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Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules

bbc.co.uk

151–160 of 303 posts

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

#151

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 PD…

Looks like it's here, linked from the NLRB website: https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45839c9e8e

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

#153

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 PD…

Just another thing that the media does to lower its own reputation.

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

#154

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 PD…

Agree with your take, but in this case it was pretty easy to find the ruling on Google. Here's the case page [0] and the PDF [1]:

[0]: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/03-CA-285671

[1]: https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45839c9e8e (file download warning)

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

#155
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.

There's no such thing as a progressive company. They do it for marketing reasons, only after a movement made up of many people taking risks "normalised" a particular form of social progress.

There are companies though with a progressive image that appeals to their progressive customers. Whether Corporate™ are progressive or not, they best beware when they offend their customer base.

To that end they are forced to behave progressively — so I don't think there's much of a distinction with regard to whether the company truly is or is not "progressive".

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

There's also the emotional impact of losing a job and the psychological toll of looking for work and possibly not finding it. Just interviewing by itself can be mentally and emotionally grueling.

Corporations have none of these stressors.

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

#157
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.

There's no such thing as a progressive company. They do it for marketing reasons, only after a movement made up of many people taking risks "normalised" a particular form of social progress.

> There's no such thing as a progressive company.

There are progressive companies, but they are usually labor coops.

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

#158
post #93

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.

Apple is absolutely ruthless toward employees. For example, they were the ringleader behind an illegal anti-poaching conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

> they

Well, Steve Jobs specifically.

Maybe because I am in denial, but I like to sort of differentiate the two. However you feel about the twain a decade ago, to be blunt, Steve is no more and Apple continues on.

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

#159

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!

> Specifically in the case of Starbucks, they absolutely think they are.

Specifically in the case of Starbucks, progressives do not think they are.

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

#160

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…

> Improved safety regulations, which is a common reason employees decide to unionize in the first place

I'm sure you're right but you didn't mention wages, health plans, or retirement, at all.

Apart from establishing a minimum wage, how is government regulation to address any of these also common reason employees decide to unionize?

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