Starbucks Workers Need a National Day of Protest and Solidarity
In response to Starbucks’ union-busting in Memphis, firing seven workers who were organizing a union there, the American labor movement should organize protests at Starbucks locations throughout the country. The coffee giant can’t get away with this.
Buttons at the Starbucks Workers United hub in Buffalo, New York, on November 16, 2021. (Libby March for Washington Post via Getty Images)
It’s time for an all-labor national day of action to defend Starbucks workers.
The Starbucks baristas, REI retail workers, Amazon warehouse workers, striking Warrior Met mineworkers and concrete truck drivers, along with other workers bravely organizing and fighting back, are at the forefront of resisting unbridled corporate greed in this new Gilded Age. But they won’t succeed if the fights are limited by region or industry. We need to mobilize workers throughout the labor movement to demonstrate that there’s still substance to the labor maxim, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
It mystifies and disturbs me that regional and national labor bodies that ought to be pulling out all stops for these baristas, retail workers, and others don’t seem to recognize that this moment demands their full energy and focus.
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