A barista fought to unionize her Starbucks. Now she’s out of a job | Hacker News Reader

A barista fought to unionize her Starbucks. Now she’s out of a job

washingtonpost.com

59 pointsmirthlessend70 comments

Honestly, not surprised. Starbucks's strategy on unions seems to be to union-bust as viciously as possible with the thinnest of pretenses, and trust that the federal government will let them do it with a slap on the wrist (if anything), as it always has.

> It’s against the law to fire workers for organizing. But as Rizzo and the other Starbucks workers were learning, there’s also little to stop companies from doing it. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees union elections and protects workers’ rights, has struggled to hold on to staff members amid deep budget cuts. Since 2010, it is down about 520 employees, or 30 percent of its workforce. The primary penalty that it can impose on companies for dismissing pro-union employees — reinstatement with back pay — has been a paltry deterrent, labor advocates said.

This punishment is so tiny it fails to qualify as a penalty at all.

Make it a criminal offense for the person doing the firing, and then you'll see some changes.

This is perfect. Then I can try to organize an union while doing none of my regular job. Guaranteed job security!

This is a great example of anti-union propaganda: you can always fire people for poor performance. What a union forces the employer to do is show cause, that this was communicate to the employee, and that the standard was consistently applied. For example, in the case in the article I’d be surprised if her lawyer didn’t request evidence that Starbucks commonly fires people for being one minute late.

In my area several Starbucks started unionizing. Starbucks responded, among many other ways, by removing all the employee cushioned floor mats (for reducing fatigue being on your feet all shift) as a "safety hazard", but were called out when it was pointed out that all the non-unionizing stores in the area had not.

>According to the document, she had been “1 minute late” to a 6 a.m. shift.

In Brazil this kind of argument for dismissal would not hold in labour court at all.

Specially when employers report hours in what the Brazilian justice call "british timing", where employees clock-in and clock-out at the exact hour. Brazilian Justice expects a natural 10 to 15 minute range (to both sides) here...

Believe it or not being slightly late is commonly used to fire union employees in the US as well.

Usually the union and business come to an agreement on such policies. These are then enforced with no exceptions. Even for 20 year employees.

There is zero flexibility or nuance for special situations. If your employer does not like you in the US they will do petty things like fire you for being 1 minute late. The best the union can do is make it so you have to be 1 minute late several times before you are canned.

The margins are so good on coffee (its a morning ritual, its a drug, and so on), and yet the employees are still driven to unionize -- why? Is it because all profits accrue to shareholders? Are there other reasonable explanations?

> Is it because all profits accrue to shareholders?

Yeah.

I’d not be surprised if most profits end up going to captured rents. Always raise rents until just about when Starbucks would leave.

If it goes to rent, it's not profit by definition. That's just a cost, same as any other. Starbucks made 32B in 2022 with a profit of almost 22B.

I wouldn't doubt that Starbucks is paying rent to Starbucks, and that is a tax evasion scam

Nope, almost all Starbucks locations (like most restaurants and retail establishments) are leased from commercial real estate holding companies and investors.

That 22B is gross profit and highly misleading in this context, since it excludes fixed costs like rents and salaries and also taxes.

Net profit was 3.3B in 2022.

Net profit was $1 a drink or so, apparently.

There is no amount of money that you could give a billionaire to make them want to pay their employees more.

There is no cap on wealth, nothing is ever enough for them. Aside from external forces they'd hire as few people as possible and as cheaply as possible

Are the margins that good? Sure the cost of the beans and milk is not that much, but the rent, wages, marketing, etc are super expensive.

What relevance are the margins? Baristas don’t see any of that profit. They get paid hourly minimum wage. They work for tips.

The margins are not good on coffee. The margin are good for starbucks because of the brand and the franchise. There are almost no regulatory capture in the coffee business. You can go ahead and open your coffeeshop if you think it’s profitable.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/Hdv5W

In my opinion, instead of trying to unionize these low margin retail jobs, an alternative approach is to encourage younger people to go into the trades. The economics of service jobs make it an uphill battle for the employers to ever pay living wages. Jobs in trades on the other hand pay very well and are in high demand. It’s not a bad thing overall for barista jobs to be part time or starter jobs, while people prepare for careers that do pay well.

I would still argue that anyone who works a living number of work hours deserves a living wage. Anything less is taking advantage of another person to make the recipient of that benefit more comfortable.

That’s noble of you, but the economics don’t work for all types of job. If all jobs must pay a living wage, many entry-level and lower-paid part time jobs will simply go away. Among other things, this will increase youth unemployment and negatively impact people with poorer backgrounds who are trying to work their way up to a good career.

Why does it work in other countries then?

Because other countries are not so filled with temporarily embarrassed millionaires as the US and they need to maintain the status quo in case they ever accidentally stumble back into "their" wealth.

Does what work? The US has one of the highest median wages in the world.

Median wage does not mean living wage. The living wage in other countries is quite a lot lower. Their money goes far further.

Just because we have big starting number doesn't mean we can thrive with big starting number.

Please define living wage then.

Sufficient earnings to be able to afford housing, food, the necessities for modern life including internet and cell service, health care in countries where it’s not part of your taxes, and a standard emergency in your country (in the US, this would be a medical emergency, like a broken bone) as well as some on top for enjoying your life a bit.

What kind of housing? Would a 1 room apartment shared with another adult suffice?

What kind of food? Is 1MB internet ok? A flip phone?

And what kind of healthcare? Cutting edge healthcare or the basics?

“Living wage” means nothing without answering those questions?

housing:

* sufficient for a single parent

food:

* the federal government has established projected costs of food per person

healthcare:

* I believe that all healthcare should be covered, so that. If not that, then an HSA with enough additional money added to their salary to cover the maximum out-of-pocket expenses

Internet:

* average internet available in the area with a minimum of "sufficient to live-stream video footage from one's house for as many residents as live in that place", so parent and child can both join Zoom meetings for whatever reason.

The tactic you're performing here is called "Sea lioning" and it's a bad-faith tactic; but I'll answer the questions just in case you didn't know what I meant by what I said.

housing: sufficient for a single parent

A single parent could share a 1 bedroom apartment with another single parent. That's ok?

I believe that all healthcare should be covered

No country covers all healthcare.

The tactic you're performing here is called "Sea lioning" and it's a bad-faith tactic; but I'll answer the questions just in case you didn't know what I meant by what I said.

You didn't answer the questions at all. Saying "it needs to be sufficient" is not an answer. And calling it "sealioning" doesn't change that.

The living wage movement has organisations that attempt to define a living wage. See, for example, https://www.livingwage.org.nz/about in my own country. They pressure companies into adopting a living wage, and have been reasonably successful. You seem to be arguing that because things can't be perfect or perfectly defined, that the entire idea is invalid.

Your link provides zero details.

And I'm not arguing it's not perfectly defined, but how can you ask for something if you can't describe what it is?

On the page I linked to: 'In the same year independent research by the Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit established the first Living Wage rate for New Zealand, $18.40 per hour." That quote contains a link to the Family Centre (https://familycentre.org.nz) which - if you look down that page a bit - contains the most recent report that defines what a living wage is, how it is determined, and how and when it is reviewed. It describes very clearly what a living wage is. What is your point exactly?

That a higher minimum wage causes job losses is a long-held but unproven economic theory, and attempts to study it have suggested it might be wrong.

"...that have deepened the amount of data that shows the original theory about the minimum wage causing job losses is likely wrong." [0]

[0] https://theconversation.com/does-raising-the-minimum-wage-ki...

You seem to have conflated the minimum wage discussion with the living wage discussion.

Per my argument, anyone working a living amount of time should earn a living wage. Since someone working 2, 20 hour a week jobs is working a living amount of time, they should also be paid a living wage.

Since those two jobs won’t know about each other, the exact number of hours should not have an impact on your per hour wage.

Therefore the minimum wage should be the living wage.

No conflation.

The living wage is a concept --a wage level required to achieve a certain standard of living-- rather than an instrument.

You wrote: "If all jobs must pay a living wage..." - and it therefore follows that if all jobs pay a wage level at least that of a 'living wage', then the living wage becaomes the effective minimum wage paid by all jobs.

Therefore evidence regarding the effects of a higher minimum wage are entirely relevant to a discussion of paying everyone at least a (higher) living wage.

The economics already don't work. For example there are many jobs currently where they struggle to find workers because the pay is so low and no one wants to do it. Rather than raise wages, they're instead hiring children, often illegally and lobbying to get the regulations lessened.

Companies will do anything to avoid raising wages so they need to be forced to the table to do so.

or the people working the jobs need govermental handouts to basically survive. Which actually means the business isn't competitive and can only exist by socializing it's losses.

If the goverment needs to provide food stamps for your employees so they don't get into financial trouble, and your bussines cannot or will not provide them with a living wage. The bussiness should simply cease to exist.

OR instead of companies going under b/c the numbers no longer make sense....governing bodies could work to reduce the minimum cost to live, those necessary costs like housing and transit (to work and home). I agree that businesses need to pay enough for people to live, and wages have been falling increasingly short of that which is why labor organizing is rising.

Businesses can pay more (which some businesses won't be able to so they'll shutter), or the costs that workers need to pay can go down (more types of businesses can exist).

> That’s noble of you, but the economics don’t work for all types of job. If all jobs must pay a living wage, many entry-level and lower-paid part time jobs will simply go away.

If a business requires someone to spend 40 hours a week doing something, but cannot afford to pay them a living wage then that business should close. They are a failure and should get out of the way so that a competent business owner can replace them. Worker exploitation should not be keeping failed businesses afloat. Starbucks does not have this problem. They're just exploiting workers to stuff their own pockets and could easily ensure that their employees are all able to afford to live on their wages.

There was a time, not very long ago, when a single person could support themselves and a family on their wages. Paying a full time employee so little that they can't even support themselves should be illegal.

All this "think of the children" nonsense ignores the fact that most jobs paying minimum wage are not held by children, and that most kids don't need full time hours (and arguably shouldn't work that long anyway since they have school) and anyone, even someone in an entry level position, still absolutely deserves a living wage for their time.

> ...but cannot afford to pay them a living wage then that business should close.

There is actually a solution for that not involving burdensome regulation: capitalism. Crap business models get outcompeted.

> They're just exploiting workers...

Slavery is illegal, so these poor coffee slaves have bigger fish to fry.

> There was a time, not very long ago...

Before the US offshored all its heavy industry and proudly declared itself a "service based economy".

> ...even someone in an entry level position, still absolutely deserves a living wage for their time.

lol. There do exist people so useless that their labor doesn't even rate minimum wage. Now the bottom rungs of the ladder are gone for them, and they can't even get on the job training. The military figured this out a long time ago, which is what brought about the creation of IQ tests. Anyone below 80ish couldn't be trusted to do anything without constant direction.

> There is actually a solution for that not involving burdensome regulation: capitalism. Crap business models get outcompeted.

If that were the case, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?

> There do exist people so useless that their labor doesn't even rate minimum wage.

People who can't do a job should be replaced with someone who can. If a company still has to hire a warm body to do that job, those employees are automatically not useless. Every person who puts in 40 hours, no matter what their purpose, is entitled to a living wage. That doesn't make all labor equal. Highly skilled workers will always demand more money than what they'd need to live comfortably. With lower skilled jobs companies pay much less for labor, but in either case businesses still have to compensate employees for their time. Our time is very finite and extremely valuable. Honestly, our current 40 hour work week is demanding too much as it is. However useless you think someone's job is, if their company could get by without someone doing that work they probably would, but as long as somebody is doing the job and putting in the hours that employee deserves a living wage.

> If a company still has to hire a warm body to do that job, those employees are automatically not useless.

If a company doesn't hire that warm body to breakdown cardboard boxes or drag around dust mops, then it is useless. Remember the donut hole welfare talking point in the 90s? That is what this is.

> Every person who puts in 40 hours, no matter what their purpose, is entitled to a living wage.

Says you, about an arrangement that doesn't involve you. You should be careful what you wish for, because you could easily get exactly what you are demanding - and be very unhappy for it. Here is how that could happen: massive coordinated campaign to shift the consensus position for an acceptable standard of living, with a catchy hook - "You'll own nothing, and be happy"; resulting in people eating bugs, sleeping in concrete tube "pods", getting paid a dollar an hour, and dying alone.

You're right about the importance of how we define a living wage, but it's ultimately workers that set that standard, as they are doing now, by fighting for it. You seem to recognize that it would be undesirable for workers to be forced to live uncomfortably, while at the same time suggesting that they shouldn't unionize to fight against that same outcome.

I can't take "forced to eat bugs/sleep in pods" seriously, but so far the only people trying to make sure I can't own things are the companies who insist on pushing everything into the cloud and/or encumbering it with DRM. I'm all for fighting that too.

> ...ultimately workers that set that standard, as they are doing now, by fighting for it.

Until it becomes a union shop, then it is the union organizers setting the standard - sitting between those in a position to pay and those seeking pay. These union bosses are surely paragons of incorruptibility with the workers' best interest driving their actions.

> I can't take "forced to eat bugs/sleep in pods" seriously...

Then you haven't been paying attention for the last 30 years. These are things that have been seriously discussed in the opinion molding class quite publicly for a long time now. Remember the push for "rewilding"? That didn't go away, it just got rebadged as "15-minute cities". The WEF now openly promotes a "Great Reset" where-in everything is effectively rented. Businesses that have been trying to get people to eat their bug food have complained about packaging requirements, as nobody wants their accurately labeled products. Not to worry though, "climate change" driven legislation seems to be attacking all the alternative sources of protein. These aren't conspiracy theories, it is a plain reading of publicly available documents put out by these people for years.

Even among Hacker News comments, you are not a serious individual.

> Says you, about an arrangement that doesn't involve you.

This is something that was also said by the judge in the 1907 Australian Harvester Decision which set a set a ‘living’ or ‘family’ wage.

It was ruled to allow an unskilled labourer to support a wife and three children, to feed, house, and clothe them.

This became the basis of the national minimum wage system in Australia that persists to this day, that a minimum wage should allow a 40 hour work week to feed, clothe and house a worker and reasonable immediate dependants.

> resulting in people eating bugs, sleeping in concrete tube "pods", getting paid a dollar an hour, and dying alone.

Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

Any ideas on when your predicted outcomes will kick in?

> Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

Didn't you guys recently have COVID concentration camps? You might wanna rethink that position.

> Any ideas on when your predicted outcomes will kick in?

Ask Klaus Schwab, he and Bill Gates seem to have their fingers on the pulse of awful things going down in the world.

> Didn't you guys recently have COVID concentration camps? You might wanna rethink that position.

True or not, what does that have to do with literally anything that's been said?

Spoiler alert, true.

>>> ...shift the consensus position for an acceptable standard of living...

>> Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

> ...recently have COVID concentration camps?

I pointed to a shifting consensus position, he denied it, I pointed to an outrageous example of the warping of normalcy in his own backyard. That clear it up for you?

> he denied it

Who denied what now? Can you quote the denial, I'm not seeing it.

"Well, here we are in Australia, 115+ years on and this is still yet to happen.

Any ideas on when your predicted outcomes will kick in?"

And the question stands.

If a minimum living wage leads to economic collapse .. when will that happen (given that's not yet happened after 115+ years in practice)?

And the answer remains the same: a redefinition of what constitutes the standard of living is far more likely than "economic collapse"... it is already happening.

Starbucks' revenue in 2022 was $33B. Their profit was $22B. That is an incredibly high margin for retail. These jobs wouldn't evaporate if Starbucks was paying a living wage.

Where did you get those numbers from?

Obviously Starbucks has massive margins but I can't imagine that massive!

Not OP, but it's easy to find these numbers as it's a publicly traded company.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/gro...

https://investor.starbucks.com/press-releases/financial-rele...

I'm not an accounting professional, but the official Starbucks report says that for fiscal year 2022, their "GAAP Operating Margin" was 14.3%. That seems to contradict the macrotrends.net website, no?

You are correct it seems to be incorrect, apologies. That's what I get for not looking closely (and trusting Google search to promote factual info in the info cards).

No, there isn't a contradiction here. GAAP Operating Margin is smaller than Gross Margin by definition.

It's not particularly sensible that the owners should profit in that case?

> The economics of service jobs make it an uphill battle for the employers to ever pay living wages.

And yet in some countries, low-end service workers receive reasonable (i.e. meaningfully higher than the US) salaries, paid vacations, and a pension scheme. [0]

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/

> The economics of service jobs make it an uphill battle for the employers to ever pay living wages.

This is simply not true. Starbucks has done great financially, and Howard Schultz has a net worth of $billions.

What a spicy, uninformed post. Basically American Stockholm Syndrome.

Starbucks, like many other service employers, is brutally profitable, running a 22% margin on growing revenue.

For some context, Microsoft has 33%, Ford (an actual low margin employer) has 5%.

You getting downvoted explains it all really. People are losing skills and the answer is to “tax the rich” and union capture (well the rich are doing it with regulatory capture, so two wrongs make right). It’s going downhill and the problem is not energy or lack of materials (the world is literally getting too hot!) but it’s a cultural problem. Maybe nothing short of a civil war or the collapse of the pax-americana will fix this. I’ll watch from afar.

It’s telling how every single response entirely ignored my suggestion to investigate the trades (or alternatively any decent office job for that matter) where jobs are plentiful and do pay a living wage, at least after a couple of years. What are they even fighting for? The ‘right’ to sling coffee for the rest of their life? <smh> Roll up ones sleeves and develop marketable skills. There is plenty of opportunity in the US for those willing to apply themselves.

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