On June 4th, the Starbucks Workers United leadership removed me from my role as union delegate. More context can be read from past articles here. As a result of my removal, workers at my cafe do not have an acting steward to communicate the contract bargaining updates. We’re a union cafe with almost 20 workers who are effectively unrepresented in contract negotiations, as well as removed from bargaining communications.
Unbelievably, our cafe was assured it would have another election to replace me as union delegate, but two months have passed and no election has taken place. In a recent response to the unexpected retaliation back in June and continued neglect of our cafe’s equal right to representation within SBWU, we circulated a petition in our cafe last week condemning the abuse of power in expelling me, doubling down on our fundamental opposition to a no-strike clause, and demanding that my delegate position be fully restored before the next bargaining convention. In just 2 weeks, every worker currently employed at our cafe had signed the petition.
The statement and demand of the petition:
We the workers at 28th and Powell Starbucks condemn the action of Starbucks Workers United union leadership in removing coworker Jake Compton from his duly elected position as union delegate. On June 4th, Jake wrote a public article expressing worker’s fundamental opposition to any no-strike clause that would come to a vote. In response, union leadership remarkably overstepped their authority in removing him as an elected delegate.
A union’s basic power is to win concessions from the bosses in its capacity to credibly threaten a work stoppage; a strike. The no-strike clause is widely known as an archaic plank for the boss’s benefit which needs no more recognition than its historic removal from the labor movement entirely. We demand that union leadership correct the mistake of sacking Jake and see to it that he is reinstated before the next bargaining convention.
Regardless of whether or not our petitions’ demands are heard, we will have valuable experiences to extrapolate from and into our broader struggles. Workers will remember these features of misleadership, and the unity of principle and action we needed to combat retaliation. We see the decision to expel an elected union delegate over their opposition to a no-strike clause as a demonstration of the conciliatory nature of the current union leadership in favor of the employer class and at the expense of the working class. We know Starbucks has everything to gain in their relationship with the union if the union misleadership moves to quietly sign away workers’ strike rights.
Starbucks will continue to deprive workers of respectable working conditions and benefits in the absence of an active labor movement seeking rank and file worker leadership that ceaselessly stands with workers’ interests against the bosses. It will take a mass current of class unions made of workers themselves to play the counterweight to today’s historical downturn in the labor movement. These class unions will have leadership who remain politically independent of all anti-worker capitalist parties, embrace class struggle over electoralism, organize internationally and across job sectors, and work in large to strengthen strike power.
