Ithaca College May Day Marchers
Father and Son
Speaker Tania Penafort of theApril 5th: Brooklyn, New York, U.S. - More than 1,000 people, including ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews, flooded the streets of their Borough Park neighborhood in a spontaneous demonstration against police brutality and harassment. Around 6:30 pm, residents began pushing and shoving police following the arrest of 75-year-old Arthur Schick who police say was talking on a cell phone while stopped at a traffic light. According to some eye-witnesses, the elderly man, who is hard of hearing, was roughed up by police after he failed to provide them with identification when they asked for it. The police say that Schick was argumentative and threw himself on the ground. Two men who tried to intervene in the arrest were arrested themselves, including one who allegedly jumped on the back of an officer.
Residents shouted "No justice, no peace" and "Nazi Germany" as they smashed the windows of a police cruiser and set another one on fire. Rioters built numerous bonfires in the streets, which they held for about four hours until riot police were able to "regain control" of the situation.
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A bit late, but I wanted to post on the IWW victory versus Starbucks. On March 8, 2006, the IWW reports that:The IWW Starbucks Workers Union won a watershed victory yesterday in the first National Labor Relations Board conflict over unfair labor practices between the world's largest coffee chain and the baristas who work there. Faced with the prospect of having its widespread union-busting campaign exposed in a public hearing, Starbucks agreed to remedy all of the myriad violations committed against workers who have organized a union.
[...]
The NLRB complaint against Starbucks which resulted in this settlement outlined a widespread anti-union effort that extended to upper level management, including a Starbucks Senior Vice President. Fifteen Starbucks employees were named in the complaint.
Thanks to Puritan City for their post on this story. I'm kicking myself for not buying some IWW Starbucks Union T-shirts when I was in The City.The final words of the lead [New York Daily] News editorial said it all: "Now, after devastating New York, (the union) has won." That's because besides snaring raises, a day off for MLK, improved healthcare in return for a 1.5 percent premium, and protecting pension benefits, the union won a payback for contributions that older members made to the system during a pervious contract. The checks could run to $14,000 a worker, which ought to cover those members' Taylor Law fines for the strike—and then some.
And as long as we're tallying union victories, don't forget the intangible edge the union has gained in future contract fights by striking during this one. The threat of a strike is one of the chips a union has at the table, and as one subway substation worker told me on the picket line last Thursday, sometimes you have to act on a threat to make it real.
Of course, few victories are total. The TWU will have to deal with its fines and other legal consequences before it is strong enough to wage another strike, and the next contract will expire after the holidays, giving the workers less leverage. Some union members -—worried about the precedent set by the health care payments—- don't think the TWU won at all. And budget watchdogs' worries about pension costs are valid—not because of the specifics of the TWU deal, but because pensions in general are the next great looming policy crisis.
All the same, "irrational" and "dead end" -—like their cousin "thuggish"-- are adjectives that look less and less applicable to the strike as it fades in the rear-view.
On the eve of the negotiations, the MTA provocatively voted to squander $1 billion in surplus funds to make sure that there would be no money for pay increases or health and pension benefits for the workers. [On] Friday night, the MTA final proposal called for below inflation wage increases, pension and work rule givebacks and for new TWU members to pay 1% of their salary for health benefits!
Bloomberg's administration intervened in the negotiations in an attempt to intimidate and threaten the transit workers with retaliation and use of the anti-labor Taylor Law. The mayor's legal department has gone to court seeking an injunction that would impose huge additional fines on individual workers as well as the penalties on the Taylor Law against the members of Local 100. The MTA is threatening that not only union offibut alsoutalso rank and file workers would be jailed if there was a strike -- clearly a threat to bust the union!
Bloomberg, Pataki, Wall Street and the MTA bosses clearly have decided to viciously attack the transit workers as part of the overall plan to roll back the gains that workers and their unions have made in NYC in the past 70 years. As for the transit system, the aim is to fund the MTA solely through fares and interest-bearing bonds rather than taxes on businesses and transit subsidies as it used to be in the past.
Furthermore, the attack on TWU on pensions (for retirement at 62 after 30 years rather than after 25 years as is now) will open the door for what is intended to be a gutting of the public employee pensions and health benefits - with billions of dollars being funneled into the pockets of big business. Another attack is the demand for "broadbanding" (forcing workers to do additional tasks) which opens the way for the future destruction of thousands of jobs.
The transit dispute has touched a raw nerve among working people in the city who sense that this dispute is about the growing attacks on living standards, working conditions and the basic democratic rights of workers in the most unionized city in the country. Millions of workers in New York face a rising cost of living at a time when wages and benefits are under attack. It is disgusting to observe the big business media portray transit workers (or teachers, government employees or any union workers) as"overpaid" and "under-worked" while the billionaires and financial lords ofthe city are growing richer and richer.
In the 25 years since the last transit workers strike, when the system was shut down for 11 days, workers in New York City and across the country have seen the loss of millions of good jobs and a steady decline in wages and benefits.[...]
There should be a call to roll back the fare to $1 as a step toward a free transit system and for a program of massive investment to upgrade the entire transit system -- paid for by taxes on the rich and big business. This should be part of a program and movement that campaigns to put the needs of working people (healthcare, childcare, education, transportation, housing, a clean environment,) before war and corporate profits.
A clash with the 38,000 transit workers in New York City, the financial capital of the world, [pits] MTA and Bloomberg but also corporate America and the Bush administration against working people in this country. The implications [are] enormous as it could be seen as a way for all workers to resist against the corporate agenda of Bush and Wall Street in the US and internationally and could open the way for workers to build their own political party to challenge the dictatorship of big business.
Again, thanks to Sean at ToTheBarricades.BlogSpot.com:New York, NY - 25 Starbucks baristas and supporters wearing union pins and hats surrounded the store manager at the Union Square location in Manhattan tonight to announce their membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union (www.starbucksunion.org). The workers, joined by union baristas from two other New York Starbucks stores, demanded a guaranteed minimum of 30 hours of work per week and an end to Starbucks' unlawful anti-union campaign. The Union will assail Starbucks with a wide array of actions until the demands are met.
One of the workers, 23 year-old Tomer Malchi, served the store manager with a document detailing the demands and several other workers directed comments at the boss to be relayed to more senior management. Suley Ayala, a mother of four who has worked at Starbucks for three years, was one of the workers who spoke. She explained after the event: "it should go without saying that we can't live on ten, eleven, or twelve hours of work some weeks. The 30 hour guarantee is absolutely necessary to make ends meet and Starbucks knows it."
The workers were motivated to organize in part because of Starbucks' status as one of the few companies in the world with no full-time employment for non-managerial employees. An initiative of Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, the part-time scheme forces workers to contend with a constantly fluctuating number of work hours, and therefore, constantly fluctuating income. For example, a Starbucks barista could receive 35 hours of work one week, 18 hours the week after, and as low as single-digits in the following week. The world's largest coffee chain sacrifices employees' financial security in the name of cost-control and "flexibility." This comes from a company whose mission statements talks of, "provid[ing] a great work environment."
Starbucks barista Mike Velasquez spoke of the personal reasons underlying his decision to join the Starbucks Workers Union. "My daughter is my first priority period," he said. Anything that comes in the way of that is going to have a problem. Starbucks falls into that category."
Myth v. Reality
Given the reality of working at Starbucks, the company's creation of a socially responsible image is testament to its public relations prowess. The company boasts of providing health care eligibility even for its part-time workers (never mentioning that all of its retail hourly workers are part-time). The fact is that an employee must work 240 hours each quarter to become eligible for health insurance. Because of the lack of guaranteed hours, meeting the quarterly hour requirement is far from assured. For workers who do qualify there are still the premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, and these are costs extremely difficult to manage for employees making six, seven, or eight dollars an hour. Incredibly, Starbucks, the self-proclaimed leader on the issue of employee health care, will not release the number of retail hourly workers that actually receive company health benefits. Even Wal-Mart releases that number. In fact, the recently leaked memo from Wal-Mart that advocated increasing part-time employment to cut health insurance costs is ancient history at Starbucks. Howard Schultz made that move years ago- but he degraded all jobs to part-time.
The workers demanded respect for the right to organize in the face of a relentless anti-union campaign launched by the company in 2004 after the formation of the Starbucks Workers Union. The company has already been hit with a complaint from the National Labor Relations Board for threats, bribes, and surveillance in their attempt to defeat the union.
"I am so pleased to welcome the Union Square East baristas to the Starbucks Workers Union," said Pete Montalbano, a union barista at an East Village Starbucks and himself a recipient of anti-union discrimination. "Given the widespread discontent at the company, it comes as no surprise that more and more workers are making the decision to go union."
Starbucks, known for inundating neighborhoods with its stores, is an extremely profitable company. On November 17, the company announced that quarterly earnings had jumped 21% to $124 million. Chairman Howard Schultz who also owns the Seattle Supersonics is doing well too with an estimated net worth of $700 million.
The IWW's unique solidarity union structure allows any Starbucks worker to join at anytime and begin the fight for a better life at work. Since its founding, the Starbucks Workers Union has pressured the company into a .50 cent an hour wage increase, an unprecedented holiday bonus, and steps toward alleviating the rampant repetitive strain injuries among baristas.
"Companies like Starbucks, Borders, Wal-Mart, the Gap, and McDonald's have gotten a free pass from the labor movement for far too long. Retail workers at some of the world's most profitable companies deserve better than a poverty existence for our hard work," remarked Daniel Gross, an IWW member and Starbucks barista. "The only solution is a fighting union."
On May Day, CITA staged the 100 Miles for Justice March, with the workers starting their march in Albion, NY, and ending in Geneva, NY. I was lucky enough to serve dinner to the marchers at the Geneva's Methodist Church. There, I heard Rosa Rivera speak and met several of the CITA workers and their supporters. Their stories are those of hard-working people who wish only to be treated with dignity. Since this has been denied to them, they are organizing and taking matters into their own very able hands.
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