Workers Solidarity Movement

In the USA they sacked a barista active in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union as part of it’s ongoing offensive against employees pushing for a better wage and regular working hours. Cole Dorsey was fired after two years of service, while he was coordinating a union recruitment drive at Starbucks stores in Grand Rapids. In Spain, a barista, Monica, was fired in April from a Starbucks in Seville for her activity on behalf of her union, the National Confederation of Workers (CNT-AIT).

Both unions have called for international solidarity actions today. Protests are taking place today in Belfast, Europe, Canada, the USA and Latin America. We are here to let management know that union busting anywhere will be met with international workers’ solidarity. We are also here to show Starbucks workers who decide to join a union that they have friends who will stand by them.

Most coffee shop workers are unorganised. Wages and conditions may vary from company to company and from shop to shop, but whatever the set-up, baristas are all subject to the whims of company strategies that seek to reap maximum profits from the labour of workers, while generally paying poor wages to those who make the profits possible.

Starbucks management in the USA, Spain and Britain are trying hard to scare their workers away from joining unions. And you know why... because with a union you’ll get better treatment than you do without one. No matter how good the job is, united you can do better! In the few stores in New York and Chicago where baristas have unionised, where membership has achieved a critical mass, there have been gains in wages and working conditions like more secure work hours and across-the-board wage increases (almost 25% for many workers in NYC). That’s why management are so anti-union.

Starbucks is a $15 billion company with over 7,500 locations around the world, company chairman Howard Schultz is worth close to a billion dollars. The bosses want to see even more money flow into their own pockets, that’s why they don’t want workers coming together in unions.

Coffee shop workers who want a better deal at work should chat to their colleagues about joining a union. If there is interest, contact the unions who organise these types of jobs and see what assistance they can offer you: SIPTU Hotel & Restaurant branch, 01-8586455, hotels@siptu.ie UNITE, 01-8734577 Independent Workers Union, 087-9356945

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Today’s protest was organised at short notice by the Workers Solidarity Movement (an anarchist organisation of trade unionists, social justice campaigners and customers who would prefer to drink their coffee in unionised cafés). http://www.wsm.ie

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Check out the site run by Starbucks workers for Starbucks workers

See what staff in Britain are doing http://www.baristasunited.org.uk

If you want to leaflet you local Starbucks the PDF file of the leaflet is athttp://www.wsm.ie/attachments/jul2008/starbucks_leaflet...8.pdf

This is the text of the leaflet distributed in 5 Dublin Starbucks stores on Saturday as well as at the Starbucks in Belfast and Cork airport.