Baristas of the Bay: Bay Area GMB on Global Day of Action for Starbucks
Submitted on Fri, 05/25/2007 - 11:15am
By Dean Dempsey and the Sbux Organizing Committee
For the Global Day of Action for Starbucks workers, the Starbucks Organizing Committee of the Bay Area General Membership Branch gathered outside a Starbucks location in Oakland, CA, to pass out fliers and to talk to the public.
Before the distribution of union literature outside the store, two wobblies went inside the Starbucks to talk to the workers about what we were doing and what the Starbucks Workers Union (SWU) is all about.
Out of the four workers we talked to, three of them were in support of the idea of unionizing. Their main grievances were their low wages, treatment from both customers and management, and most of all, their inability to have sufficient and secured hours. Two contacts were made.
About a dozen wobblies participated in the Global Day of Action in Oakland, CA. We first met outside the Starbucks and then split into groups to cover a larger area, talking to workers at other coffee shops, including Pete’s Coffee, and to passerby’s about the SWU.
With Starbucks being such a large, monopoly of a corporation, the chances of meeting someone on the street and them being in someway connected to Starbucks is pretty high. When talking to the public, we met people who had friends and relatives employed at Starbucks, and some who were ex-employees themselves. Our goal when talking to the public was to make them the organizers, by them talking to the Starbucks workers they knew, or baristas at any other coffee giant. We also met others who were very much supportive of the organizing campaign, and we gave them agitational and informational literature for them to give their local barista so they could show support for the SWU.
The Starbucks Organizing Committee has decided to do these informational rallies once a month, along with weekly visits to Starbucks locations by union representatives to talk to workers.
When average people think of unions, who do they think of? They think of miners, auto-workers, machinists, construction workers, etc. They do not think of theater workers, fabric store workers, bike messengers, and so on. And they certainly don’t think of coffee baristas! The IWW is following our historical trend of organizing the unorganized and challenging the boundaries of “what can be union.” We are also broadening peoples understanding and perspective of unions, reclaiming the word for worker unity and solidarity, rather than organizational bureaucracy.
However, we need to take our organizing a step further. We need to construct our union, in and out, through today’s worker’s interest alone; not as a competing union or a union which is nostalgic for the “Days of Haywood.” We in the IWW are all leaders and we must make a concerted effort to remain on the forefront of organizing all workers, for as black feminist author bell hooks puts it, “Movements for social justice that hold on to outmoded ways of thinking and acting tend to fail.” Let’s remember that when we think about organizing.
For more information about the Bay Area GMB, visit: http://bayarea.iww.org
To get in touch with the Starbucks Organizing Committee, you can email [email protected].