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Video: Starbucks boss begs store managers to step up anti-union activities – and company ‘fakes activist tweets’

Growing unionisation among Starbucks employees attacked by billionaire: “it’s an American right of workers not to unionize and to [instead] embrace the values and the culture of his or her company

A remarkable video obtained by the US workers’ media organisation A More Perfect Union shows Starbucks founder Howard Schultz railing against young baristas who have successfully organised unions in five of the company’s outlets and arranged unionisation votes in more than two hundred others – and telling store managers to work harder to influence the outcome of votes and prevent more workers organising.

Schulz can be seen describing the company’s own workers as an ‘outside force’ – and says that it is ‘an American right’ not to be represented by a union:

The company’s North American president (7m 53s) also tells store managers that their ‘number one priority’ is to make every employee vote to prevent workers speaking through union reps rather than as individuals.

Meanwhile, Starbucks has also been accused of faking tweets supposedly issued by the workers’ union that it quoted in anti-union leaflets – and of misrepresenting pay awards won by the newly-unionised workers – to try to deter other employees from joining them:

Solidarity with Starbucks employees and workers in every other company fighting for recognition of their right to organise and take collective action to protect themselves.

Follow A More Perfect Union here and Rational National here.

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6 comments

  1. The case for moderate democratic socialism still requires free trades unions and always will. In the UK, why do the Labour-affiliated unions not even criticise the Special Envoy of the Trilateral Commission, Sir Keir Rodney Starmer?

    1. Starbuck’s growth model in the 90s was to open more stores in a city than the market could cope with. The stores were franchises, open by small investors lured by the shine of a big successful brand. After a few years, many closed because they weren’t viable. But, ultimately, independents closed too.
      This company is a cancer.

  2. quertboi iT takes a long time for people who have made a good living out of unions and the labour party.to suddenly find that somthing you relied upon and lived as changed beyond recognition.I found life difficult to adapt to after leaving the Council and the labour party and I am sure that long term friends and family even have problems with someone rejecting what was the life and soul of many in the invisible working class.For many who have left a religion its much the same.The sooner people realise just what the labour party represent the better for everyone in a country with no Opposition party
    The second time I left two years ago was far far easier and inevitable before being told to go.in a party that is little more than a Business going bankrupt.

  3. Thatcher shackled the trades unions and, therefore, the working class.
    Blair failed to unlock the shackles.
    The results? The poor get poorer. The gig economy.

  4. Whatever happened to the likes of lord lever, Titus salt and the likes?

    Nowadays these so-called self-styled philanthropists pay £££hundreds of thousands to sit at a table next to the likes of de piffle at a charity event and then complain on social media when they come outside to be greeted by some poor sod sat under a tatty old blanket with a sign that reads: ‘homeless, please help’

    Their idea of philanthropy consists of donations to a political party in exchange for lucrative contracts/concessions and the removal of the rights of the very people that actually earn them their billions.

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