This job...

A Union? FOR MAKING COFFEE? You have got to be kidding me. I'm in shock. Why so barista's can start out making 25.00/hour? I left a well known union industry for starbucks and I can tell you all from experience it is much better to earn you place rather than to complain and whine and file grievences and try to bring others down so you can get ahead. Union workers work "just hard enough" not to get fired.

Well, I don't think that baristas should make $25/hour. Maybe up to $8.50 to $9/hour. There should be timely and scheduled pay raises.
There should be guaranteed hourly minimums and guaranteed benefits.

ALL i got to say is that it depend were you live because NYC has a problem with the poverty line as the way it is and most people relie on low wage jobs NYC Barista personally should get 10-12 starting instead of 8.25 and hour and we all know that we got a 50 cents raise because of Union Busting going on! O yeah by the Howard the CEo for starbucks is cheap!!!!!!!!!

All barista do make 8.50 with tips.

There are timely and scheduled pay raises. If they are late you get retroactive pay.

I disagree with your last point. Why should Starbucks have this mandate??? If there is not enough demand why should they have to schedule hourly employees??? They aren't salaried afterall.

To say that all baristas make eight dollars and fifty cents an hour is a little bit of a stretch. For one thing tip income is varied everywhere. Another thing is staring pay is varied everywhere so to say all baristas make eight fifty an hour with tips included is obviously a statement not based on FACT. No offense intended in that statement. It just appears that some of us are so eager to defend the company that we will make sweeping generalizations about a company that is too large to make any sort of generalization about.

One generalization that we can make about tips though is that they are an unreliable source of income. Service and tipping are not correlated in my experience. You can give the most legendariest sevice in the entire world and people won't even throw their pennies you give them for their change on their five dollar purchase.

I have found tipping to be solely based on the nature of the individual customer. I've seen customers get crappy service and throw their dollar in the little plastic box and I've seen the exact opposite happen when we give excellent service. This makes for unreliable and varied income from tips.

There is no way around the crummy wage the Starbucks pays. Health insurance is there. THANK GOD! Stock options, 401K, tuition reimbursement, profit sharing, those sort of things (and their many variations) are run of the mill at most large corporations, I know, I've worked for many.

So we must examine what sets Starbucks apart from most corporations if the benefits are generally speaking (with a few variations) the same. We have to look at how they treat us on a day to day operational level. That is where Starbucks again and again is falling short of any employer I have ever worked for.

Disrespect in the form of arbitrary terminations, reaming out by management (in front of customers mind you), berating of workers (also in public), a disciplinary action system that leaves workers dead cold and does not correct unproductive behavior in the slightest, being forced to work at uncomfortable if not unreasonable speeds to meet impossible demands, and micromanagement down to the most miniscule detail are huge problems at Starbucks.

These problems have absolutely nothing to do with pay or benefits. These problems are what enrage the people I have worked with in two different stores in two different states seperated by over one thousand miles.

You can't tell me that standard retail pay and benefits are enough for us.

You can't tell me that we don't deserve a little more from a company that takes in so much.

You can't tell me that if all Starbucks partners were to stop fighting amongst themselves for crappy shift supervisor promotions and start fighting collectively for just a little bit more in the way of pay, benefits and mostly, RESPECT that we won't be better off that we were yesterday.

You can't tell me that as a union we will be worse off.

All you can do is warn me about union dues, an us vs. them mentality penetrating our workplace, and a communist reveloution. All three of those points are tired and all three of those points are without basis. People who are union members are statistically proven over and over to be better off than their non-union counterparts so dues are a non-issue. The us vs. them mentality is already there and if you can't feel it you need to WAKE UP! And guess what, I'm not a communist and neither are most union members.

The thing that seperates those who wish to organize and those who don't is merely an education thing. So I don't get mad at my co-workers who don't wish to be involved because they just don't know any better and don't want to know any better. Ignorance however, will our be our downfall. Education and awakening will set us free and get us some of those roses we've been longing for.

So, fellow worker drance201 please, instead of trying to debunk the productivity of a solid labor movement I ask you to stop and examine which side of the fence you are on and see just how green your grass is or if you want to think of it in a Starbucks sorta way, how green your apron is.

Always in solidarity, never in anger

Me

Maybe everyone should just go work at McDonalds then. Enjoy being in charge of the fryers

port74..

You are an ASM which means you are trying to become a manager... I will pray that never happens because you obviously lack the demeanor to manage a complete sentence.

Please leave union business to workers. You should focus on whatever the hell it is assistant managers do. Go order some marble pound cake or something.