Starbucks ’organizational campaign was able to bring together nearly 20 coffee shop chains in the United States, a historic change for the labor movement. But consolidation efforts are in an early stage now Even heavier cranes: Negotiate the first contract.
Starbucks has every incentive not to offer workers a satisfactory deal because it will only help get more workers into the organization. From the point of view of the union, Workers United, ensuring a stable profit in a collective bargaining agreement could boost the organization’s already hot activity and bring in many more from the company’s 9,000 U.S.-owned stores. Starbucks.
Both sides are now battling a fierce battle at the negotiating table that will ultimately determine the future of the Starbucks unions.
“Developing a contract that meets or exceeds what we already offer to our partners will be difficult for them,” Starbucks spokesman Reggie Borges predicted. “These contracts do not start with the basic level of benefits our partners receive. This is a total stop rule. “Contract negotiations start at the beginning”.
(Following the news, Borges said he had wrongly discussed the start of contractual negotiations[ing] At zero. “He said he intended to imply that“ collective bargaining involves many variables and no one can predict the outcome. “)
Starbucks has already hinted at some hardball tactics that may be on hold. CEO Howard Schultz suggested at a recent corporate forum that Starbucks could benefit from the new benefits. Anywhere except United places, Because these stores negotiate their own working conditions. “People who can vote for the union don’t really understand,” Schultz said. According to the Wall Street Journal.
“Starbucks has every incentive not to offer workers a satisfactory deal, because it will only encourage more workers to organize.”
One of the challenges of the merger is to consolidate leverage against the company. The campaign, known as Starbucks Workers United, organizes a range of department stores, conducting elections in areas where union support is high. The company has Promote wider elections It covers the entire market – for example, in Buffalo, New York, where First Store is a union – but the National Council on Labor rejected this argument and sided with the union.
The union’s store-to-store approach is more manageable than trying to consolidate Starbucks nationwide or by market. But technically it leaves the union to manage a contract for each shop it will join.
Michelle Eisen, union leader and attorney at First Store, said the campaign treats each Starbucks as different and using the exact same contract at each outpost is “contrary to what we said we wanted in the beginning.” Eisen said the union hopes to achieve what can be called national Frame For a union agreement, which includes basic Starbucks store warranties, but allows individual stores to handle their own problems.
“There are aspects of the company that are consistent with these stores, but there are many aspects that are not,” he said.
Eisen said he works at a small promenade known as the Language Cafe Company and his store operations are different from a store like the one in Mesa, Arizona, that has merged. Some language contracts for one may be meaningless for another.
“We need to find store elements that are interconnected and that it becomes a national framework, but provides a seamless framework under the contract that can also deliver to every single store,” Eisen said.
Borges of Starbucks said the company has no interest in developing any kind of national standard, no matter how many stores decide to merge.
“In our view, the law and the NLRB have given the union the argument that every store is its unit,” Borges said. “So now we’re moving forward with individual contracts for each of these stores.”
The first security contract may be Known to be difficult In the United States, partly because employers do not face large fines for delays in the process. This is a common strategy for companies to trade in “bad faith” and not make real progress at the table, hoping that union support will decrease over time and may become a union. CertificateOr clean from the workplace.
If only a few stores were finally merged, it would be easier for Starbucks to crush the campaign. But the union has voted in more than 200 stores and so far has lost only two of the more than 20 votes already counted (the results of some of which have not been verified). At this rate, the union is likely to gain more influence at the negotiating table and more public support.
“Obviously this is a very union movement, and workers are in very good communication with each other,” said Rebecca Given, an associate professor of labor research at Rutgers University. “So we know that workers who are at the same bar table in a store will try to get a broader understanding of what workers everywhere want when they ask.”
Borges assured that the company operated in good faith: “We will be respectful, we will respect the process.” But getting a contract can take many years and ultimately depends on the company’s willingness to reach it.
“Obviously this is a workers -led movement and the workers are in good communication with each other.”
– Rebecca Givani, Rutgers University
Starbucks sent dozens of lawyers to avoid Littler Mendelson’s unions. Slow down the pace of union elections, And he sent Starbucks executives to vote workers for the union. But Jivan said the fight against unions is becoming less sustainable in every store as the campaign grows.
“It will be difficult to keep this approach on the table of potentially dozens of negotiators, especially when workers are fully selected and interacting with each other,” he said.
Starbucks has also fired some prominent unionists. The company says this termination occurred for legitimate reasons, but it has already been established by representatives of the Labor Council Seven shots in Memphis This is in response to union activism and therefore against the law. Bloomberg recently reported that the Labor Council will do that. Case Handling Vs. Starbucks if it does not agree to a deal.
When workers talk about a company launching a union campaign, Starbucks may encounter a customer reaction that will influence its last line. The stakes could be higher on a bad deal if the union gets hard -working politicians and other high -level supporters who want to criticize the company.
Sharon Block, a professor of labor law at Harvard University and a former Biden White House official, said brand dynamics are “hard to count,” but reputation considerations should be included in the calculations of Starbucks.
“I guess it affects their decision making,” he said. “Not just by doing it [financial] Mathematics. “
If workers manage to successfully organize hundreds of stores, there may be an opportunity that Starbucks considers to be in the best interest of the company to identify itself as a union employer and thus a bargain. instead of constantly fighting with every store where a petition comes out. trade union. .
Eisen said he often thinks about this perspective and wonders how much organization it will take to get there. He said merging a store took longer than expected. He believes the community support of the campaign may ultimately be more important than the number of stores that go into the feedback column.
“We’re getting stronger, of course, with every petition presented and every store that wins,” he said. “The hope is that if the company is truly what it has claimed over the past 50 years, it still has room to make changes and ride and become a truly progressive and exemplary company.”
Source: Huffpost
