I get it, I’m sure he thinks he’s for the common man because of his upbringing. He might even believe it and want to help his employees. Unfortunately, it sounds like he lost their trust by letting another hack run the company for a few years, and now they want unions. Too bad for him, but does he truly think the second he dies there aren’t some greedy MBAs hovering around ready to squeeze as much profit from it as possible? He should probably be working with the new union and trying to cement his legacy of being the good guy he thinks he is by ensuring that Starbucks and the union are intertwined culturally at that company so that this never happens again.
why do starbucks workers want to unionize? do they feel underpaid/overworked? are they mad the company earns billions in profit (do they?) and they only make $15-18/hr + some paid tuition perk/benefit/or whatever?
what could starbucks give these workers to not want to unionize? $25/hr? breaks every 15 minutes? what is the union promising to negotiate for the workers that they don’t currently have now?
I’m unsure if your comment is genuinely curious; I’ve tried to assume positive intent. Unions are the only way for workers to get purchase against abusive, unchecked capitalism.
(disclosure: I have provided financial and technical support)
Edit: @savanaly
The author of the comment I replied to has a most recent Ask HN asking why not smaller government and more privatization. Their comment language and format, when viewed for only a moment, is easy to distill as not genuinely curious, but as condescending: “what could these workers possibly ask for that they’d deserve from Starbucks?”
I’m happy to act as Google and stick the result in a reply for them (this is what they’re asking for), but I’m also going to politely call out their disingenuous behavior.
Starbucks is their company. It could not exist without their labor. By unionizing, they obtain that power. You may feel different, but this is what labor regulations and the NLRB is for: to protect workers’ organization rights.
Starbucks belongs to its shareholders, end of story.
If unions hadn't seized political power to grant themselves unjust power these leeches, which is what they undoubtedly are, would be where they deserve, fired.
They are suppliers of labor, and should be treated like any other supplier of any other good or service, rather than being privileged by the force of law.
One thing that somewhat comes to mind is their 'Just say yes' policy. It tends to make it difficult for baristas to deal with customers that harass them, I know when credit card -> gift card conversion fraud was a big problem in my area my colleagues intimated that they weren't allowed to deny or even question obviously fraudulent transactions being asked for (really? you need 1000$ in starbucks gift cards? and keep trying different cards when one is denied?)
If you were actually curious, you’d read the article, which goes into a lot of detail about the unsafe work conditions, the equipment breakdowns, the unstable hours, the student debt making the unstable hours even more precarious, and so on.
I read the article. It tries to give a balanced view of both the good and the bad, including details, but if your read the article closely, it doesn't say exactly what the union is trying to do.
Also read the 2 links provided above, because I was interested. On the second page 'what will the union do" the answer is 'its up to us', so I tend to agree, it's not clear what they are asking for yet.
Good questions for the CEO of Starbucks to be asking. I assume the workers like the benefits they think the union will give them and that’s why they want it.
We have a strong legal system that protects employees. We should start working on it and strengthening it so every employee has protections instead of these hived off unions.
Unions started for factory workers and farm workers too when they had no rights. It’s entirely unnecessary and disruptive now to rely on unions that simply use an artifact of the past to bully employers and reduce productivity.
In America, we have monetary as well as legal safety nets. Unions are used as political means to create vote banks in our current times. I think if politicians wants to mobilize voters to suit their own agenda, they should do it on their own time and on their own dime.
Also: Union pension funds are humongous and public sector and govt employees pension funds are the main reason why we have pension fund liabilities and the some state’s economy gets manipulated.
The California teachers Union is the most powerful union and voting block followed by correction officers union. The amount of political power they wield is often hidden from most people esp those who frequent places like HN. Tech workers Union and Starbucks unions make no sense. A powerful union needs hundreds of thousands of members. And billions of dollars. If tech workers and Starbucks employees Unionise, the entire economy of the USA would crumble and collapse simply from the macro economic impact.
Not to mention their power over how our cities are run. Case in point, why can’t we build modular homes quickly in San Francisco so there is more housing and affordable ones at that. Unions oppose it. And people end up talking and fighting about NIMBYs and prop 13 by brainwashing kids in public schools(unionized teachers) and colleges(again unionized work force in state univs).
Some little squirt still in high school will spout off about NIMBYs and I want to know where they got it from…instead of availing an education, we have an uneducated public school trained political mob. Kids just out of school would speak about Prop 13 and I am like..dude, pay your bills and your taxes. I mean..get a job first before you want to get grandma to sell her home to build your ‘walkable city’.
Most importantly: The amount of meddling and damage that this has caused our education sector is irreparable and irreversible. We have an entire generation of politically uneducated ignorant gaslit and easily manipulated youth because of the agenda driven public education they recd from our hard earned tax dollars. Worst investment ever.
These youngsters that are the products of a useless public education system wanting to form unions while working in airconditioned work spaces are simply reflecting their education. Rebels without a cause probably never saw the James Dean movie.
Unions are outdated. The law is universal for all in the USA..and it is a superior and effective system because it protects everyone from workers to employees to immigrants rights to undocumented workers. We should work on the law of the land and not on divisive pseudo political outfits like unions.
Hard to respond to such a long comment containing so many different talking points.
I can’t tell if you are advocating for updating labor laws instead of relying on unions to influence individual employers. If that’s the case - that’s a strong argument.
Since forcing stronger labor protections at the Federal or even State level takes a very long time and is usually counter-acted by extremely powerful corporate lobbying and propaganda (e.g. Uber), unions offer a more immediate and flexible alternative.
Compared to most European countries, labor laws and benefits in the US are a joke. Unions fought for improving labor condition in Europe, and will hopefully fight for the same level of improvement in the US. Peeing into a bottle should not be OK at an Amazon warehouse, maternity leave should not be an optional benefit, “at-will” employment should not be the standard, etc etc
Why are we always comparing America to Europe? What if we compare America to China?
America is America. We will have to do what’s best for us. Constant and random comparisons with other countries picked for simply beating down America isn’t helpful.
Because humans strive to become better over time, not worse. Practicing gratitude is important, but if we fixate on "well, at least we are not Bangladesh", then we won't have much motivation to improve things.
This is entirely irrelevant. In what way is America going to ‘become better’ by emulating European(a cluster of many countries) labour laws?
European unemployment rates are much higher..at least 50% more..than American unemployment rates. There has been no relative increase in wages in Europe whereas it has been steadily increasing in America leading to better quality of life index.
There is no comprehensive Europe vs USA comparison but this is a good read of how they dealt with the pandemic(most of the countries mentioned have less than 1/4 population of US)
There is no way to compare Europe to America but it serves better to compare America to China or India as USA is the third most populous country in the world after the other two.
Comparing America to 5 million peopled NZ and 60 million peopled France is an entirely useless exercise. Unless the purpose of the comparison is to simply pit western countries with a majority white population with other countries with a white majority…therefore ignoring comparable countries from the east. And that’s is frankly Racist.
China is more comparable to USA when it comes to economy than any other European country. But they are Asian, so it doesn’t count seems to be your stance.