Last year, Ithaca, New York, became the first town in the country where every Starbucks worker was unionized. Now, by the end of the month, Starbucks will have forcibly shut down all three of its unionized Ithaca locations.
The company announced its intention to close Ithaca’s two remaining stores (in a town in which a large chunk of the population is caffeinated college students) on Friday. In a recent press release, the company said they “continue to open, close and evolve our stores as we assess, reposition and strengthen our store portfolio.” But given that all of Ithaca’s stores, all unionized, have been shut down within a year, the actions seem more than simply earnestly strategic.
Last June, Starbucks shut down a location near Cornell University, a handful of weeks after the location voted 19–1 to unionize. “The College Ave location may be the single most prime property in all of Upstate NY,” former Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick wrote on Twitter. “Over 15,000 pedestrians cross it every day. There’s no way it isn’t profitable. This looks like union busting.”
Last week, emails were revealed to show that Starbucks higher-ups were actively concerned with bad press and the workers’ striking in the lead-up to their decision to shut down the campus location. Workers had complained of their hours being cut and stores being understaffed, seemingly in efforts to wear down the workers and consequently the stores themselves.
“The under-scheduling is genius on their part,” Stephanie Heslop, who worked at one of the two soon-to-be-closed locations, told Jacobin. “Customers and our pitiful paychecks punish us and Starbucks can claim that it’s about ‘business needs.’”
Such efforts to push out employees holds potential resonance, with another Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York—among the first locations to unionize—now filing to decertify from the union. Last April (the same month Ithaca’s campus location unionized), the Buffalo store voted 18–1 to unionize. Since then, it seems management has done whatever it could to turn back the clock.
“Almost every union leader at the store was fired or forced out because of the environment of intimidation and fear that Starbucks management created,” a spokesperson for Workers United told local TV outlet WGRZ. “In fact, the company is currently being prosecuted for the discriminatory treatment of workers at the Del-Chip store.”
It appears that if Starbucks can’t outright close locations down, it’s looking to simply wear out and replace the workers who unionized them. Such a notion is affirmed by the aforementioned emails, which reveal efforts from management to refuse time-off requests for student workers to go home for spring break and even double-schedule them, all in self-fulfilling anticipation of “expected turnover” for “10-14 partners in the next four weeks” (emphasis in the original email). That specific email was sent on March 4: four weeks before the store would hold its unionization vote.
With the closure of the college campus location, the two remaining locations in Ithaca logically would have only increased in foot traffic. Yet somehow, Starbucks purports that the closure of those two final locations—again, in a town whose population is significantly made up of students and faculty—is part of some ongoing detached-from-union-efforts business optimization scheme.
To be fair, Starbucks is not wholly dishonest in its logic of why it is forcibly closing stores. The closures are optimizing—just not for customer satisfaction, nor for basic worker protection and dignity, but simply for executive profits.
The revelations are not surprising. Just over a month ago, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz accidentally admitted that nonunion stores received better benefits than unionized stores, and he couldn’t even say “no” to the question of whether he has threatened workers for unionizing.
It's not about Starbucks' profits, it's about who's next. Maybe Starbucks goes and the profit losses are negligible, but what happens when Dunkin Donuts, Tim Hortons, and McDonalds follow?
They can't allow the threat of a good example.
As someone who knows jack and squat about law, how exactly would we get a federal jobs guarantee back and keep it?
Howard Shultz is absolutely one of those people. He's a dead-eyed psychopath with a surprisingly fragile ego entirely bound in his own bullshit 'self-made' myth. Just look at his whining in front of Congress about being factually being called a billionaire because it didn't sound servile enough.
If you're so self-made Howard, why does giving your workers a raise threaten your business you piece of shit.
I hope they all head to NZ and it gets nuked.
More likely they'll starve to death in NZ or have one of their jealous friends strangle them to death.
Let the class traitors who took jobs as their private security tear them and each other apart for space in their bunkers away from the fallout.
Idk about others but Howard Schultz definitely is. He went from being the cool democrat and future department of labor leader to the villain of almost everyone. He’s gonna sink it all.
Rosa was right capitalists will burn down the system before they give an inch to organized labor.
Interested to see what Ben and Jerries does now that their stores are unionizing. The lack of any response from the owners or corporate is concerning.
as a connoisseur of corporate statements about unions that was weird to read.
I did miss this thank you. Last I heard was last week where they hadn’t commented.
the absolute shit state of western leftism
fuck organizing normally, you'd probably get more done just running over a CEO with a car
I don't remember the exact wording, but I'm reminded of the "Unions are what we agreed to do in lieu of dragging the bosses out of their home and beating them to death in front of their wife and kids."
It's far past time the bosses remembered the advantages of this arrangement.
fuck organizing normally, you’d probably get more done just running over a CEO with a car in GTA 5
:I-was-saying:
It just sucks that when the US collapses the only people it will hurt are the people who don't deserve it.
This stuff really makes me wonder what kind of tactics have to be adopted by the western left.
I mean yeah unconditional solidarity with the struggle of these workers and I fully believe it’s a necessary and important one. But the sacrifices these workers are making are absolutely brutal. Being fired is absolutely awful and the mind games they play under these kinda of circumstances are incredibly traumatizing.
I don’t know how far this struggle can really be taken with how much power capital has in the U.S. and how fickle a friend the NLRB is, not to mention the arch right wing judiciary in this country.
Not to say this struggle is futile, but stuff like this really makes me wonder. If nothing else this has to be a major blow to moral to any other ongoing organizing effort in other retail settings.
Labor discipline is far more important for the capitalists than profit, because the workers will always come back demanding for more if they ever taste some success. This is itself a contradiction of the capitalist system - it’s not just that capitalists don’t want to pay workers more, they simply cannot let workers win.
Most people are familiar with why economism is flawed with respect to what workers should do, but this here is why economism is flawed from the perspective of trying to analyze the actions of the bourgeoisie as well. Just like how having a higher wage in and of itself doesn't lead to the emancipation of workers, capitalists don't make decisions purely on an economic basis either. They are more than willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars if they can break the backs of the current generation of workers and lose hundreds of millions of dollars more to break the next generation's backs.
I think I recall reading once that Lenin thought that communist revolution was only possible in "weak" capitalist countries. Not sure if that is true though.
It is also why leftists flat out want to see America crash and burn. Not saying its impossible to have systemic change, but too much of the country is well off currently to smell the smoke.
It won't happen and I don't want to sound too :fedposting: but making the cost vastly, vastly higher than closing stores to punish labor.
Historically in the States that meant burning train cars, shutting down mines, sabotage etc until you had to face off with militias or the army. It only had mixed success then and certainly wouldn't like that now, not head on.
But a comparatively smaller set of dispersed and disconnected people could probably do a lot of damage to businesses that are the worst offenders. Luddites smashed looms and burnt properties. Renault workers under Nazi occupation rigged truck engines to blow after very few miles. Eco groups destroyed forestry vehicles and equipment. How to blow up a pipeline etc.
The issue would be how many people are actually both willing and able. And how do you cultivate or support a compartmentalised movement like that without infiltration.
I'm genuinely not kidding when I say the only thing to do is attempt to strap up and ride out the crash of empire. It might take a long time, or it might be a decade, but unless you can figure out a way to organize a 30-40% general strike that literally siezes and operates the means of production, you cannot win against corporations that are worth billions of dollars.
This stuff really makes me wonder what kind of tactics have to be adopted by the western left.
China is going to smash the US. We've nothing to worry about.
not to mention the arch right wing judiciary in this country
Anyone else notice that Starbucks and Amazon escalated from tactics that left them with plausible deniability to blatantly illegal tactics right around the time that the Supreme Court went hard right? Probably more of a general fascist collapse thing, but I’d imagine some deep pocketed lawyers would love a chance to challenge some of these labor laws before the Supreme Court.
The Union doesn't own any coffee plantations worked by slaves. How could they get a 900% markup to cover costs?
By not sending 90% of their earnings to corporate executives
Think of the money they’ll save by not hiring union-busting consultants!
Local cafés sell coffee at or lower than Starbucks prices without owning the supply chain.
Any coffee shop could make a brownie better than the Starbucks brownie. I'm not sure how a dessert can be 400 Kcal without even being sweet, but they did it.
lol @ all the defeatists in this comment thread
This union has been rapidly growing and is more radical than it started. I trust that they'll figure out a response. Meanwhile Starbucks is scared enough to cut into their profits.
Hey I don’t want to be a pessimist it’s just hard to stay positive sometimes. I recognize and support the critical importance of what the unions are doing. I believe in the Unions.
I’m just lamenting the human cost of this and hoping it isn’t too late or too little. I’ve been fired before and fucked with by management for organizing and it really fucks with you psychologically.
I don’t doubt the necessity of Unions as a tactic, but it’s hard to look at the history of labor militancy in the U.S. and not wonder when the unions will get their legs swept out from under them. I try to be hopeful the victories may someday outweigh the losses. I admire the bravery of those struggling in retail Union organizing right now.
I personally feel the risks of getting fired and professionally ostracized are too great for me right now because of the obligations I have to people who rely on me. I feel no small amount of self loathing for the cowardice. I understand that may sound short sighted without knowing the specific circumstances of my life. I do what I can with what I have. I am finally approaching a point where I can reasonably kick in to strike funds without feeling the loss of every dollar I put in.
I guess a lot of what I’m thinking about too are the parallel tactics that may be necessary. I think it’s fair to say that the western left will require tactics that are specific to their material conditions, just as every struggle must be adapted to the specific conditions where the struggle is occurring. I am generally one to agree with the ML position but I often find myself admiring the diversity and creativity of anarchist resistance tactics. Especially in the face of climate apocalypse.
Something I wonder about is the utility/viability of a union for the unemployed/less able. Is there any precedent for such a thing? Is it even feasible without the specific conditions of a specific workplace to use as an axis of organizing? What leverage would such a union be able to wield? I feel confident saying a debt strike is badly needed and would be extremely powerful within the U.S. if such a thing could be organized. People have and continue to try but as a goal it feels very distant. Could a Union of the unemployed/less able advance a goal like that? If Covid is the mass disabling event that we are fearful it may be, then the less able will be a growth demographic.
I’m just musing because I feel absolutely powerless. I truly have no idea what is to be done. All power to the unions, solidarity. o7
Organizing the unemployed has always been a major part of the communists in the US. Look up the history of unemployed councils specifically in the 1930s when cpusa was at it's strongest historically. Since about the 1880s-90s is when organizers realized the importance of organizing the unemployed especially since the labor organizing of the ~1870s saw immense capital state collaboration in crushing labor unions and creating masses of unemployed.
The current biggest issue is that the unemployment numbers in a lot of places are at historic lows because unemployment counts if you work a single hour in the past two weeks. Which means that every single person and family who is seeking out the bare minimum poverty wage to stay alive countsas employed, and the number of people in working poverty has never been higher in most places.
So while there aren't unfortunately literal roaming armies of unemployed masses to be able to organize to any significant effect, the jobs that most people have are starvation jobs that only keep you in the same position of precarity for decades until something breaks. The solution it seems a lot of leftists are working ATM is entering the unions and fighting for a better wage which is definitely needed but can succumb to the true monopoly power that enabled capital to crush labor at it's strongest. We are seeing a lot lot more union power in the past year and definitely will in the next few years to come so it'll be interesting to see how things continue to play out.
Capital, capital is afraid. The mask of humanity falls from capital. It has to take it off to to cry like a lil bithc
Yep, even if they reopen all of these stores with non-union staff, that is an expensive move. It's not something they can do at scale. It might be effective in busting the union, but it's a desperate move.
The American Left is going to find itself in a second gilded age that will last for several decades. Labor unrest will rise and there will be armed conflicts too. Results won't be exactly what people want until a few decades deeper when labor begins to become more organized and daring.
Starbucks should die already. Local cafes are cheaper and offer the same quality.
No drive throughs at most local cafes.
In America, that's a death sentence.
Found this disgusting thread on Reddit about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cornell/comments/v9bw4u/last_friday_starbucks_told_the_workers_at_college/
Of course it's Cornell alumni
here's to more unions and more shitty franchises closing out of fear of workers
