And, Felix Mitchell: “Starbucks open new stores worldwide every day, they could have paid employees with that money.” Um, wrong, they’ve been closing stores.

I find it odd, though, that the apparent stakes are so low, judging by the 165K settlement for the wrongful termination of union workers.

I think the most convincing statistic in the film was at the end, “Union workers earn 30% more each week than non-union workers.”

I decided to do a little fact checking, and came up with these two links.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/jobsemployment/a/unionwages.htm

Supports the (fairly common sense) theory that union workers make more money. But the figures are a bit old and not as well referenced as I wanted.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t02.htm

Provides up to date numbers. My interpretation is that union (and union represented) workers make more than non-union workers. There isn’t enough data to check the 30% figure specifically, but I’m inclined to believe it.

My analysis: I’d want a union if I worked at Starbucks.

The answer isn’t to boycott. It’s to support workers in their struggle. It doesn’t help the workers to not shop at Starbucks, it helps them to cooperate in defending them against attacks by employers.

The idea that we can fix things by being responsible buyers is just a trick to individualise all struggle, and thereby render it totally ineffective. Corporations have the capacity to bargain as a collective block to exploit workers and consumers. Workers and consumers need to have collectives to balance the equation.

It’s not this film-maker’s job to investigate everyone. He’s only one guy, and he’s going after the biggest target.

This is not really about coffee. Starbucks has much more influence than other chains. It doesn’t really make sense to investigate them when they’re struggling to stay afloat anyway. Starbucks open new stores worldwide every day, they could have paid employees with that money.

Doing investicative journalism is hard. Doubly so when you’re up against a large multinational who earn billions of dollars off the lies and coverups you’re trying to make public.

When I was at University of Iowa the Grad students unionized but it was such a corrupt power grab it made me sad.

The IBEW (that’s right, electrical workers) paid for the grad student organizers to do the unionizing and then of course, the comittee voted to unionize with the IBEW and of course, it happened.

Yep, you read that right. The grad students at U of Iowa are apparently Electrical Workers.

Fucking corrupt bastards.

That’s not even starting into my story about a union tuckpointer bossman with a pinky ring that said Dale coming to a jobsite in a big lincoln town car and saying if we didn’t join their union he’d have us shut down.

Turd Juggling Ass-Tard.

Oh unions…how I hate thee.

But a union might get me more money and make it hard for them to fire me, so screw ‘em!!!!

Unions can be vital, but they should be for more than just getting (extorting?) higher wages for the sake of higher wages, or making it difficult to fire people who don’t perform. In this case, there’s simply no rationale for a union since the company has consistently been a good faith employer.

They take a small percent of my pay check every pay period. In return, they protect the lazy, the stupid, and the incompetent from being fired at my job. Legitimate grievances are treated equally with grievances about a boss mispronouncing someone’s name. A co-worker has had the same grievance in adjudication for 5 years now. The union constantly asks her to resubmit her paperwork with new evidence and another written request to continue the grievance (for back pay that’s about $10k) rather than settle for $1000. I could negotiate a better raise for myself than what our collective bargaining unit has received, but that’s because it’s not a meritocracy — it’s about the good of ALL workers, lazy and incompetent as well as hard-working and industrious. And when the lay offs come, as we know they will, those in higher titles or who have put in more years can bump those like myself who’ve only been there five years, even if those with seniority have been written up extensively and often work without pay because they take excessive absences. They have the protection of the union. The union does something for them.

My mother works for a supermarket. Her union sucks just as much, if not more so than mine. The percentage of wages they take from her is higher than my union, and they pretty much ignore the shitty working conditions. She files grievances, they settle with management without actually changing anything — she just receives acknowledgment that her grievance was valid. The problem there is that her union has bigger fish to fry. They’re going after Wal-Mart, and they’ll stop at nothing until they’ve got that golden fleece.

My father and grandfather were union workers as well. We all have similar stories about the worst workers being protected at the cost of the best. Yes, they get us health care and a pension guaranteed, that’s absolutely a good thing they’ve done. But the blanket protection for all workers, no matter how poor the work ethic or quality, is absolutely intolerable — I could be in a higher job title for higher pay if I didn’t have the union, which says everyone who has a start date before mine — regardless of whether they even show up for work 5 days a week — has to be promoted before me. Because we have to be fair.

Every time someone mentions how GREAT unions are, Last Exit to Brooklyn comes to mind.
Yes.
Great.

Oblivious ignorance of the trend over the last two decades to push full-time, benefited employees into part-time. Failure to notice soaring unemployment rate and need to take any available job. It’s a bit embarrassing to share a species with people who think that it’s fine that a job doesn’t pay a living wage. I thought that la guillotine had taken care of that attitude. Apparently there’s no cure for Empathy Deficit Disorder yet.

I don’t know about you guys, but I personally think that Starbucks is really the wrong place for a union. Coffee shops in general are not exactly life time careers. They are a job grad students and hipsters snag where they are being (barely) paid so that they can say they work at a coffee shop. If you don’t find bad pay an erratic hours rewarding… you should probably look for a different career path.

Eh, it doesn’t matter to me. Like I said, I only visit local shops that offer absolutely no health insurance and bad pay anyways.

Rindan: Not all coffee shop workers are “hipster liberal arts students”. A lot of them are working poor, trying to support themselves and their families. Having the power of a union to stand up to a mega-corporation like Sbucks could make all the difference in the world for them. Don’t dismiss them so easily.

The problem with not being unionized is not (really) that Starbucks workers are being oppressed and abused as a whole, the problem is inconsistency. I have seen (and heard about, and read about) stores whose employees are all as happy as can be, whose managers dole out hours based on need/request/skill level rather than on seniority, and everybody gets enough hours to qualify for that fabulous health insurance #22 gives glowing praise for. But. For every store like that, there’s another one that’s grossly mismanaged, where the regional management looks the other way, because to address the situation would require admitting that they had made a mistake in hiring/promoting that store manager to begin with.

In my previous store, less than half the employees ever got the requisite 20hr/week to qualify for benefits, because the manager only scheduled her “favorite” people to work, regardless of seniority or ability. That was only the beginning of her underhanded and unethical activity – there were a lot of cash handling and time clock inconsistencies as well – but when I took my concerns to the next level of management, *nothing* was done. At all. Despite the fact that I was assured that they were “greatly concerned”. She ended up running that store into the ground, and when it closed, only half of us still had jobs, and the ones who didn’t were only given five days notice of that fact.

Now I’m at another store (whose manager is a pillar of modern virtue – really, not sarcastically) and everybody’s pretty happy, but I can’t help thinking: What happens the next time something at my workplace sets off klaxons in my conscience? Who do I appeal to? I admit that I know very little about unions, and what I do know seems to indicate that their command structure is as rotten as ours is.

I guess all I’m saying is that it would be really nice if Starbucks had some actual infrastructure in place to deal with workplace issues. It’s nice that they make all this noise about benefits and corporate responsibility and whatnot – but when it comes down to it, Starbucks is run by people, and some people just are the kind that will take advantage of others if no one holds them accountable.

Coffee shops are not lifelong careers BECAUSE the staff are treated badly. It’s not the coffee that makes it a bad start to a career, it’s the lack of worker rights and benefits that a union would bring.

That’s WHY the only people who work there are those who don’t care about a long term career in the industry. You think that only undergrads can make espressos?

Thank you Brave New for using corporate PR against itself!

Peet’s is not unionized. I do not foresee a day when Peet’s will ever be unionized. Granted, I enjoyed working at Peet’s much more than at Starbucks, but when I worked at Starbucks I earned $.50 more/hour. That was only due to the fact that I worked in a location where the minimum wage was above $10.10 an hour. When you make $9.60 an hour, fifty cents feels like a lot.

Other than the erratic hours, it’s an absolutely great college job–working conditions are pleasant with easy going customers, management has always been respectful and there are quite nice health care benefits for this kind of part time job. Pay is slightly above fast food worker fare, but tips compensate quite a bit. And the pound of free coffee a week and (non-paranoid policies about family discounts and taking unused coffee home) is refreshing.

Yes, the hours are definitely erratic, but the manager is having to schedule a lot of students who’s schedules are erratic too.

His, and pretty much any Starbucks I’ve been to have far better, friendly customer service than most similar places that employee a lot of students. That’s imperative for a company that depends on maintaining a pleasant environment for consumers.

For a huge corporation Starbucks seems to be one of the good guys compared to anything similar….not sure what a union would do for them other than bring down the level of service due to incompetent employees being allowed to stay on, and slowly turn the employee/management relationship adversarial when up to now it’s been pretty cooperative and progressive. There are many other companies the union should focus on that really do treat their employees like dirt…not sure why they jump on one of the few that’s got a decent record.

Unions are not always the answer. The manufacturing industry in my area has been gutted because of unions. It is almost impossible to get rid of a union worker for performance reasons. There is also no incentive to work hard because like a grade school track meet, everyone gets a ribbon no matter the effort.

I go to my local Starbucks twice a day. They provide excellent customer service and from my conversations with the employees and management the people love working there. They pay over minimum wage, provide a dental/drug plan (no health, I live in Canada), and a free pound of coffee a week. As far as the food industry goes they treat their employees well.

With the economy in the state it is I feel thankful that I even HAVE a job. It might not pay much, require long irregular hours, and demand a lot of time and effort, but it pays my bills and feeds my family. Life is not like that grade school track meet; if you want to succeed you need to put in the work to do so. Want a good job? Work hard at getting a good education and get that job. If you choose not to then don’t complain about the consequences. The world owes you nothing.

Coffee shops are not lifelong careers BECAUSE the staff are treated badly. It’s not the coffee that makes it a bad start to a career, it’s the lack of worker rights and benefits that a union would bring.

What is wrong with having a job that ISN’T a life long career? I personally like the fact that every time I end up chatting with barista I get to talk to her about her PhD research. Some times it is just fun to take a job that barely pays the rent but exposes you to interesting people. Personally, I find the thought of a 60 year old barista you can’t fire because she has seniority x10 doesn’t actually appeal.

Not every single job has to be a life long career. Some times people want to take a detour. Hell, I took a detour with the awesomely low paying please-don’t-collect-on-my-student-loans-but-mildly-interesting-job. It was a good time. If you want a life long job… stop competing with hipster and PhD students and find another industry. Is that so horribly hard?

We have some facts about our relationship with our partners posted on our website at:
http://news.starbucks.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=225