Starbucks Is Threatening Its Workers

Starbucks is allegedly engaging in illegal threats, intimidation, and surveillance of its workers in an effort to stop them from unionizing. This is according to a labor board complaint, claiming that Starbucks is violating federal law as its non-unionized workforce makes efforts to finally form a union. 

Currently, no Starbucks locations in the US are unionized, but six stores in Buffalo, New York just won a key victory allowing them to hold unionization votes store-by-store, which will almost certainly lead to the first Starbucks unions by the end of the year. This is terrifying to Starbucks, which has been at the forefront of lobbying against unionization for ALL private workers, not just their own employees. Does that mean your coffees are about to cost $15? Of course not!

Starbucks is a valuable example of a company increasingly marginalizing it’s workers as it grows and becomes more profitable. Their last CEO, Howard Schultz came out against the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009, which would have made it easier for workers to form unions.

Alongside centrist Democrats, Schultz proposed a new plan that would actually make it substantially harder, and when it came to a vote, these Democrats voted against it, the bill didn’t pass, and union membership nationwide continued to fall, setting back workers rights during the global economic crisis, and one of the biggest wealth transfers in history from the working class to billionaires, allowing for a continued generational stripping of workers rights for the next decade, and setting the stage for Millennials to enter the workforce severely underpaid, and without union protection.

Today, Starbucks workers who are speaking out in favor of unionization are reporting that they’re being pulled into one-on-one anti-union meetings, stores are being arbitrarily shut down, temporarily closed, and unnecessarily remodeled, and despite only giving management their phones numbers for emergencies, workers are receiving unsolicited anti-unionization text messages.

Executives are even flooding into union-interested stores, in what organizers believe are classic intimidation techniques, with workers reporting feeling surveilled and disrupted from their work. One store in which 80% of workers signed union authorization cards was suddenly shut down and turned into a training center, and its workers were separated and sent to different locations.

And still, corporate has been unwilling to address issues like short staffing, poor training, and inadequate safety measures. As the largest coffee company in the world, ten times larger than it’s closest competitor, Starbucks is on track to force its employees into striking - throughout the United States, Striketober has turned into NoWorkNovember, with over 100,000 workers striking or threatening to strike, while simultaneously low-wage workers are abandoning jobs exactly like those offered by Starbucks and creating a labor shortage in response to a wage shortage and poor working conditions.

These actions by Starbucks are completely inappropriate, as is their political advocacy against unionization for all US workers. They are directly responsible for worker exploitation both as an employers and as lobbyists, and without significant change they may have more trouble than ever finding workers and maybe even, pending a pro-union boycott, finding customers.

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