Nina-Bytes: It Can't Rain All the Time Eric

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

How the Starbucks Worker Organizing Model Can Accelerate Unionization Across the Country

I must confess that, out of necessity it seems, most of the articles I share and analyze here in Nina-Bytes are overwhelmingly infuriating, heartbreaking, or negative in some very obvious and often overwhelming way. Such is the price of trying to decode messages from the propaganda model in a neofeudalist society, on a boiling planet. Given that capitalist life in the Pig Empire is essentially a never ending class war rigged in favor of the owner and investor classes, I'm not really sure what good it would do to try and put a positive spin on the situation anyway.

Today however I'd like to work against type for a moment, and look at this exciting March 28th, 2022 article from labor organizer Shuvu Bhattarai over at Jacobin; because for once, I think the good news here is more useful for the ongoing conduct of labor class liberation. Inside, Bhattarai catalogues the surprising (but welcome) successes of the Starbucks Workers United campaign in the United States; described here as "one of the most invigorating labor campaigns in recent U.S. history." More importantly however, our author breaks down the SB Workers United method of unionization in great detail, while demonstrating why this thus far overwhelmingly successful model can easily be extrapolated to organizing in any other corporate chain environment.

All of this is, quite frankly, exciting news for the labor class here in the Pig Empire. For far too long, the public image of organized labor has existed as an overwhelmingly white, producerist caricature of what the actual labor class in America looks like. If the labor class in America is going to organize in the workplace, that workplace is going to be defined by the jobs we actually have; and that means we're talking about organizing against corporations like McDonald's, Amazon, and yes, Starbucks. These newly unionized Starbucks workers are the very face of what an American labor movement that actually wants to change anything is going to be, by necessity as Bhattarai notes:

"There are practical reasons why workers must be the ones driving and leading the unionization drive. For one, they are the ones who best understand and feel the numerous ways they are exploited by their management and thus are best able to develop tactics to use their shared conditions as a point of unity. Second, the common driving factor for workers seeking unionization is a lack of agency, which manifests itself in numerous forms: management abuse, poor pay, and unstable schedules. By creating a space where the workers are able to exert control over their workplace, through leadership of their unionization campaign, a space of empowerment is created that can bring forward the best from every worker. To create a force of highly motivated worker-organizers, worker control over strategy is an absolute precondition."

 

Of course, the old Wobbly in me questions whether union organizing under the auspices of capitalist predation, also know as "the workplace," can ever be an effective way to liberate workers and destroy capitalism itself. Given however the simultaneous need to both organize the labor class, and protect labor from the tender mercies of extractivist capital and the supervillains who make it go; this sure does look like a great starting point to me. In that light, I'm happy to offer up three cheers for the Barista revolution and all their successes. In a class war that never ends, the only hope for the exploited remains refusing to allow our exploiters to define what labor is, and who has a right to a union. The Starbucks Workers United campaign drive, and the instructions provided in this article, can be a light in a purposely-darkened path forward; if we remember that all workers are labor, not just the guys in hardhats. 

Update: literally a couple hours after I published this, Amazon workers in Staten Island formed their own, completely new union; becoming the first group in America to do so successfully. Today has indeed, been a good day.

 nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

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