Baristas of the world unite!

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, are this month balloting to join a union - part of a surprise post-pandemic trend in union activism across America, as retail and hospitality workers find that the tight post-pandemic labour market is giving them more bargaining power with their employers.

Ed Butler speaks to Michelle and Jaz - two baristas in Buffalo, New York, who are encouraging their colleagues to organise - and to Richard Bensinger, who hopes to represent them as part of the Workers United union. He reckons this marks a turning point for unions in the US, which have for decades seen thin membership numbers.

We also hear from Stephen Delie at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based think tank and advocacy group for "right-to-work" laws, which discourage union membership. Unions, he says, take workers' hard-earned money for little or no return.

(Picture: Starbucks union supporters posing in a group photo with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Credit: Michael Sanabria)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, how about a coffee with
0:07.7	plenty of froth on top? A Starbucks union vote is this week becoming a lightning rod for worker
0:14.0	employer tensions across the US. They are requiring mandatory anti-union meetings while their workers are on the clock.
0:24.6	How is stuff like this legal? How is it legal?
0:29.2	But not everyone's a fan of this union drive.
0:32.4	They shouldn't be injecting themselves into matters of public policy.
0:36.1	They shouldn't be injecting money into politics.
0:38.3	And they do both of those things right now. America and the state of the unions, business daily
0:42.9	from the BBC. We are one of the last remaining what they call a cafe store in this area.
0:52.0	Say maximum capacity, 30 people.
0:55.4	Maybe you could have 30 customers in there sitting down.
0:57.9	So it's a unique kind of neighborhood feel that a lot of these newer stores that Starbucks
1:01.9	is putting up just don't really have.
1:04.4	That's Michelle Eisen, a veteran barista, working in one of the dozen or so outlets of
1:10.2	the Starbucks coffee chain in the town of
1:12.9	Buffalo, New York State. Alongside her, fellow employee, Jazz Brissac. New hires are known as green beans,
1:19.6	which I know Michelle doesn't love the term, but we have about seven brand new green beans on our
1:25.3	floor. We've never had that many at one time.
1:27.6	Yes, and this isn't the only odd thing that started to happen around Buffalo's Starbucks
1:32.3	lately. We're going to get back to that in just a moment. But first, what it's like to be a barista.
1:38.6	Each Starbucks employee gets about $15 or $16 an hour at the moment, which is a little above the local minimum wage.
1:46.5	They also get access to a wide range of health insurance benefits, a big draw, many say.
	...

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