STARBUCKS INFAMY: IWW Organizer Daniel Gross Terminated for Union Activity!
TAKE ACTION NOW!
www.starbucksunion.org
August 5, 2006
The Starbucks “investigation” of IWW member Daniel Gross concluded today with his termination after more than three years of organizing at the company. Daniel’s expression of solidarity at a union picket line with co-worker and fellow union member, Evan Winterscheidt, was deemed threatening by Starbucks despite multiple eyewitnesses who confirm that Daniel merely asserted to District Manager Allison Marx that Evan should not be fired. With the termination of IWW members Daniel Gross, Evan Winterscheidt, Joe Agins Jr., and Charles Fostrom in less than a year, Starbucks has demonstrated conclusively its intense hostility to the right of workers to join a union.
To provide additional cover for the unlawful termination, Starbucks issued Daniel a blatantly discriminatory performance review today with negative ratings for things like, “not communicating partner morale issues to the Store Manager.” The manager confirmed that morale issues included complaints about wages and working conditions. Last we checked, an employer may not mandate an employee to engage in surveillance of co-worker’s protected activities.
Far from breaking our campaign, Starbucks has done the opposite. The current and former Starbucks workers who proudly carry the red Industrial Workers of the World membership card vow to redouble our efforts to achieve an independent voice on the job. The right to free association at work is fundamental and not subject to compromise. But to vindicate our right to union membership, we need support from you, the working class; the class that built this society with our sweat and indeed with our blood.
The multinational retailers like Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Borders seek totalitarian control of the workplace. The way forward to reign in these massive corporations is a social movement of workers and community members. The Wobblies at Starbucks have proven that by taking direct action against the company over issues of concern to workers and by avoiding the skewed certification process of NLRB elections, baristas can improve their lives on and off the job. This strategy only works however, if the company incurs significant economic, political, and social costs when it violates the right to organize by terminating workers for union activity.
Take action with us sisters and brothers. Together we will win:
1) Do not spend your hard earned money at Starbucks until the company respects the right of workers to organize and reinstates Daniel Gross and the rest of the IWW baristas. Let the company know you are taking a stand by participating in the email action: http://starbucksunion.org/node/1015
2) Obtain a resolution or pledge from your community group, labor union, or house of worship agreeing to stay way from Starbucks products until justice is done. Please send copies to starbucksunion@yahoo.com.
3) Hold a rally or leafleting action at Starbucks in support of the right to organize and in defense of the fired union baristas if you feel that’s appropriate in your local community. Please check in with the baristas at the store before hand to involve them in the action.
4) If you are a student, join the Justice from Bean to Cup! campaign launching this Fall to ensure Starbucks doesn’t operate on campuses without reinstating the IWW baristas, respecting the right to organize, and making a meaningful commitment to Fair Trade. Get involved by e-mailing starbucksunion@yahoo.com.
5) Make a financial contribution to the IWW Starbucks Workers Union to ensure a continued independent voice for employees at the world’s largest coffee chain. Send checks made out to “IWW Starbucks Workers Union” or well-concealed cash to:
IWW Starbucks Workers Union
347 Maujer St. Apt. #C
Brooklyn, NY 11206
www.starbucksunion.org
I recently finished the new Althusser collection, the Philosophy of the Encounter, where Althusser sketches what he calls “aleatory materialism” or “materialism of the encounter.” (more…)
There’s a long post up at a new blog that’s well worth reading on immaterial labor and all that. Good questions and points, including a solid discussion of Negri on simple and complex labor. In a nutshell I take that argument to go like this: Negri’s claim that today there’s no unit of simple labor with which to measure complexified immaterialized labor implies a highly problematic thesis that there was some quality about prior simple labor, and complex labor as an aggregate thereof, which lent itself to measure. This quality was not provided (imposed) by capital but was inherent in or proper to this form of labor, such that measure was more appropriate and less of an imposition than it is today in the era of labor that is “immeasurable” or “beyond measure.” That argument strikes me as entirely right, and something to develop at greater length. One such avenue would be to address Negri on this via the category in Badiou of the count by or count as one, the imputation of a given unity. Labor power is a multiple counted as a unity by capital and too often this counted-as is taken as not an operation enacted upon a multiple but as a given, a starting point rather than a result.
Friends, please take a moment to read this and to take the small actions requested.
IWW Starbucks Union Co-Founder Daniel Gross Facing Termination Pending “Investigation”
Sisters and Brothers:
We need your solidarity now. Daniel Gross, an organizer in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, is being “investigated” by the company over a protest he and his co-workers participated in to support another IWW barista, Evan Winterscheidt. Evan was suspended and faced termination because of his union activity and his fellow union members went to protest outside his store to demand that he not be fired. Pending the outcome of Starbucks’ “investigation” into Daniel’s participation in this act of mutual aid, Starbucks will decide whether or not to fire him. The decision could take place any day so please take action now.
Over two years ago, Daniel Gross and a group of co-workers formed the first union of Starbucks baristas in the United States. Since then, the campaign has grown to include union members publicly fighting for a living wage and respect on the job at six Starbucks locations. Baristas interested in joining the IWW Starbucks Workers Union are currently employed at locations around the country. Despite a vicious anti-union campaign waged by Starbucks and its Chairman Howard Schultz, the Wobbly baristas have won three wage increases, more consistent scheduling, and have remedied many individual grievances with the company.
Regrettably, with the campaign to organize Starbucks growing at an unprecedented pace, the company is seeking to erase all our gains thus far and break our union. The company recently terminated two IWW baristas in retaliation for their union activity including Evan. Now the coffee giant is going after Daniel. Starbucks District manager, Allison Marx, who is well known among IWW members as an unscrupulous union-buster, came to the store with other management officials during the protest for Evan on July 15th. As Marx approached the store, Daniel expressed his support for Evan by demanding he not be fired. Such mutual aid and support is the cornerstone of the right to organize.
Two weeks after the protest, Daniel was brought to the back of his store for an interrogation by his District Manager and Partner & Asset Protection Investigator, Marc Stella. Stella attempted to get Daniel to sign a document that said he could be interrogated as long as necessary and that he could be fired for failing to cooperate with the investigation. After Stella denied Daniel a requested IWW witness, he proceeded to ask about the events at the protest for Evan. Daniel objected to the interrogation as interference with protected concerted activity but had no problem declaring that yes indeed he was there and did express his support for Evan to all who entered the store including District Manager Marx. Stella insinuated that Daniel’s support of Evan directed towards Marx was threatening. But standing up for your co-worker in a peaceful protest is no “threat” by any reasonable standard.
Daniel has worked at Starbucks for over three years and has labored tirelessly to improve life on the job for all Starbucks workers. He doesn’t deserve to be fired for taking a stand in solidarity with his co-worker and fellow union member. But this struggle is about more than one worker and his job. This struggle goes to the heart of whether workers at multinational retailers like Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and Starbucks can exercise their right to free association or are destined to languish as subjects of their employers.
In 2004, when Daniel Gross was under attack by Starbucks, you responded with breathtaking solidarity and saved Daniel’s job. Please stand with us again. Together let us show Starbucks the dignity of the working class and the beauty of our labor movement:
1) Participate in the e-mail action campaign at http://starbucksunion.org/node/1005 and encourage others to participate as well
2) Call Regional Director Jim McDermet at 917-207-8660 to demand that Daniel Gross not be fired and that the right of workers to organize be respected
3) Take other creative actions.
(Reposted from here.)
