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Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#131

Post by pnutjam »

nerdponx wrote: post #99
notch898a wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the worst recession of the US at one point I was changing shit retail jobs at like 1 a week trivially for the hell of it. To do it now you practically only need a pulse. You don't need to lose income to change jobs, you just don't show up to one and show up to the next. Starbucks would be crushed if they had to close all their stores but the laborer can close up all their labor to a company and change jobs muc…

If it was so universally easy, why aren't more people doing it?

Because he's full of it. I was unemployed last year. It took me 6 weeks to land an in-demand tech job; mostly because of the layer of interviews. I think it was an average of 3 interviews for each job. I eventually had 6 or 7 similar offers and a couple bad ones. I also cut short several processes because I knew they were a month away from an offer.

Meanwhile, my wife tried to land a part time retail job. She got 3 offers, but all had slow an onerous background checks, so none started before I got the offers I was waiting on.

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#132

Post by cool_dude85 »

hellotomyrars wrote: post #108
fallingfrog wrote: post #105

As a side note, I find it just incredible that the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, actually campaigned for the president under the democratic party. And Hillary Clinton was going to make him labor secretary . When even the left leaning party is that right wing, something has gone terribly wrong.

It’s all well and good until it impacts your wallet. The hypocrisy is depressing but not surprising. It could also be argued, )I hate the argument but it is true) that he has to oppose any and all unionization efforts because as a publicly traded company they are required to look out for the interests of their shareholders. Which comes back to the same place ultimately. And I have no sympathy for him regardless of hi…

>It could also be argued, )I hate the argument but it is true) that he has to oppose any and all unionization efforts because as a publicly traded company they are required to look out for the interests of their shareholders.

Anything could be argued, but this argument is not true. Plenty of publicly traded companies have unionized workforces and do not face shareholder lawsuits for it. Can you find an example of a publicly traded company losing a shareholder lawsuit for not running underhanded and illegal union-busting tactics?

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#133

Post by supernova87a »

Can news articles/reporters ever quote the actual original court ruling that they use to source their stories? I find it amazingly rare that journalists feel that they should show people where they get the key finding of their story, and rather lazily present their story as if they were the controlling authority and only source of information.

Given how rich the original information is to link to (like, a 200 page PDF ruling), this is a bit of journalistic travesty to leave it out. Compared to how much hearsay they seem to accept as a source in day to day stories, yet go to lengths to name the person's name.

And "For more information on this breaking issue, go to KABC.com!" Yeah, thanks a lot for that in-depth reporting!

Does anyone know where to find the PDF of this one?

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#134

Post by nemo44x »

roody15 wrote: post #69

Its funny to watch "progressive" mega corporations like Starbucks, Apple, Amazon + more skirt around unions. Essentially they use PR to say we are all for these corporate safe progressive topics... but any topics of worker rights, unions.. nope.

[flagged]

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#135

Post by cool_dude85 »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #119
nerdponx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutting down one store out of thousands is not equivalent to a business ceasing operations.

If it worked that way, then if a company was going to shut down any unprofitable store, the workers could unionize as a trick to keep their jobs.

That's not how things work here in the real world. The big company would show to the NLRB that internal discussions of closure began well before any unionization effort, they'd show financials explaining why the store's closing, etc. and the NLRB would happily side with the big guy.

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#136

Post by aaomidi »

gruez wrote: post #83
richbell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad comparison because the power dynamics are wildly different. To quote another commenter: > Employees can’t 1/35,000th quit the way Starbucks can close 1/35,000th of its locations. https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=34997971

So "retaliation" is just the word for when the party with more power terminates an agreement?

No it’s a word that the a party terminates an agreement because of workplace organization.

I think the problem here is that property owners both want government protection but they specifically hate it when it doesn’t help them.

If we don’t want the government interjecting itself into “contracts” then let’s have that. Courts and cops should not be enforcing contracts. People should not be going to prison for breaking contracts.

It’s unfair to have it both ways. The government is currently protecting employers against employees - and not really the other way around.

So maybe let’s balance government influence in contracts?

It’s perfectly fine for the government to force a company to keep a store open because they unionized. In the grand scheme of things these companies still have a huge advantage.

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#137

Post by cool_dude85 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #61
nerdponx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense for smaller businesses, where "closing" might mean closing the entire business. But the situation seems materially different for a large company like Starbucks, where each physical location is only a small part of their overall business operations. What SCOTUS ruling was that? I wonder if it applies to e.g. shutting down a warehouse or dismantling a department within the business, as opposed to shutt…

> But the situation seems materially different for a large company like Starbucks, where each physical location is only a small part of their overall business operations. Each location is differently situated. One might have higher real estate costs or taxes or more competitors or fewer customers or antagonistic local politicians etc. There are so many things that go into store closures that they could always find a…

>There are so many things that go into store closures that they could always find a plausible pretext.

Then why did Starbucks, no doubt availing themselves of very well-paid labor lawyers, lose this case to the NLRB? For these examples at least they were not able to provide plausible pretexts.

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#138

Post by CobrastanJorji »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #46
ensignavenger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What power would a union have if the company is willing to close the unionized location? If they were required to keep the store "open" but the union strikes, the union is basically closing the location for the company.

It's a power imbalance. Starbucks can close one trying-to-unionize location because they have 3 others in a few block radius in some cities, and in doing so ensure the other 3 stores are too scared to unionize. If all 4 stores in a town unionized, Starbucks can withdraw from the town because they have 16 stores in a neighboring city, so and in doing so intimidate them. There is no equivalent behavior a worker can hav…

Perhaps you could add a simple check, like "in the event a unionized operating place is closed, unionized employees must be given right of first refusal for any job openings for a similar place of operation within 10 miles at no less than their original pay or the average pay of a similar role at the new facility, whichever is greater."

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#139

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #114
MapsSlaps wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks and Amazon are hardly "progressive". Most folks I know would describe them as pretty much bog standard big capitalist companies. Sure, they slap a rainbow logo on their twitter during June, but so does Raytheon. I'm less sure about Apple, which might actually have more of a progressive streak in it (I'm simply not knowledgable), but the other two are pretty much standard exploitative mega corps.

Specifically in the case of Starbucks, they absolutely think they are. Does anyone besides me remember that CEO Howard Schultz thought he should be president back in 2016? This whole thing just makes me want to shout from the rooftops: We do not have a left-wing party in the United States! The Democrats are anti-union and pro-austerity. We have a center-right party and a far-right party, that's it!

In the context of discourse in American politics -- and increasingly Canadian ones as well -- "left wing" has been rewritten to be almost exclusively about cultural politics. This is the only way one can decode everyday conversations when people talk about "the left"; they clearly don't mean what it meant "classically": socialist politics / economic policy, working class politics.

It's basically a marginal position at this point to be outright pro-union, even more so to be pro-nationalization / pro-interventionist. Apart from outliers like maybe Bernie Sanders, an explicit working class orientation has been taken over almost completely by the populist right, and much of the self-identified "left" speaks mostly to the concerns of the upper middle class. Not just the mainstream of the US Democrats, but even much of what is spoken about by "the squad", or the Canadian NDP party.

In some areas, if you break down voting maps by demographic, parties lumped in as "left wing" now tend to dominate in areas with higher incomes. Strongly working class areas often swing populist right. This was not the case even 20 years ago.

Regular working people are not the audience anymore.

Re: Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

#140

Post by genocidicbunny »

amurthy1 wrote: post #64

Setting aside this specific case, what is a business supposed to do if a union's demands are unreasonable and make it infeasible to keep the business profitable? If they try and replace the unionized workers, that is frowned upon and in some cases illegal. If they shut down the business due to no longer being viable, that seems to also be legally murky. If a group of employees wants to band together and collectively…

> If they shut down the business due to no longer being viable, that seems to also be legally murky.

There's a difference between shutting down a business because some employees are starting to unionize, and shutting down a business because its financially non-viable due to extended negotiations.

If the business is somehow stupid enough to sign a contract with a union that makes them fail (and frankly, the union stupid enough to propose -- if the business fails, they still all lose their jobs) then that's really on the business, not the union. At that point they can go to court to try to fight the contract, or close up shop.

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