Union Buster Howard Schultz and STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED

Starbucks locations are starting to organize all over the country and winning union vote after union vote. Howard Schultz does what union busters do...suck ass.

(from Episode 1338)

Starbucks Workers United

We believe that the best way to truly inspire and nourish the human spirit is to organize for greater justice, greater equality, and a greater vision of what life can be for Starbucks workers across the United States and for workers in the coffee and restaurant industry.

As Starbucks Workers United, we are organizing a union to bring out the best in all of us. Our organizing committee includes Starbucks partners from across the United States. Many of us have invested years of our lives at Starbucks, while others have recently become partners. We all have one thing in common — we want the company to succeed and we want our work lives to be the best they can be.

We believe that there can be no true partnership without power-sharing and accountability. For this reason, and through discussing our shared experience working at Starbucks, we have come to the conclusion that organizing a union is the best way to truly contribute meaningfully to this partnership and both ensure that our voices are heard and ensure that when we are heard we have equal power to affect change and get things done.

We are “partners” becoming partners.

Starbucks is the leader in the coffee industry, and one of the most successful and companies in the world. We want to share in that success, and we want to have a voice in determining what that looks like for us. We think there is a disconnect between corporate and us. The company says that partners come first, but all too often puts large shareholders above all else.

We are not anti-Starbucks. We are Starbucks! We know what it takes to make this company run, and we know best what we need to be able to do our jobs to the fullest. We want to be able to be our best selves, and we cannot reach our full potential if we are understaffed, overextended, exhausted, and burned-out. We are organizing because we know that Starbucks partners have the ability to improve this company, transform this industry, and form a collaborative, creative, forward-thinking, justice seeking, independent organization that will allow us to advocate for ourselves.

from vice

Since Starbucks workers in Buffalo became the first U.S. store to unionize in December, workers at more than 250 Starbucks stores across the country have filed to unionize. Of the elections that have been held so far, more than 50 stores in over a dozen states have voted to unionize–a remarkably high win rate of more than 80 percent, according to a tracker compiled by More Perfect Union.

The workers’ success against the coffee giant and its team of lawyers from the union-busting firm Littler Mendelson has surprised even longtime observers. “It’s actually shocking to me how badly they’re getting the shit kicked out of them,” Eric Fink, an associate professor at Elon University School of Law in North Carolina, told VICE News. “I think it’s because Littler is not used to dealing with this kind of thing and these kinds of workers.”

So far, all of the stores that have won union elections have organized with Starbucks Workers United, which touts more than 100,000 members and a history dating back over a century. But the Starbucks campaign has been remarkably grassroots: Spurred by the victory in Buffalo, workers have effectively mobilized with a bottom-up strategy of organizing.

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