Squeezed Starbucks workers call on management to share the burden (on black Friday Mall America)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_3861

30 November 2008

BLOOMINGTON - The Starbucks Workers Union picketed the Mall of America on Black Friday to draw attention to the plight of the nation's retail workers on the busiest shopping day of the year.

Starbucks baristas who are being squeezed by downsizing, stagnant wages, and reduced work hours called on CEO Howard Schultz and his fellow executives to stop the deterioration of baristas' wages and working conditions, the union said in a news release.

Through mass store closures, a new anti-family labor scheduling program, and frozen wages, Starbucks is squeezing baristas and their families to the extreme, demonstrators said. Baristas are asking the company to pay fair wages, and, in accordance with the union's longstanding commitment to coffee farmers, press Starbucks to embrace transparency by disclosing the names and locations of source coffee plantations, as well as how much plantation workers are paid.

"On Black Friday, union supporters will head to the Mall of America, but we won't be going shopping. Instead, we have a message for workers: it's time to organize for our own voice on the job," said Erik Forman, a union barista at the Mall of America Starbucks. "Consumerism and corporate greed got us into this mess, only union solidarity will get us out."

Shift Supervisor Aaron Kocher added, "While we are here struggling to pay the bills working at Starbucks, we know that coffee farmers around the world are literally struggling to survive. Yet, while our situations are so different, we feel we have more in common with exploited farmers than we do with the millionaires who own and run this company. As the legendary union leader Big Bill Haywood once said, 'labor produces all wealth. All wealth must go to labor.' We need to stop overpaid CEOs and investors from stealing what is ours."

The union delegation to the Mall of America was the first since Labor Day weekend, when 40 union supporters were sealed into a train and sent back to Minneapolis by riot police while attempting to escort an illegally fired organizer back to his first day of work at Starbucks.

The IWW Starbucks Workers Union is a grassroots organization of more than 200 current and former employees of the world's largest coffee chain united for secure hours and a living wage. The union has members throughout the United States fighting for systemic change in the company and remedying individual grievances with management. The union has been especially active in New York City, Chicago, Grand Rapids, and Minneapolis.

For more information
Visit the Starbuck Workers website, www.starbucksunion.org

[VAliberal]

1. Minneapolis sounds like a fascist city-state

40 human beings were 'sealed' in a train for 'escorting' a worker returning to work?

Are we back in 1915?

The '80 to '08 era is going to take a lot of work to roll back.

[Omaha Steve]

2. Video of the sealed in a train event on Youtube

For those that don't believe it.

Riot Cops Detain IWW Union Supporters at Mall of America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnK3I_zDuk0

[hendo]

3. Hilarious

Baristas are comparing thier situations to those of people who work on coffee plantations.