Unite Baristas!

The workers of a third New York Starbucks unionized recently, continuing what has to be an uncomfortable trend for our caffienated giant. The employees of the Union Square Starbucks store are joining two other Manhattan locations in The Starbucks Workers Union (aka IWW, aka IU-660) chiefly because of concerns regarding the low number of hours available to part-time employees.

From Libcom.org:

The workers were motivated to organise in part because of Starbucks' status as one of the few companies in the world with no full-time employment for non-managerial employees. An initiative of Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, the part-time scheme forces workers to contend with a constantly fluctuating number of work hours, and therefore, constantly fluctuating income. For example, a Starbucks barista could receive 35 hours of work one week, 18 hours the week after, and as low as single-digits in the following week. The world's largest coffee chain sacrifices employees' financial security in the name of cost-control and "flexibility." This comes from a company whose mission statements talks of, "provid[ing] a great work environment."

The IWW also pressured Starbucks to release a report detailing its health care practices and the company complied. The report shows that fewer than 50% of its employess have coverage through the company. That's a percentage that doesn't sound that surprising to us, but apparently some people are shocked (shocked!) that Starbucks covers a smaller percentage of its workforce than labor whipping boy Wal-Mart.

From Infoshop News:

After multiple public challenges from the IWW Starbucks Workers Union for this very statistic, the company admitted to the Wall Street Journal that only 42% of its employees are covered by company health care. Wal-Mart covers 47% of employees according to the Journal report. Starbucks' 42% figure includes management officials whose participation in the health care plan is greater because premiums, co-pays, and deductibles are more affordable with their higher earnings. Therefore, the percentage of non-managerial workers covered by company health care at Starbucks is undoubtedly even lower. The union had argued- correctly it turns out - that health care coverage would be significantly lower than one would expect from a company that claims an extraordinary commitment to employee health benefits.

Seattlest hasn't gotten any reports of Seattle Starbucks locations trying to unionize, but you'd think with the IWW attempting to climb back into relevance they would try to get something going here. Yeah yeah, Manhattan's so high profile, but how about snaring the first ever Starbucks location?