The People's Struggle For Unionizing Starbucks - Baristas Demand Guaranteed Work Hours

Workers at Third U.S. Starbucks Go Union

Baristas Demand Guaranteed Work Hours

New York, NY - Twenty-five Starbucks baristas and supporters wearing union pins and hats surrounded the store manager at the Union Square location in Manhattan tonight to announce their membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union (www.starbucksunion.org). The workers, joined by union baristas from two other New York Starbucks stores, demanded a guaranteed minimum of 30 hours of work per week and an end to Starbucks' unlawful anti-union campaign. The Union will assail Starbucks with a wide array of actions until the demands are met.

One of the workers, 23 year-old Tomer Malchi, served the store manager with a document detailing the demands and several other workers directed comments at the boss to be relayed to more senior management. Suley Ayala, a mother of four who has worked at Starbucks for three years, was one of the workers who spoke. She explained after the event: "it should go without saying that we can't live on ten, eleven, or twelve hours of work some weeks. The 30 hour guarantee is absolutely necessary to make ends meet and Starbucks knows it."

The workers were motivated to organize 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."

Starbucks barista Mike Velasquez spoke of the personal reasons underlying his decision to join the Starbucks Workers Union. "My daughter is my first priority period," he said. Anything that comes in the way of that is going to have a problem. Starbucks falls into that category."

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