Organising Starbucks Saturday 18 August there will be a (inter)national day of action

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workersliberty.org/node/8890

Organising Starbucks
Submitted on 29 July, 2007 - 14:40 :: Solidarity 3/115 19 July 2007 | Sweatshops

Over the summer anti-sweatshop group No Sweat will be running a campaign highlighting the highly exploitative conditions for workers at Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee chain, particularly their anti-union record. On Saturday 18 August there will be a national day of action — get in touch with [e-mail] for details of how to get involved. Here, Harriet Parker gives some background.

Starbucks was founded in the early 1970s. Last year its annual global turnover was $7.8bn (£3.9bn). Starbucks announced in October 2006 its long-term expansion target of 40,000 outlets around the world, more than triple the existing number. At the time it had 12,000 global outlets.

In 1998, Starbucks bought the Seattle Coffee Company to establish itself in the UK. It opened its first store in London in September 1998, on the King’s Road, Chelsea. Starbucks opened its 500th outlet in the UK in July 2006. The company announced in January this year that it would aim to open a new store in London every fortnight for the next decade. Its highest paid director got paid £452,000 in 2005.

Over 100,000 people world-wide work for Starbucks, 5,000 of them in the UK.

Starbucks workers in the United States earn as little as $6, $7, or $8 per hour depending on the location. Every single barista (server) in the United States is part-time and not guaranteed any work hours per week. For example, a Starbucks worker can get 35 hours of work one week, 22 hours the week after, and 10 hours the following week.

Starbucks baristas work at a relentless pace to meet extraordinary customer demand. The Starbucks work environment is also full of ergonomic dangers, resulting in repetitive strain injuries for many workers.

Workers report that the managers are disrespectful. Schedules are often made without consideration for a worker’s need to a healthy sleep schedule. Starbucks requires workers to call around the city to get a shift covered when ill or in bereavement.
In 2004, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) began an organising campaign in Starbucks in the US, forming the Starbucks Workers Union (SWU). In 2006 the union took the company to the National Labor Relations Board for anti-union activity and victimising union members. Yet within months, it sacked another union organiser Daniel Gross.

FULL story at link.