Submitted on Mon, 08/20/2007 - 3:28am
By Diane Krauthamer
Despite Starbucks’ international union-busting attempts, workers and their supporters are telling the company that they are not backing down. Increased organizing and support is growing like wildfire throughout Europe and the U.S., and this past weekend proved once again that the struggle is far from over.
On August 18, 2007, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and No Sweat held a successful National Day of Action against Starbucks, with demonstrations in ten cities across the UK, including Glasgow, Leeds, Edinburgh, Leicester and London.
Although the company has more than 500 stores with over 5,000 workers and continues to expand in the UK, management is growing nervous as negative publicity surrounding their unfair labor practices increases regionally.
In London, small groups spent the morning distributing informational leaflets to baristas at both Starbucks and Caffé Nero, another major UK coffee chain with working conditions that parallel those of Starbucks. Starbucks baristas are paid just above the minimum wage and are subject to excessive working hours and unpaid overtime. Additionally, baristas must work at a relentless pace, resulting in repetitive strain injuries.
By 2 PM, the groups convened in front of the New Oxford Street Starbucks, a busy shopping district in the central city. More than 30 people spent the windy Saturday afternoon protesting and distributing information to customers, workers and onlookers. In addition to the dozens of protesters, undercover police officers and regional management also made a presence at the event. Two police officers were spotted across the street from the demo, illegally taking photos of individuals from the IWW and No Sweat.
One of the managers, wearing a beige sweater as a feeble attempt to conceal his company t-shirt, sat inside the store “reading a newspaper” while keeping the protest under surveillance. When I asked him if he was there to protest, he said he just wanted to make sure that nothing would “get out of hand.” He admitted that the company had already known about the protest beforehand, despite the fact that the protest location was only communicated over email, and not made public.
The manager asked if we were planning any other demonstrations, and when everyone packed up to go home, he followed the group down the street.
As Starbucks' headquarters in Seattle is advising regional management in the UK to embark on campaigns of surveillance and intimidation—as they have done in the U.S., France and Germany—workers are not backing down. Many baristas showed interest in joining the union, and many potential customers turned away from the store when they received information about the company’s practices. Continued harassment is evidence that the company who sets the world's coffee industry standard feels threatened by the power of radical unionizing and solidarity that continues to expand across international borders
Submitted on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 2:02pm
Starbucks exploits its workers and the farmers who grow the coffee beans it uses. Worldwide it has over 12,000 stores and employs over 100,000 people. In Britain , it has over 500 stores employing 5,000 workers.
STARBUCKS COFFEE: BAD FOR WORKERS, BAD FOR FARMERS, BAD FOR YOU!
Starbucks exploits its workers and the farmers who grow the coffee beans it uses. Worldwide it has over 12,000 stores and employs over 100,000 people. In Britain , it has over 500 stores employing 5,000 workers.
Starbucks baristas in the UK are barely paid above the minimum wage and are subject to excessive working hours, unpaid overtime; work at a relentless pace, resulting in repetitive strain injuries for many workers. In the US , Starbucks has waged an illegal union-busting campaign resulting in firing of six baristas in New York City .
Coffee growers receive little more than 0.50p for a pound of coffee, which is then sold for £80.
Oxfam launched a campaign against Starbucks in October 2006 after it effectively blocked Ethiopia 's attempts to trademark its coffee beans in the United States .
The tide is turning against Starbucks. In the UK the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is organising the Baristas United Union in several organising campaigns at Starbucks; in the US the IWW-Starbucks Workers Union is expanding across the country; in NZ hundreds of casual fast food workers, including Starbucks baristas organised into the UNITE union; workers are getting organised in France and Germany too.
18 August is a national day of action against Starbucks. The IWW, No Sweat and many organisations and supporters are holding protests in cities right around the UK . We are asking the public not to drink at Starbucks today and to show support for the workers and farmers trying to improve their lives and make a living wage.
Contact us to get involved in the campaign:
Industrial Workers of the World – UK
[email protected]
http://www.iww.org.uk
http://www.baristasunited.org.uk/
PO Box 1158 Newcastle upon Tyne
NE99 4XL
No Sweat
[email protected]
http://www.nosweat.org.uk
PO Box 36707 London SW9 8YA
http://www.starbucksunion.org/node/1852
Submitted on Tue, 06/26/2007 - 12:50pm
The IWW is continuing in our support for the Crichton workers' and students' fight to save their jobs and courses. We're stepping up our fight by picketing or leafleting every major event Glasgow University is hosting on its main campus, in an effort to raise the visibility of our campaign, and we are pursuing other initiatives to force a climbdown on the decision to close the campus. However to make our presence really felt we urge you and your friends to take a few minutes out of your day to demonstrate the strength of feeling we have on this issue. Please help us by contacting the following people. It's vital at this stage that public pressure, from civil society groups and so on, is actually visibily increasing on this issue.
Contact the Principal, Sir Muir Russell and complain at the decision.
Email: [email protected]; Tel: 0141 330 5995
Contact the Scottish Funding Council and urge them to help Glasgow University find a resolution to this problem
Email: [email protected]
Contact Fiona Hyslop, Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, and urge her to act quickly to help resolve the situation.
Email: [email protected]
POINTS TO NOTE IN YOUR COMMUNICATIONS:-
Glasgow University made a profit last year of £2 million.
The claims of the University that the Crichton Campus loses £800,000 a year have been dismissed as laughable by MSPs from across all the political parties.
The University hopes to spend the money it will gain from closing its part of the Crichton campus (liberal arts) on recruiting just 3 researchers to boost the University's image. Money which should have been directed to the Crichton campus has went to fund a new business school at the main Glasgow campus.
In a previous job, as Scotland's most powerful civil servant, Sir Muir Russell presided over the building of the Scottish parliament, which was supposed to cost £50 million, but in fact cost £400 million more
than this. This man is clearly not very shrewd with money, and this casts doubt on his claims that the Crichton is not viable, and indeed on what his plans are to do with this cash instead.
Dumfries and Galloway has no other Higher Education facility, and suffers economically from a gap in graduates, and graduate jobs, as well as a skewn age demographic as young people leave Dumfries and Galloway for the central belt to find education and work.
Submitted on Tue, 06/26/2007 - 12:45pm
The vital blood processing and distribution service is to be centralised in management cost cutting insanity which will result in blood being transported hundreds of miles by road and skilled workers losing their jobs. This will directly threaten patients’ lives as the blood is driven on congested motorways from the donation centres to the “super centres” and then back out to hospitals.
The NBS in England currently has 13 regional centres which process and test donated blood before redistribution to the hospitals. However this vital service is under threat with management wanting to condense these regional centres into just 3 to cover the whole of England.
Unlike many NHS trusts, the NBS is not in debt, and operates efficiently with committed workers, many of whom have worked there for decades learning their highly specialised skills on the job.
Submitted on Tue, 06/19/2007 - 3:27am
Bristol train driver, Patrick Spackman, sacked for swearing by First Great Western, has referred the Morning Star to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).
On 6 June the Morning Star, self-styled "daily paper of the left", reported Mr Spackman's sacking for swearing, which the company claimed had been "threatening."
However, two days later, the paper claimed that he had, in fact, been sacked for "violent harassment in the workplace against a respected senior lay union representative."
Mr Spackman responded: "This is completely untrue. I complained to the Morning Star but haven't even had the courtesy of an acknowledgment from them. So I've referred the matter to the PCC who now have a copy of my dismissal letter which clearly shows why I was sacked. I look forward to a public apology and retraction from the Morning Star."
Mr Spackman, who intends to take his dismissal to employment tribunal, is being represented by the Industrial Workers of the World, the union generally referred to as "the Wobblies."
A union spokesperson commented: "Someone seems to have set the Morning Star up here. But a bit of basic checking would have avoided the problem. Needless to say, the 'union representative' referred to by the Morning Star is not a member of the IWW".