What’s the advantage to having a union specific to Starbucks rather than a broader one for batistas or even hospitality in general?
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The union has to have the workforce behind it big enough so that it can have leverage against the company. Otherwise the company won’t negotiate with the union. It’s easier to get the employees of one single company to unionize than it is an industry as a whole.
it allows the CEO and shareholders to virtually control the union, thereby making it more of a human resources department. It’s a form of advertisement. That’s why you see it it mostly being used in companies that are marketed more towards left wing people. Dunkin donuts a similar sized chain for example has no such phony union effort going on in the news. This isn’t new for starbucks either, in fact they largely pioneered using fake unions as a form advertising all the way back to 1985 when the first “starbucks union” started
They are called [Sectoral Unions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining) and they are well covered in many reputable sources.
Bargaining power is higher if you make a more specific group.
For example on my city emts fall under the general FD union that also includes all supervisory ranks for both ems and fd.
As a result in contract negotiations emts get screwed over the hardest due to having the least pull.
I assume a “barista” union would have the same problem where those in smaller coffee shops get screwed in favor of say the starbucks baristas or whatever group was largest in that union
Some unions are good. Some unions suck. Once you unionize, there’s no take-baksies. You’re stuck with it. So say you unionize. It sucks. You want to go back to the old way. Or even say you don’t want to unionize. An advantage of unionizing per store for Starbucks employees is that you can transfer to a different location. (there’s lots of them). Whereas if it was company or trade wide, you’re looking for a new job.
But there’s more. Companies don’t like unions. And its not uncommon when some locations unionize for the company to give additional benefits to non-union stores. It both incentivizes these locations not to unionize, while also sticking it to the union stores ie “Oh look at the benefits these stores get, but its not part of your union contract so sorry not sorry”
I want to clear up the difference between a union and a collective bargaining unit. A union is an organization of workers who decide to work together to help each other.
A collective bargaining unit is a legally recognized group of workers who have elected to all negotiate together for a common contract. Bargaining units usually exist at a single workplace, for example at a specific Starbucks location. Unions, on the other hand, are collections of those bargaining units that pool their resources.
So you can have the United Baristas Union of America that represents 45 different groups of workers at difference coffee shops that each have their own contract who aren’t allowed to strike just because one of the other contracts has expired.
So it’s not like you’ll have every barista at every coffee shop walking out at the same time.
The advantage is that it’s easier to get passed.
Unions expect everyone to sacrifice to help one group.
If Starbucks employees want to strike, than you’d expect the Marriott and Hilton and dunkin doughnuts to strike too. Or at very least, to use their dues to provide wage support for the employees on strike.
It requires a tremendous amount of solidarity for that to work. An electrician spent years learning the trade, a barista spent days. They don’t have the same investment, particularly to help out someone completely removed form their own situation.
Just getting solidarity across different stores is a challenge…
I think its because the profitability of starbucks greatly exceeds the profitability of almost all other coffee shops, so collective bargaining across the industry would greatly diminish how much employers could afford to compensate employees compared to what starbucks could do for just starbucks employees.
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