After years of scorched-earth union-busting and stonewalling tactics by their bosses, Starbucks workers are trying to get their union drive and contract negotiations unstuck through a nationwide strike.
The labor left has a role to play, directly in the workplaces and within the unions themselves. As volunteers of all types, as organizers, as salts, and as community supporters. It’s time to go for broke and push as hard as we can.
The union has been bargaining to reach a contract with Starbucks for over three years, with no end in sight. It says that the new dress code represents “bad faith bargaining,” .
ICE is reading from an old textbook
The “worker-to-worker” organizing model adopted by many of the most dynamic unions and campaigns in the country has enormous promise for revitalizing labor — in large part because it puts workers themselves in the drivers’ seat.
Worker-led and initiated organizing is certainly positive, as labor writer Eric Blanc points, but this emphasis is one piece of a much larger analytical framework for success in organizing.
"I will be pursuing all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent," fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, who was fired along with National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo.
Blanc argues that the current imbalance of power between labor and management in the U.S. can only be changed, for the better, with large-scale, coordinated organizing efforts rooted in the rank-and-file. His most detailed case focuses on Starbucks.
Spread the word