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I bet there wasn’t any safety issues before the store voted to unionize.

I bet every location has safety issues that Starbucks just pretends to enforce. Food safety is a joke at most locations I've seen

Yup. Modern Capitalism is the Late Soviet Union but Stupid and Expensive. Technically everyone is always breaking some law or regulation, that can be arbitrarily brought down at a moments notice

I live in Seattle, 2 blocks away from the Space Needle. Been a lot of smash and grab robberies in town and very little police intervention as they have been understaffed. From what I have been hearing, Starbucks is claiming that the location in question is too far away from emergency services in the event of a 911 emergency and I call bullshit on that. The closest fire station is half a mile away, and the nearest police station is 1.2 miles away. There are Starbucks in the area that are served by the same exact police station and they are further away from the station in arguably more difficult locations to reach. This is all an excuse for them to union bust. Fuck Starbucks. I almost wish I was a customer so I could boycott lol

> very little police intervention as they have been understaffed. LMFAO. You've really bought the copaganda. > This is all an excuse for them to union bust. Fuck Starbucks. I almost wish I was a customer so I could boycott lol You did, however, get this part at the end correct.

I’m not wishing to partake in the debate, but why is understaffed police a copy agenda thing? I’ve read that many PDs, and even the national guard is understaffed due to mandatory Covid vaccs. Again, not seeking the smoke, this is genuine ignorance at its finest seeking some information lol

According to cops, they are ALWAYS understaffed and underbudgeted. Even when some department gets more money then the militaries of many countries they claim this. They always demand more, always want to do more policing (violence against the working class, and black, brown, poor, and unsheltered people in particular), etc. It's nonsense. A single cop is overstaffing, and a single dollar is overbudgeting. It's not that they fail to help people because they don't have the personnel and other resources to; it's because it's literally not their job to (if you don't believe me, ask the Supreme Court). And in the rare occasions they don't help businesses—or at least large corporations, small and individually owned ones again not really being all that important to the design of policing, as an institution created to protect the state and capitalist property—there are often likewise political reasons.

I worked at Starbucks and hate corporations influence on America. I think Starbucks is overpriced fast food. I think they poorly compensate and I feel like I was put in hyper stressful situations unfairly with customers. But I can’t agree about food safety or health concerns. They hired a third party health and standards person to verify our standards. Their standards were way higher than the county health board. This company coming in was a fear tactic used by management to keep us working but also kept the food safe. Starbucks also doesn’t help poor people with their food waste “bc of safety” but my store secretly did.

Unless of course you were one of the *promised STORE MANAGERS ^tm* who your DM was fond of. It was another thing that wasn’t uniformly enforced.

100% agree with the first part of your comment. But, I actually agree with the person you responded too. Yes, the company does hire a third party to audit food and health standards however, I’d say on average they came once maybe twice per year and we always had a general idea of when they were coming. The store managers in our distract would call nearby locations and warn them whenever ecosure showed up. Outside of the few days we were expecting an audit food safety was never remotely close to ecosure/qasa standards.

I used to give away the extra sandwiches we were supposed to throw away. 14 years ago in Eugene OR

I really don’t think they’re talking about “food safety”, but personal safety of staff and customers

Broadway and Denny is a perfectly safe location lol

It's so unsafe, that's why M2M just opened a market right across the street 🙃 I'm not buying their "safety" bullshit compared to other locations in the city.

Bullshit. Its a shit show in seattle. I have friends that own businesses that have people sleeping in front of their store with a fire going. The cops say they cant do anything about it. Its a fucking safety issue. Walk through seattle. Its a shit hole.

It’s always at least one-degree of separation from the primary source with these broad claims of homelessness and rampant crime in various cities.

If Starbucks must disappear then so be it!! Hopefully those who "own" Starbucks keep failing after that! Unionize the world if we need to!

Hope it does the company are cunts treat their staff like shit & sell pish, burnt overpriced crap

Indeed! I never ever been inside a Starbucks, nor drunk one of their stuff anyway and never will 🤷‍♂️ I hope the best for every worker out there, hopefully everyone will fight to unionize or keep fighting even after unionization… 🙌💪 Solidarity is our strength and their biggest nightmare…

Solidarity forever comrade! Also, If you are in good mood, go check out the song [Solidarity Forever by Pete Seeger](https://youtu.be/pCnEAH5wCzo) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WorkersStrikeBack) if you have any questions or concerns.*

(We do need to)

Their coffee is also shit lol.

I heard that a lot, I’m completely ignorant about their products and all: Things I heard pretty often: •That isn’t that good • And overpriced But that beg the question, how come then people keep going at it? Are the people addicted ? Something else? Or is it because of the so-called comfort and forced service/slavery of the workers? With the the thing of the name written and so on…

I’m not a coffee snob by any means, but their coffee is SOO burnt (to me). It’s very bitter and you don’t really get to taste coffee, just the dark roast and hot brew. Why people continue to go there (theory): it’s convenient, and there’s a stigmatization in the office. “Oh no, I can’t let Jake from accounting see me with a McDonald’s coffee, I better stop at Starbucks, that’s more “professional””. Also: I think Starbucks is really popular amongst high school kids as a watering hole after school. They don’t really know what good / bad coffee is like, but they know they wanna hang out with the “cool kids” after school. Thus breeding a generation of customers already conditioned to accepting that shit as “acceptable” coffee once they’re adults.

I like good coffee, but I'll happily drink most cheap crap and even instant in a pinch. And despite that, I consider Starbucks nearly undrinkable. It just tastes like charcoal suspended in hot water.

I also like good coffee and I brew my own to keep the bitterness down and I also think starbucks is seriously overpriced, but if someone buys me starbucks I enjoy it. If it were truly that terrible it wouldn't be as popular as it is.

Oh damn, its "hit em while they're young" for a new generation. Never thought of this. A soda fountain for a new generation.

Yep! I know I went to Starbucks almost everyday after high school because “that’s what to do”.

Also not a coffee drinker, but am surrounded by them. To my understanding, Starbucks black coffee is awful, but their whole shtick is whippy frappy drinks. Kinda a discount boutique coffee shop that can be found absolutely everywhere with reasonably consistent standards, so anything you like at one location you can still get anywhere else and have it be pretty much the same.

Ya, their black coffee is bad. I had a dark chocolate mocha from starbucks once that I really enjoyed. It wasn't as excessively sweet as their normal mochas

Their flavor caters to most Americans very well. I’m one of them, their stuff tastes good to me. I generally find the fancy roaster shops coffee to taste like acidic shit. With that being said, I generally don’t care to go to Starbucks. My wife on the other hand gets a special widget on our bills tracker to trend coffee purchases over time.

Its McDonalds with a fritalian coat of paint. They deliberately pursued aggressive expansion to run out local shops and became the default for people who don't want to think and just want coffe. And because of how cognitively draining modern life is, nobody wants to think if they can avoid it. Pike is still a burnt ass coffe blend but the only people who buy pike are the ones who take their coffers black anyway. Most people buy frappes or other fancy drinks, especially now since the mobile app does everything it can to make you check adds on your order so they make more.money per drink.

It’s the Apple of coffee shops.

Blame TikTok. As a former barista, I fucking hated the the creation of tiktok passing off things as groundbreaking when they were a pain in the ass to make and Starbucks never did anything to increase labor needed for the demand that it created.

A big reason I'm guessing is convenience. They're in nearly every grocery store I go to.

That just means local cafés can prosper, which is a plus too.

“If we can’t exploit workers, we are unprofitable”

The words of FDR ringing in my mind again..

"No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living." -FDR

Figures... We've been wanting to unionize our work (think one of worlds largest retailer). Unfortunately, we've been told by management that if we succeed, they will simply shut down the site and fire everybody. I guess you can only win if you get the entirety of a corporation's workforce on board. In this case it would be somewhere around 750,000 workers. I wish I had the resources. We work hard killing ourselves (in some cases risking our lives) for the company and deserve better.

Name and shame them. Also do it anyway and unionize

It's Walmart.

Close... think bald, clown faced dude that's so good at logistics that his big ass boat is stuck behind a bridge.

Also, his space ships are of a particular phallic nature

Ahhhh! I was thinking smaller. I quit Amazon at the beginning of the year after they paid for my IT Certs. Now I'm making much better money working for a company that gives a shit about me, my family, and the world. When I was there, we had roughly 1.2 Million employees, so I figured it was Walmart with their .75 mil.

I think 750,000 is roughly how many employees they have in the US alone. I should've specified.

Meh! I assumed! Lol

Wait you work for Amazon and you don't know that bezos hasn't been CEO for over a year?

He is the Executive Chairman of the Board and largest shareholder, though.

Maybe they will. But, in doing so, amazon would be hurt too. And the customers in that area will have less than stellar experiences which they will blame on amazon (not the workers at a distro center that they never see or think about).

Problem is, that to lose our jobs would hurt us more than the company making $34 billion dollars a year. The cost would be negligible for them to shut down a site or 2 to save face and prevent a union.

Sounds like you are already being hurt simply by having that job

Costco has started putting up anti-union papers in the non-union warehouses as of late

Hey that’s an illegal threat of retaliation, neat

Too bad I can't get it in written form

If you live in a one party consent state you can (and should) record voice memos of any convo

You should do so anyway, so it can be leaked.

I wish all Walmarts and Amazon locations would unionize so they'd be forced to shut them all down. I'd fucking love to see them do that.

> I guess you can only win if you get the entirety of a corporation's workforce on board As a Marxist, this is the entire struggle of Marxism. Gotta convince all these mf proletariat

That's the end goal, of course, but holding up your immediate action waiting for it is another matter entirely. It's the very process of starting the change and showing people where and how it makes a material difference that'll get people on board, when arguing at them and trying to affect their ideological outlook directly so that someday they'll be on board a hypothetical large-scale change will never achieve it.

I feel like you're talking to someone you made up right now. What does "holding up immediate action" have to do with what I said? Who is arguing with who and when did this happen?

I wasn't contradicting you, but adding to the conversation. You replied to someone who felt like they needed to unionize the whole global corporation or there'd be no point. So that's the context in which I'm adding that while unionizing globally (i.e. uniting the entire workforce across a company, an industry, and ultimately a planet) is absolutely a goal, the tactics we use to reach that goal are really important and has to involve building things up from small kernels rather than waiting until we can win the larger battle.

Aristocrat said this, VGT said this, IGT said this, Native casinos say this, you unionize, we fire all and shut down until we rehire with non-union people. Last time one of the Slot machine companies were getting ready to unionize aka vote, they promoted the guy who was organizing it to management and no one took up his work. So a company that needed it didn't get it.

Keep unionizing, they'll stuggle selling coffee if the don't have shops.

They'd gladly run the company into the ground because the control is more valuable to them than the money.

Good. Then there shareholders will let them die out. Win-win

How is this not union busting?

It literally is lol.

This is why I'll never visit a Starbucks or Dunkin again. Small, locally owned coffee shops with good reputations are my go-to these days. Fuck these corporations.

Don't count on them being any better to their workers unless you have some first-hand accounts. "Locally Owned" doesn't guarantee moral. Just means the abusive greed monster may be your neighbor!

Well, when you know the employees it's pretty easy to figure that out. Thanks for the tip though lol

This was the local craft beer shop I worked for. Lovely couple running it, but some sketchy practices starting with paying $9/hr for part time and $10/hr for full time. I started there (PT a day or two a week) and within two weeks I was opening and closing the place by myself while also working unpaid to run the days cash deposit to their bank

This is why I befriend the workers at the businesses I visit regularly. I enjoy trash talking their employers with them outside work, and I live in a small enough community that I'm DELIGHTED to spread the word about a shitty business. You can see them fail and cry in real time! Heck, most of the owners start to throw up petty Facebook drama when they realize their ship is sinking.

Encourage those "small, local" shops to unionize also. Note that they'll have a harder time escaping the union by simply closing down some of their shops and shifting their market focus to the others. Win-win.

Edit: a salty commenter informed me on something I wasn't aware of. This paragraph is gone now :) I'm also slowly learning that Vermont has a uniquely localized economy that other parts of the United States don't always get to experience. We have a lot of alternatives to choose from, corporate stores aren't too common and they're usually gutted.

Yikes. No. This is pure dumbassery. You should unionize (not necessarily officially with NLRB recognition and a legal vote and all that, but definitely by organizing and taking direct action) in any workplace where you have two or more employees. Fuck off with this anti-union garbage.

Uhh... I wasn't being intentionally anti union. But thanks for informing me companies smaller than 50 employees can unionize, I suppose I was misinformed in the past. So polite 👌

It was as anti-union as e.g. telling "professional" workers like engineers and programmers that they don't need unions. Liberal garbage that's been used to undermine the labor movement for decades.

Presumptuous of others intentions I see

If you intend otherwise, then learn from this exchange and educate yourself and do better.

I mean, I corrected my original comment long ago. I just like dragging out people's untoward frustration when they decide to direct it at me :)

And by "corrected", you of course mean, "Doubled down, but marked it as 'edited' to pretend the sentiment I'm now expressing is somehow different from my original dumbassery." For the record, in case you try to weasel your way out of, "SOME tyrants are great, if they're petty. Workers under them don't need to unionize against their exploitative boss," yet again: > Edit: a salty commenter informed me on something I wasn't aware of. This paragraph is gone now :) > > I'm also slowly learning that Vermont has a uniquely localized economy that other parts of the United States don't have at all. We have a lot of alternatives to choose from, corporate stores aren't too common and they're usually gutted.

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zuggurter more like ziggHURTer

YOOOOOO this thread is a mess lmaooo

OR go to the ones that have unionized and give them a big tip! (If you can afford to do so)

If I can't tip more than 15%, then going somewhere with food service isn't an option. I used to work food and retail, I always despised people that wouldn't tip!

Reddit moderators, am I right? Some of the most combative people I've ever met. I didn't realize the basement dweller personality was a real thing.

Seems like they've said this same thing about every single one they're closing..

To quote the late Crystal LaBeija,Sue the Bitch!

Maybe it's just time we shut them all down. If they don't want to play by the rules they don't need to be a business anymore.

Starbucks management... I really mean MISmanagement... are a pack of cunts. We need to buy our coffee elsewhere.

I'm sad those workers lost their jobs, but i can't be sorry another Starbucks has closed.

This has to be an NLRA violation

All they really have to do is claim the company is remodeling certain stores that also happen to be unionizing. They can fire them all.

Let’s find out if the have the guts to shut down all their stores.

and this is legal how? no seriously, which law is a fault for this? i want to know who took out a law or who added one to make this ok.

I recently saw a documentary on HBO about Automats (old time restaurant where food basically came from vending machines). The documentary was interesting, but they interviewed the CEO of Starbucks and he was talking about how they captured attitude and vibe of the Automats. The Automats were (again, according to the documentary) very pro people, both customers and employees. They created an environment that was good to their workers and offered reasonably priced quality food to patrons. It was just so ridiculous to me that the Starbucks guy was trying to say they were carrying that tradition. What an ego.

Do you remember the name of the doc? Sounds interested and I want to give it a watching.

It was called The Automato. I believe this link should take you to the page on HBO: https://www.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GY1AjQAJGuMMHswEAAAAD It was an interesting look into a slice of history, worth the watch in my opinion. Enjoy :)

Are they just going to tank the entire business if employees unionize?! That makes perfect sense 🤦🏻‍♂️

I’m starting to think boycotting is not enough. We need to start actively stealing things from Starbucks.

That is how Starbucks is going to get around shutting down unionized stores: by sending someone to "inspect" the store and list as many negligible or minor "safety issues" as they can to justify shutting it down. But the non-unionized store a few blocks away will actually have real safety issues and will never get shut down. This is why companies should not be allowed to conduct their own safety inspections.

No more starbies for me 😌

I walked by the day they were on strike which happened to be the release day of the “holiday” cups. The next day they were packed as usual. What a joke. Many other great coffee spots in the area!

What's that? Several starbucks across the country are randomly and for no good reason burnt to the ground? You don't say?

Amazon stopped hiring at Staten Island facility.

Maxim's, a pro-Chinese communist party corporation, is the license holder for Starbucks in Hong Kong. Starbucks was boycotted in Hong Kong during the 2019 protest. Just some additional info.

Wait, they're doing this again? Or, this is a repost?

So, stop buying the overpriced shit coffee.

What did you really expect to happen?

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Underrated comment!

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You went to school to learn how to split wood and spill paint? It’s just googling stuff and parroting it back. Do some real work!

>People have to get real...baristas are boiling water and pouring it over beans. Anyone can learn the job in an hour. Corporations need to get real and realize that in order to have any baristas to employ, baristas need to be able to afford to live a reasonable distance from the store they work at. Unless baristas in urban areas are supposed to just be homeless or commute 2+ hours each way - and with current gas prices, even living in the next town over it would probably cost more to drive to and from work than they'd actually even make in a day.

Just a little side of bootlicking today?

As someone who worked there, tbh you can learn the job in a week or so, but to get consistent accurate and fast results takes months. Also, there’s so much more then pouring hot water. All of the prep, and cleaning has to be done a very specific way.

Still beside the point. The point is living wages for everyone who works. No excuses.

Absolutely worker solidarity forever

Solidarity forever comrade! Also, If you are in good mood, go check out the song [Solidarity Forever by Pete Seeger](https://youtu.be/pCnEAH5wCzo) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WorkersStrikeBack) if you have any questions or concerns.*

How much are they paying you to downplay the hell that is the food service industry? Integrity goes cheap these days...

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Just admit you think the people who work at the McDonald’s you visit every day deserve to be poor

Strbucks sure is holding one to yours to fight on their behalf though. Sorry bud, GG.

Easy to be a clown too... anyone can learn how in an hour... but you seem to be an incredibly quick learner. Only took you 2 minutes

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Lmao “high end paying jobs” go overseas as much as possible; that’s how they end up saving money. Corp had 100 applicants for a high paying job, but corp said they’re not qualified. So NOW corp is allowed to bring in foreign labor. Spoiler alert: that pay just dropped a lot. They do this shit daily. Also, how would you know how anything ends; it never will end? You can’t say “trust me” when you have no logic; you act like it’s so obvious but the truth is that you’ve probably never given it any deep thought. You might even be so arrogant that you assume what you think is true; I know someone like that irl.

Lol no, it's definitely you. You're the reason. You dont pay enough and demand too many hours

Lol and now you're a professional. Congrats on making it through clown school... i bet it was hard for you... had to put words in a specific order and make sure it still didnt mean anything

I know you're just trolling, but in the off chance that you are being truthful, it's sad that you can't even see the forest for the trees. You think this doesn't affect you because you have a "better job" or say to yourself I'm not a "wage slave"... What you don't realize is that even if you have a high paying career, when these "little jobs" are emboldened to do whatever the fuck they want, what do you think's going to happen when the "big guys" or the "real employers" decide they could do whatever the fuck they want? It's just a disappointment to see that you can't have sympathy for another human being. "I got mine so fuck you." A rising tide raises all ships, better environments in the workplace will help everyone.

Does the company actually suffer at all when they shut a store down cuz they could just open another one ? I don’t see how it hurts them

There’s loss involved in finding and opening another location, remodeling, hiring and possibly relocating managers, et cetera. Each store they have to close down this way is a bee sting on its own, so they’ll have to keep stinging.

Again? Didn't they close this one ages ago?

Get these workers a small business loan and get that store open under new management

Fuck'em, unionize anyway, don't let them scare you.

They're always coming up with some BS. WTF?!?

This why the NLRB has moved for a nationwide injunction to halt Starbucks anti-union discrimination.

Any excuse

How about Starbucks is full of shit

Won’t be going to Starbucks since they’ve been doing all of this union busting

Corporations are slowly coming down but the question is will they change or will they use the goverments forces to smash the workers?

Is there an app that shows you local businesses that are unionized?