Posted on 08/07/2006 6:41:13 PM PDT by sig226
SEATTLE - Starbucks Corp. has fired the co-founder of a union claiming to represent employees at six of its Manhattan coffee houses.
Daniel Gross, a barista and organizer for IWW Starbucks Workers Union, a branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, said Monday that he is challenging his termination, which followed a company investigation into an allegation that he made a threatening remark to a district manager at a recent union rally.
Gross, who has led union organizing efforts at Starbucks for the past three years, countered that he was simply making a statement of solidarity when he told District Manager Allison Marx that a fellow employee should not be fired.
Gross, 27, said the IWW filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday alleging he was wrongfully terminated.
"By terminating me on Saturday, Starbucks has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's an anti-worker, anti-union company," Gross said in a phone interview from New York City on Monday.
Starbucks confirmed Gross no longer worked for the company but would not comment on the circumstances that led to his firing.
Valerie O'Neil, a spokeswoman at Starbucks' corporate headquarters in Seattle, insisted the company does not discourage union organizing. "We don't retaliate against anyone who tries to organize or be part of a union," she said. The world's largest specialty coffee retailer, which is often lauded for offering generous benefits that include health insurance for part-time workers, contends there are no unionized Starbucks stores in the United States.
And while the IWW Starbucks Workers Union has not been formally certified under the National Labor Relations Act, it claims to represent dues-paying members who have bargained for certain job improvements, including pay raises.
Gross refused to disclose how many members the union has, saying only that it's a "modest-sized group" with "positive membership growth."
In March, Starbucks settled an unfair labor practice charge the union filed with the NLRB, accusing the company of violating federal law by creating a national policy prohibiting workers from sharing written union information or wearing buttons.
The company admitted no wrongdoing in its settlement, but was forced to post at three stores named in the complaint detailed notices explaining workers' rights to organize. It also offered two workers their jobs back and gave three employees back pay totaling less than $2,000.
Gross said he is the fourth IWW member at Starbucks who has been fired in the last year. One day in mid-July, Gross said he joined a protest on behalf of a shift supervisor who had been threatened with termination _ and later fired _ over an altercation with a co-worker.
In addition to claiming that Gross made a threatening remark at that protest, Starbucks gave Gross an unfavorable performance review the day it fired him, saying he failed to communicate employee morale issues to his store manager, including complaints about wages and work hours, Gross said.
O'Neil said she could not confirm whether that was one of Starbucks' reasons for firing Gross but did verify that one of the "core competencies" it requires of its employees is that they help store managers create a positive work environment. Gross said the three other IWW members fired by Starbucks are formally challenging their dismissals, including the shift supervisor Gross defended at the mid-July protest. Gross said IWW believes that worker was fired because of his union activism.
On the Net:
Starbucks: http://www.starbucks.com
IWW Starbucks Workers Union: http://www.starbucksunion.org/
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
Anybody who pays $5 for coffee does because they're stupid, venal or both.
Never understood the mindset that would pay $5.00 for a coffee.
What's really weird to me is the same people who pay $5.00 for coffee and $2.50 a pint of bottled water are the ones screaming the loudest about gasolene prices.
It's 1.80 for a 21 oz coffee.
The $5 ones are milkshakes they call "coffee".
The IWW: International Workers of the World, aka "the Wobblies" was a Communist union in the teens, 20's, and 30's.
"By terminating me on Saturday, Starbucks has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's an anti-worker, anti-union company," Gross said in a phone interview from New York City on Monday.
Note to Mr. Gross: Maybe Starbucks has finally awakened from their stupor to realize that unions are not good for business??? At least in most respects?
It's a buck eighty for a large coffee at Starbucks.
It's the girly drinks that are more expensive.
These are the drinks that people pay "$5" for. I go to starbucks since I can get a big coffee for $1.75, and a refill for 50 cents, assuming they even charge me. So when a place opens up that I can get 40oz of coffee for less than $2, I'll go there
Looks to be a Nørwêgian mööse, disguisêd as a Møntana mööse!
'bout 3 seconds. But look at the label carefully. What is being presented to us as a river in MT looks suspiciously like the Henry's Fork of the Snake River. Those wiley mööse-jahadeen photoshoppers have struck again!
Classic! At first I thought it said "Moose Dreck" (note to self: must clean screen) and no, I don't want to report on any major flavor differences twixt dreck & drool.
LOL.Don't give these guys any ideas! I expect to see a brand spanking new MooseDreck Cafe in Bozeman next time I go up there - every other independent coffee shop & brewpub in MT has moose in its name, which is, I presume, a take- off on the mega-brand "Starbucks of the Rockies" - Caribou Coffee.(HQ'd in Minneapolis though - with nary a rocky in sight).
Have you run across the book Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer, With Not Enough Illustrations by Ronald Searle? A classic.
Never was a big Jackson Browne fan. I was following the Who and the Stones at the time . . . although I do like the NGDB. . . at least their Circle album.
It was founded in Chicago in 1905 at a convention of 200 socialists, anarchists and radical trade unionists who were opposed to the policies of the contemporaneous AFL union.
At its peak in 1923, the Wobblies claimed about 100,000 members. Today, the IWW numbers around 2000 members worldwide.
The IWW contends that all workers should be united within a single union as a class, and that the wage system be abolished.
The union's goals still include "promoting worker solidarity in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the employing class."
Along with Starbucks, Borders Books is a current target of IWW campaigns to unionize employees.
The Wobblies most famous member today is Noam Chomsky, radical Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at MIT.
Leni
Well, it's one of the few companies I've seen whose employees stay in low level food service jobs for many years at a time, so how "anti-worker" can it be?
That's interesting - I didn't know that Chomsky was a Wobblie. It figures, though. He would be against wages. If he had to produce in order to get paid, he'd be panhandling.
What 5 dollor coffee?
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