Yesterday, Starbucks worker and duly elected delegate to the SBWU contract bargain, Jake Compton spoke at our CSAN general meeting regarding the developing effort to oppose the no-strike clause within the union (more on that HERE ), alongside other criticisms of the current leaderships direction which are widely felt by shop-floor workers within the union. As has happened to other militant groups of Starbucks workers across the country who have sought to get organized to preserve the combativity of the union effort, elements within SBWU national leadership organized themselves to pack the meeting and proceeded to raise disruptions in an attempt to distract workers from the issues at hand and frustrate the ability of workers to organize to address real questions about the unions direction; however, recourse to this type of maneuver only underscored the fragility and instability of the current leadership’s direction within SBWU and the enlarging gulf between national leadership and shop floor workers. The path forward is clear, worker militants within SBWU must organize themselves to defend their freedom to strike, to preserve and develop the fighting capacity of the union to fully defend their working and living conditions. Despite opportunist and boss linked leadership attempts to kowtow workers in favor of placid contract guarantees that serve the bosses interests, militant workers must struggle to put the principles of class unionism in charge of SBWU.
From the very beginning of negotiations between Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United, Starbucks imposed a base agreement of a no-strike clause to be included in any contract negotiated. Unfortunately opportunist and boss-linked leadership within SBWU agreed to these terms and are now leading workers to accept the surrender of the most powerful weapon they have to defend themselves from lay-offs, emergent attacks on workers conditions and violations of the agreement after the contract goes into effect. Given the fact that any negotiated contract between workers and bosses is simply a temporary reprieve from the aggression of the bosses, workers should never negotiate away their freedom to strike. Our true power is in our unity and organization which enables us to collectively remove our labor, to stop work, the very thing the boss profits off. Thus our unions must be organized with the constant aim of ever expanding and strengthening our ability to take strike action, never selling it out in exchange for meager wage increases and legal guarantees.
Unsurprisingly, despite workers best interest, opportunist and boss-linked leadership within SBWU has viciously defended the inclusion of a no-strike clause in the contract. In recent years a crest of paid union officials has developed within SBWU which has promoted an increasingly collaborationist “partnership” approach in relationship to the company, reflective of the dominant business unionist paradigm, which has subordinated unions to the capitalist class across the United States leading to the decimation of the ranks of organized labor over the last half century. As such, the unions growth while initially explosive, has largely fallen off over the last year, leaving the vast majority of workers unorganized. Meanwhile SBWU locals across the country have been left with no representative structure and no real way of engaging within the union. A disconnect which last year unfortunately led to approximately 25 SBWU locals applying for decertification after falling prey to anti-union National Right to Work Foundation propaganda. With only 460 stores organized out of 9,000 company owned stores and a base which has not been organized sufficiently to present a credible strike threat to the company, SBWU is going into contract negotiations with little to no power and a major gulf between national leadership and workers on the shop floor.
The current union leadership openly recognizes this lack of leverage as the primary reason it is making the low concessionary wage demand of $20 an hour (which is already the minimum wage for the half a million fast food workers in California and does not meet living wage standards in most high cost urban areas) amid declaring that opposing a no-strike clause is impossible; however, securing a contract with the company at any cost is not a positive step for growing the real power of the union. In fact, locking workers into a weak contract for years in exchange for surrendering workers freedom to strike only works to hamstring the unionization effort in the long run. While the weak position of the union is acknowledge by leadership and is used to justify weak demands in pursuit of obtaining a contract at all costs, they fail to admit the situation has developed in no small part as a result of the union leaderships increasingly collaborationist policies, and their promotion of weak pre-announced, 1 day long strike actions, such as the mostly ineffectual national Red Cup Day actions (read more on that HERE). The failure to develop an effective national strike strategy which could have put the union into a strong position alongside the increasingly out of touch and paranoid national leadership has led to the precarious position the union has found itself in going into bargaining. Instead of reconciling with the causes which have led to the outcome, opportunists appeal to workers to remain “reasonable” and take safe incremental paths padded by earning capitalist class contractual and legal guarantees. They call workers to patiently wait for real and serious gains in their living standards and working conditions which are promised in future bargaining cycles years and years later, without admitting it is their own misleadership which has closed the field of what they claim is possible to begin with; however, worker militants who have been involved with the unionization effort from the start are not so easily confused.
Unless a significant militant workers opposition organized on class unionist lines develops, SBWU under its current opportunist and boss linked leadership is fully on course to become another toothless regime union fully subordinated to the interest of the bosses as so many other unions have already become; however, the fight to preserve workers freedoms to strike is moving forward! As Starbucks worker contract negotiations continue to unfold, Starbucks workers in the Class Struggle Action Network and the network as a whole remain resolute: No No-Strike Clause! Let’s fight for serious and substantial wage increases and to preserve workers freedom to strike! Against contracts negotiated at the mercy of the boss, towards strong powerful combative fighting class unions!
If you find yourself in agreement with this article, join the network (https://class-struggle-action.net/?page_id=1893) and organize with CSAN and join the initiative to oppose a no-strike clause in a SBWU contract!