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I got fired for unionizing at Starbucks and I’d do it again
- changoplatanero 4y ago> We also had a lot of safety issues at that store that were not handled well. I don’t know how to deal with someone overdosing or people verbally abusing us every day. Why don't companies invest in better managers? It seems like it could help make their stores operate more efficiently and at the same time it would reduce the chances that the employees form a union, which is costly to the business.
- beckingz 4y agoGood managers can make more elsewhere?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nopenopenopeno 4y agoThe priority of profit
- mschuster91 4y agoBecause "managers" are often barely older than their staff. It's simply vastly cheaper to operate that way.
- rhacker 4y agoManagers can and often are younger than their employees.
- sam0x17 4y ago> Why don't companies invest in better managers $$$$ But they should.
- skyyler 4y agoIf employees unionising is particularly costly to business, could it be because the employees are being exploited? If paying your lowest tier workers a living wage and good benefits would disrupt the business, could it be that your business relies on suffering to exist?
- antisthenes 4y agoBy that standard, ~50-60% of the restaurant industry shouldn't exist. Which, honestly, maybe it shouldn't.
- chaosharmonic 4y agoI mean, the restaurant industry is getting hit disproportionately by employees leaving in droves...
- bloody-crow 4y agoBusinesses typically pay market rate. If this rate creates suffering situations, it's a problem of the market, not particular employer. If living wage is substantially different from the market rate, employer cannot afford it without going out of business. Employers don't have infinite money, they have checks and balances. Paying employees more would require different pricing model, for example. If your pricing is far enough from what customer is ready to pay, customer is not paying and you end up out of business. Basically, employer's responsibility is to pay market rate, not living wage. If there's a disconnect, it needs to be addressed on the legislation level, not individual employer level.
- em-bee 4y agomarket rate is a function of the availability of labor. not a function of the profitability of a business. a low market rate means that there are a lot of poor schmucks willing to work for scraps. if a business can not survive without paying a living wage then it should not exist in the first place. no amount of legislation can fix that
- jmugan 4y agoI don't know what a better manager is going to do in that kind of situation. You need a medical and mental health staff and a social worker.
- hn_version_0023 4y agoI've always assumed it was because of what I perceive to be an overall decline in workplace training. Employees are supposed to come fully trained, so they can hit the ground running. The only training done is the absolute bare minimum required by law, if any is required at all. Is it possible to calculate the possible return on investment in training? Maybe? It is most certainly possible to calculate the cost of training, and that sum comes right out of profits, so it doesn't happen, given the other is unknown. This is the way of things in corporate America. Profit above all. Apologies for my cynicism, but I'm finding it harder and harder to exist in the status quo.
- floxy 4y agoSounds like they need a bouncer at that location.
- pxue 4y agoIt's because in corporate, people managers are promoted from excellent ICs. However, not all good ICs are good people managers. Software is lucky that we can go Architecure route for promotion instead of a Engineering Manager route. This is not the case for most other professions.
- legitster 4y agoStarbucks does a lot of promotions from within. A manager at a corporate location probably started as a barista. Which is honestly better than bringing in corporate managers who have no experience anyway.
- willcipriano 4y agoIf you are a great manager do you really want to solve the "homeless guy overdosed in the bathroom" problem every week? Especially given that you can't practically do anything about it as the restroom policy flows down from corporate? It's all responsibility and no authority. You probably don't even have much discretion or visibility when it comes to how employees are rewarded. Bonus, it pays considerbly less than anything else you can do.
- blooalien 4y ago> "Why don't companies invest in better managers?" … Because the more you invest down at the levels where it really matters, the less you have left to line the pockets of the ultra-rich alphabet soup at the upper levels. Gotta pay for those multi-million dollar "bonus/severance packages" and all that junk somehow right?
- sneak 4y agoIt seems to me that this is an open and shut case of violation of federal law. Where are the AUSAs when you need them? Prosecutorial discretion wielded so plainly means that people very obviously do not have equal protection under the law.
- shortstuffsushi 4y agoI guess there is probably some struggle because they said she stole something, so they have "reasonable cause" to terminate her. Can't speak to the others fired with her, but I assume they've come up with some other "legitimate" reason. As far as the legal aspect, it seems like she is in the process, and putting out news pieces is probably to help attract attention of higher actors, like the AUSA. I wouldn't say it's a matter of more/less equality, it's a matter of visibility of this single person which she seems to be working on.
- legitster 4y ago> We also had a lot of safety issues at that store that were not handled well. I don’t know how to deal with someone overdosing or people verbally abusing us every day. I guess I don't understand the ask here. Starbucks should be more authoritarian and discriminatory? Does no one remember the bathroom fiasco? I'm not sure what management is supposed to do other than call the cops more often. There was a similar article about Medieval Times workers trying to unionize because guests were bad. But I guess I never thought that one of the roles of customer service unions is also unionizing against customers.
- changoplatanero 4y agoI feel like a lot of unions are implicitly anti-customer. The employer has an incentive to better serve the customers in order to get more of their money but the union/employees main incentive is to get a bigger share of the take from their employer.
- dfxm12 4y agoAs a result, she was fired and lost stable housing and health care. It's cruel that stable housing and health care are tied to employment. Employers have enough power as it is, they don't need to lord the basic needs of health and shelter over us, too.
- mimikatz 4y agoHousing isn't tied to employment and isn't like health care. Health care not being separated from jobs is a real issue, and I am shocked more businesses don't push to decouple it as well as it doesn't help anyone.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoIt keeps asses in seats at crucial moments. Or at least, it used to.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoNote that I don't agree with this, just observation.
- Sir_Son_Son 4y agoIt is functionally for anyone living hand to mouth.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoEarning a pay check or other source of income is absolutely has a causitive relation in being able to pay one's bills to the majority of adults if we're going to be pedantic. Certainly not in all cases, but in most cases, much like healthcare (you can get Obamacare without a job)
- alkonaut 4y agoAny relation between ability to pay one’s bills and receiving healthcare is also not much of a thing in most of the developed world.
- jshzglr 4y agoWhat is so difficult about quitting and finding work elsewhere? Genuine question.
- dfxm12 4y agoOff the top of my head, first, quitting a job means losing benefits that are tied to employment. Second, Starbucks is not unique with these issues. Third, the fed is raising rates, in part to try and slow down hiring. Also, please understand, finding another job means someone else walks into that same bad situation. Some people are OK with that, others see the bad situation and want to take an active role in fixing it. Organizing labor is fighting for a cause larger than yourself. Unions have earned us 40 hour work weeks, an end to child labor and other safety regulations. It's not about finding work for yourself, it's about making work better for all your colleagues.
- jshzglr 4y agoRight but you would only quit assuming those benefits don't outweigh the duties of the job. I think quitting can also have the effect of making work better for your colleagues. Starbucks will either have to be continually training new hires(however minimal that might be) or deal with less than ideal employees. That is until they improve benefits to remedy their situation. Which they will assuming it hits their bottom line.
- shortstuffsushi 4y ago> It's not about finding work for yourself, it's about making work better for all your colleagues. This one is an interesting point that I have a couple of (unanswerable) questions about. She cared enough to want improvement, did she ask for some of the things she mentioned as perks of unionizing (like the music change)? She mentions that she was in the process (?) of a raise when she was fired, so presumably they saw some value in her (or just wanted to push her out of unionizing). I wonder what sort of options were available for a single store in a large, franchised company. For some of the "location issues," what sort of things would she have wanted the company to provide? What benefits with unionizing would help with (e.g.) the OD issue? It seems like this store was going to be a non-ideal location with or without a union, perhaps seeking out some sort of "hazard pay" arrangement would have made it worthwhile for the employees. My real question, I guess, is whether this was something that could have been worked out, as a group, with the employer, rather than unionizing. A company will in almost all cases be hostile towards a move toward unionization, but I wonder if there could have been, or was, any negotiation that would have been satisfactory for both parties.
- crmd 4y agoThe typical "penalty" to a US business for unlawfully firing a worker for protected union activity is simply being ordered to reinstate the worker. Because there is zero punitive risk, the first step is often to fire the worker(s). If the government were serious about correcting the massive power imbalance between capital and labor that is currently destroying American society, one of the first steps should be implementing financial penalties for retaliatory termination that are so severe they make the CFO not want to get up and go to work the next morning.
- soco 4y agoIf they were serious about correcting the power imbalance? They're not even joking about it, such a initiative is on nobody's table.