When Starbucks in Scottsboro, Alabama, voted “yes” for the union in 2022 – the town made infamous in the 1930s when an international campaign saved nine young Black workers from the gallows – there was no doubt that this campaign was here to stay.
The reality of labor weakness and social media strength makes what organizers call an “air war” compelling. But if not accompanied by resources for worker organizing and leadership development, all the money in the world won't produce worker power.
Striking baristas are not merely up against the executives of a coffee store behemoth, but a broader constellation of corporate power fully networked into Starbucks’s top leadership.
Corporations far beyond Starbucks want to keep baristas out of unions. The ongoing barista strike also represents something much broader: a pitched battle against an executive and governance regime interlocked with a wider network of corporate power
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About 560 Starbucks locations have voted for union representation since the first vote to unionize four years ago, according to the union Starbucks Workers United.
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