Starbucks unions to strike on November 16th

[Brian Lutz]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... #xj4y7vzkg

Starbucks Workers United has made plans for a walkout on November 16th, Starbucks' "Red Cup Day", alleging that Starbucks will not negotiate in good faith with the union. At the same time, the union is rallying college students to demand that their schools shut down their on-campus Starbucks locations and divest their holdings in Starbucks stock.

Currently, about 350 of the chain's 9,000 stores have voted to unionize. So far, none of them have been able to come to a collective bargaining agreement.

[storewanderer]

Notice how lately few to no stores are even voting to unionize?

Striking plays right into the company's hands. The loss of sales will result in these stores starting to lose money then get flagged as poorly performing. There are too many normally operating non union locations. And Starbucks will have the unit level financial reports to prove the locations are losing money if they do much more of this striking.

[rwsandiego]

I'm neutral on unions in general. My view is employees who are treated fairly have no reason to unionize. I don't see where Starbucks employees are being treated unfairly. It seems like they are treated a lot better than the average foodservice and retail workers. The union lost me when they stated that they want assurances stores won't close. That's ridiculous. Firstly, companies are free to make business decisions such as closing stores. Secondly, unionized companies close locations all the time.

[veteran+]

[storewanderer]

They may be able to save themselves by joining up with UFCW or Teamsters or SEIU.

If it is about doing the right thing for the employees who exercised their right to form a union in their workplace, "Starbucks Workers United" will step aside and let an established group like UFCW, Teamsters, or SEIU take over and deal with Starbucks. These entities all have experience dealing with employers who drag their feet on contracts, though not always successful getting anywhere fast, they always do get somewhere eventually.

[Brian Lutz]

If they were serious about unionizing to improve working conditions they probably would have just gone through an existing union in the first place. The whole thing feels like amateur hour, a bunch of college students fed an endless diet of Socialist Worker / RevCom propaganda on campus seeing this as their big chance to "bring down the system".

[pseudo3d]

I'm neutral on unions in general. My view is employees who are treated fairly have no reason to unionize. I don't see where Starbucks employees are being treated unfairly. It seems like they are treated a lot better than the average foodservice and retail workers. The union lost me when they stated that they want assurances stores won't close. That's ridiculous. Firstly, companies are free to make business decisions such as closing stores. Secondly, unionized companies close locations all the time.

Starbucks rarely closes stores, but they do, especially in economic downturns. The unionized stores want to prevent a "store closed to union problems" issue.

The way to avoid problems between the two parties would be to have well-communicated standards based on income and fixed expenses.

[ClownLoach]

I'm neutral on unions in general. My view is employees who are treated fairly have no reason to unionize. I don't see where Starbucks employees are being treated unfairly. It seems like they are treated a lot better than the average foodservice and retail workers. The union lost me when they stated that they want assurances stores won't close. That's ridiculous. Firstly, companies are free to make business decisions such as closing stores. Secondly, unionized companies close locations all the time.

Starbucks rarely closes stores, but they do, especially in economic downturns. The unionized stores want to prevent a "store closed to union problems" issue.

The way to avoid problems between the two parties would be to have well-communicated standards based on income and fixed expenses.

Starbucks has a "scorecard" with the store financials that all their employees can see, and furthermore they do a great job of teaching business acumen so that the employees understand how they personally make the difference between a "bad" scorecard and a "good" one. If the store is in the red and stays there then it's going to get closed, and the entire idea of a scorecard is that results aren't open to intepretation but rather are set and established chainwide in a fair and equitable manner. If it loses money it should be closed, and my understanding is that more and more of their stores slip into the red because of the changing model.

The reality is Starbucks is aggressively reinventing itself and closing many stores because the rising costs of rent, labor, utilities, etc. renders the old model of small, slow, in-line stores that saturate an area obsolete. Those were cushy jobs in those low volume inline locations, but they no longer turn a profit, especially in higher cost areas like California. I have been shocked by some of the locations that have been closed down recently as Starbucks retreats to rehabbing lower cost old, closed fast food and bank buildings with drive throughs. A very busy location in Old Town Temecula just closed a few weeks ago and was snapped up by an independent almost immediately; the replacement site is not finished construction yet but it's going to be a drive through in a former bank on the other side of the freeway. I think that part of the issue is that these employees know that working in a drive through location is harder and they don't want to do the extra work. Starbucks does not automatically transfer the employees when moved from an in-line to drive through either; they treat it as a store closure and a separate store opening, requiring interviews to join the new store which generally employs more partners overall thus creating more jobs. Not sure if situations where two in-lines consolidate into one drive thru equal the same number of jobs, somehow I think it's slightly less.

Starbucks Workers United is not a real union organization in my eyes, it's just a made up entity masquerading as one. I am suspicious as to where they came from and who is funding them. The article about the planted employees who worked for the union collecting a paycheck and were told to infiltrate happy Starbucks stores where everything was fine, get close to the employees, stir s___ up even if it means getting fired in dramatic fashion and then try to convince everyone to unionize in retaliation was unacceptable in my eyes. If the SEIU or UFCW or even Teamsters felt that Starbucks was actually mistreating employees then I am sure they would happily open their doors to help organize these locations. They're not, which tells me that they too don't see the issue as Starbucks employees are treated much, much better than the rest of the foodservice industry. The only locations that seem to "need" a union are the massively high volume locations with ridiculous staffing levels like the Reserve Roastery stores as well as Downtown Disney and a few other tourist hotspots.

It also seems like problematic sites tend to unionize as if the union could fix their infrastructure issues when in reality the site should be closed and/or moved. There is a drive thru in Encinitas that is in a horrific location up an embankment on the side of I-5 South and it has been ridiculously busy ever since it opened for reasons that escape me; their strip mall has like 10 parking spaces total and employees have to wander around trying to corral the cars on a narrow two lane road outside that lacks sidewalks. I get that their job is unusually dangerous because of the site, but maybe they should press the issue that the store needs to be moved, site needs to be torn down and rebuilt despite being less than a decade old etc. They unionized. What's the union going to do for them, buy out the million dollar homes across the street and widen the road? Same thing for Lakewood, they're on "restaurant row" in a former McDonalds that closed because it was too small, limited space for drive thru line, limited parking. Both stores have unionized over "bad working conditions." Again if I was Starbucks CEO, I would say "you spoke, we listened, we agree that we are so profitable that we can do the right thing. Your location is closed permanently at end of business today because it is such a dangerous working environment and we should not run such a store as it conflicts with our values. You'll receive a generous severance in the mail with your final paycheck. We will look for a better site in your community to reopen, when it does feel free to reapply. You can also apply for a transfer to any open store."

Also, in the news today Starbucks claims repeatedly through executive statements that they've offered a contract and had it ready for negotiation with Starbucks Workers United for over 4 months, but the union refuses to even read it and come to the bargaining table. Obviously one side is lying, but I don't think it is Starbucks. They are having Officers of the company make these statements publicly, and that means that if they were lying the SEC would come down on them hard including imprisonment for lying to investors. So that would mean that who is lying about this? Hmm.... If the union thinks that refusing to negotiate and then pretending it's really Starbucks being unreasonable is going to help them organize more stores, it's not going to work that way.

[storewanderer]

I'm neutral on unions in general. My view is employees who are treated fairly have no reason to unionize. I don't see where Starbucks employees are being treated unfairly. It seems like they are treated a lot better than the average foodservice and retail workers. The union lost me when they stated that they want assurances stores won't close. That's ridiculous. Firstly, companies are free to make business decisions such as closing stores. Secondly, unionized companies close locations all the time.

Starbucks rarely closes stores, but they do, especially in economic downturns. The unionized stores want to prevent a "store closed to union problems" issue.

The way to avoid problems between the two parties would be to have well-communicated standards based on income and fixed expenses.

In my area I've watched Starbucks close a lot of stores. There is always an alternate location nearby. It is rare for them to abandon somewhere entirely. But the relocation may be a licensee shop instead of a corporate shop.

Just in downtown Reno alone they have closed 3 corporate stores over the years (currently they have 2 corporate stores there). Downtown Reno is not big and doesn't have much going on. This is in like a 10 block by 10 block area.

[veteran+]

I do not think I am qualified (nor is anyone else) to second guess employees who want a Union. They work there, we do not. If things are not working for them (however silly we think they are) then I support what they are doing and always will.

The propaganda from Corporations, the media and anti-union types writ large is nonsense.

I will always be biased for the employee. I would trust a lousy Union before trusting a corporation (and its HR puppets) or Chambers of Commerce types or the corporate Media world.