Starbucks is continuing its union-busting campaign with a vengeance in the wake of a tenth store voting to unionize. Workers at the New York City Roastery—one of just three flagship “Roastery” locations in the country—voted 46-36 in favor of unionizing, with the vote counted on April 1, the same that New York Amazon workers won their union vote.
That was Friday. On Monday, Starbucks fired Phoenix, Arizona, worker-activist Laila Dalton after months of harassment and retaliation for her union leadership. In fact, Starbucks fired Dalton for having recorded the abuse the faced from managers. That’s one of a string of firings of union leaders at Starbucks, but, Noam Scheiber notes, the first to have been fired after the National Labor Relations Board had already issued a complaint against Starbucks for retaliating against her for her protected activism. Pretty damn brazen.
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Here’s what that campaign of harassment has looked like:
Also on Monday, Howard Schultz made his triumphant return to public speaking as, once again, the CEO of Starbucks. In that speech, he cast unions as a major threat to Starbucks and other companies.
“Now here's where it gets a little sensitive—because I've been coached a little bit—but I do want to talk about something pretty serious,” Schultz said. “We can't ignore what is happening in the country as it relates to companies throughout the country being assaulted in many ways, by the threat of unionization.”
Assaulted by the threat. That threat is the workers of his company. People like Laila Dalton, a teenager repeatedly berated and harassed by managers.
Schultz added, “There's two ways I can approach this. I can say I'm anti-union, and [that] I don't want to see that at Starbucks. But I'm not an anti-union person. I am a pro-Starbucks [person]. Pro-partner, pro-Starbucks culture, pro-heritage, the history of our company. ... We didn't get here by having a union.”
Heritage, huh. Is that like when people say their embrace of the Confederate flag is “heritage, not hate”?
Schultz’s “I’m not an anti-union person … BUT” schtick is obvious nonsense. If he’s terrified about his company being assaulted by a threat, he can’t plausibly deny being anti-that-threat.
In the same speech, Schultz announced, “We are going to be in the NFT business,” just to drive home how laser-focused he is on the stuff that matters. He’s pro-Starbucks culture, pro-heritage, all about “the partners” (Starbucksian for “workers”) and the history of the company—oh, and he’s jumping on board with the hot new scam. It seems that, to Schultz, NFTs are more in the Starbucks tradition than listening to workers. What a surprise.
As the latest union win shows, though, the momentum is with the workers despite big-money union-busting campaign and the retaliation and firings and poor-pitiful-me speeches from the CEO. Long may it continue.
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