Starbucks' Aggressive Union-Busting Is a New Model for American Corporations

[marmar]

Starbucks’ Aggressive Union-Busting Is a New Model for American Corporations
Their tactics go beyond even Amazon’s, and they’re getting away with most of it.

BY STEVEN GREENHOUSE
NOV 03, 202211:16 AM


(Slate) In June, Starbucks permanently closed its busiest store in Ithaca, New York, after the newly unionized baristas there went on a short strike to protest unsanitary conditions. In July, Chipotle shuttered a restaurant in Augusta, Maine, shortly after its workers petitioned for a vote to become the nation’s first unionized Chipotle. In August, Trader Joe’s closed its wine shop in New York City’s Union Square just days before that store’s workers were to unveil plans to seek a union election. Also in August, Amy’s Kitchen shut down its 330-employee frozen-food operation in San Jose as a union drive was gathering momentum.

Labor leaders have denounced these closings as deliberate moves to discourage and defeat unionization—to warn workers at these corporations’ other stores and operations that bad things can happen if they seek to unionize. But company officials insist that these weren’t union-busting moves, but rather innocent steps to close operations that had problems. Union officials see a calculated strategy at work here: Corporations know that such high-profile closings—as well as moves like firing prominent union supporters—frighten workers and make many too scared to vote for or campaign for a union. The Starbucks union says the company has fired more than 100 pro-union baristas, not just to retaliate against them for their union activities, but to chill overall enthusiasm about unionizing. Federal law makes it illegal to fire a worker in retaliation for supporting a union.

These types of heavy-handed, anti-union moves highlight three big problems. First, they create an atmosphere of fear that often prevents something that federal labor laws seek to guarantee—free and fair unionization elections. Far too often, all the closings, firings, and other anti-union moves destroy the “laboratory conditions” that the National Labor Relations Board says are needed to assure workers a “free choice” when voting whether to unionize.

Then there’s a second big problem: Companies like Starbucks often seem happy to take one illegal anti-union action after another—like firing workers for supporting a union—because under federal law, they can’t be fined one cent for doing so, and their executives can’t be punished. (At most, companies can be ordered to pay backpay to workers who were illegally fired for backing a union.) Top corporate officials must tell themselves, When you can’t be fined, why not break the law to stop unionization? The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which President Joe Biden has endorsed, aims to remedy this by creating substantial fines for employers’ labor law violations, but a GOP filibuster has doomed that bill’s chances. ...................(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/starbucks-union-busting-tactics-workers-labor-wave-nlrb.html

[Haggard Celine]

1. I wouldn't say it's new.

Read "A People's History of the United states", by Howard Zinn. It's all about labor struggles in America. It goes back to the beginning of union struggles in the U.S. and the atrocities that the wealthy committed to bust the unions. It's a bit of dense read, but well worth your time.

[marmar]

2. I've read it.

[appalachiablue]

3. SAMO, thanks for posting. Workers stay strong! K/R

[Stuart G]

4. Thank You for posting this. Starbucks is permanently off my list I didn't know this about Starbucks.

I doubt that everyone knows this. Again, Thank You for posting this from Slate.
And, it also is a well written article with lots of proof of what Starbucks is doing. Also,
the article notes that other anti-union companies like Amazon & others, do similar things
to prevent Unions from organizing workers.
...In the article Trader Joes & and Chipotle are also mentioned. I didn't know that
Amazon, Trader Joe's and Chipotle were anti-union. We all need to know this.