perspective, someone who works 40 hours a week every week of the year with no vacations or sick days is on the clock less than 24 percent of the time.
● President Joe Biden is saving the pensions of tens of thousands of midwestern union workers.
● Workers at Ultium Cells, an electric vehicle battery maker, overwhelmingly voted to unionize. And I do mean overwhelmingly.
● One year later, friends and family of Kroger employee driven to suicide still want justice.
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Sign and send the petition to Starbucks company leadership and board: Stop union-busting and sign the Fair Election Principles.
Why did Democrats do so surprisingly well in the midterms? It turns out they ran really good campaigns, as strategist Josh Wolf tells us on this week's episode of The Downballot. That means they defined their opponents aggressively, spent efficiently, and stayed the course despite endless second-guessing in the press. Wolf gives us an inside picture of how exactly these factors played out in the Arizona governor's race, one of the most important Democratic wins of the year. He also shines a light on an unsexy but crucial aspect of every campaign: how to manage a multi-million budget for an enterprise designed to spend down to zero by Election Day.
