storewanderer wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2023, 7:05 pm
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/02/business ... exis-rizzo
Fired for attendance issues and seems to basically admit it in the article. Due to closing one night and having to open the next morning but doesn't explicitly say that happened in this example.
Starbucks states the employee arriving late caused the store to open an hour late. That will get someone fired at just about any business... union or not...
And if this was a real union then they would care just as much about upholding the rules and applying them fairly as anything else. They would have a rep sitting there during the termination nodding their head as the boss explains why they were let go for attendance.
I read this article about how the Union figured out Starbucks would be a good organization to infiltrate, then got their paid people hired to do the job. Not sure how I feel about this. I can see why Schultz pushes back so hard, he doesn't believe that the Union represents truly unhappy employees. I don't want to call out specific people but I am aware of one of these workers who befriended employees at multiple locations then unionized their own store - and got themselves fired somewhat intentionally to stir the flames further and convince friends at other stores to unionize in retaliation for their "firing". The entire time they were collecting a paycheck from the union as well as Starbucks. It just doesn't smell right to me after reading this article (if you can figure out how to get around the free article limit pay wall).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... over-salts
I have a close family friend who spent over a decade at Starbucks as both a regular worker and a supervisor. Their experience is that Starbucks changed in three ways that make it less pleasant these says, but none of these can be fixed by a union. First, drinks have become more complicated as Starbucks embraces customization as their way of standing out vs competitors (really can't change that or lose business). Second, as customers embraced mobile ordering the need for cashiers has been reduced and those positions were shifted (note not cut) to different roles like coordinating mobile orders which are more challenging (again can't turn the clock back). Finally the customer demands drive thru service, so Starbucks is aggressively relocating in-line stores to drive thru as soon as a site is available, sometimes within a year of major remodels of the existing store - and work in drive thru is much more difficult than a standalone store because you're servicing two groups of customers simultaneously (but it's what the customer wants and makes more money for the company - plus ironically when an in-line relocates to a drive thru the hours and headcounts go up).