Baristas at largest Starbucks in NYC join IWW

[syndicat]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Starbucks Workers Union (Industrial Workers of the World). Contact: Zelig Stern, 508-524-2118; Cason Bolton, Jr, 702-490-1732
http://www.iww.org/graphics/IU660/sbux/SbuxAstorsm.jpgNEW YORK, NY –On this the 25th anniversary of Dr. King’s holiday, baristas at the Astor Place Starbucks in Manhattan declared their membership in the 105 year old union the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a staunch and outspoken defender of workers’ rights including the right to a living wage and the right to join a labor union.
The baristas represent the latest group of workers at the coffee giant to join the ongoing struggle for a living wage, more consistent scheduling, more affordable health insurance, and to be treated with basic respect and dignity by management. “I am proud to join the growing ranks of retail workers organizing together in the largest and least organized sector of our economy and at a company that has created thousands of low-wage jobs,” expressed Astor Place barista Zelig Stern. In the last year, baristas in Omaha, Nebraska and Ft. Worth, Texas have also joined the IWW Starbucks Workers Union (SWU), showing that workers’ concerns with the company are far-reaching.
“We would just like to be treated like human beings and not machines,” said union barista and Astor Place employee Cason Bolton, Jr. in reference to Starbucks’ latest initiative toward mimicking the factory assembly-line, the “Beverage Repeatable Routine.”
Today the workers delivered a collectively written demand letter (see below) to the management of the Astor Place Starbucks. Their demands included a one dollar per an hour raise across the board for all store employees. While the company’s total net revenue for FY 2010 increased by 9.5% to $10.7 billion, according to the company’s Financial Report for Nov. 4, 2010, many of the retail location employees aren’t able to make ends meet with their low Starbucks wages and are forced to live below the poverty line, many requiring public assistance.
Ex-Manager turned Union Organizer, Claudio Anzalone has seen the company move further and further from its employees-first mantra from when he started his career at Starbucks over ten years ago. “I feel great regret that Starbucks partners now need a union to protect their job and human dignity, but we do,” said Mr. Anzalone.
Another demand from the workers is the immediate reinstatement of wrongfully fired union barista Catherine Arredondo, who the union feels was targeted by the company once they found out she had attended a union meeting. Ms. Arredondo assured her co-workers that she's sticking with the Union, saying, “I’m going to stay and fight because I want my coworkers to know that organizing a union is the right thing to do.”
Workplace democracy is a large focus for the workers. Union workers at Astor Place feel strongly that each worker should have a voice in decisions regarding the day to day operations of the store, since they are the people most directly affected by these decisions. “We’re all humans and we should be treated as such, above everything else,” said Kayla Halstead, another union barista that works at the Astor Place Starbucks location. Union worker, Princess McLawrence, sites a very personal connection to organizing when she said, “I joined the IWW Starbucks Union in an attempt to regain, by force, the part of myself that I have lost since I first started at Slavebux.”
The IWW Starbucks Workers Union is a grassroots organization composed entirely of current and former Starbucks employees who have fought for respect, security, affordable health care and a living wage since 2004. Working together, SWU members have improved working conditions for Starbucks employees and won legal victories against unfair labor practices.

[KurtFF8]

Could you post a link to this original article?

[syndicat]

it's on the IWW front page:

http://www.iww.org/

[Amphictyonis]

The IWW should contact the workers who supply Starfux with coffee via their labor. I'm also not sure we should celebrate service sector economy jobs. I celebrate Starbucks unionizing but there's only so much one can demand from a service sector job, also, the more US workers gain in the service sector economy the more the actual producers are squeezed but at the same time it's good to see workers join the IWW. I guess I always look at things from multiple cultural perspectives not just from the American worker perspective.

[crashcourse]

Actually this has been in the works for years, via a project called "from bean to cup."

At a more abstract level, what makes someone an "actual producer"? As I read Marx, production is when workers labor upon objects to transform them. Seems to me almost all workers work on objects that other workers have already worked on - with the very limited exception of some agricultural and extractive workers (who still work with tools and machines and many of them work in areas that have long been shaped by human cultivation). After coffee beans are harvested they're shipped, the distribution workers produce change in location (see Marx's discussion on what he calls, if memory serves, "communication industries" in v2 of Capital). Then they're roasted, roasters produce beans that are ready to be made into coffee grounds. Then they're shipped again, where they have to be ground and combined with hot water. Some of that labor happens in Starbucks stores.

The same goes for fast food restaurants. Say we have two workers assembling various components into new objects which are then sold for individual use (rather than serving as material to be worked on by employees at another capitalist enterprise). Each component is itself the product of some other workers' labor. If the final product purchased for individual use is a computer, clearly they're a worker. Yet if it's a sandwich for someone reason people often think it's "service work." I don't see what the distinction is supposed to be.|

[Amphictyonis]

Actually this has been in the works for years, via a project called "from bean to cup."

At a more abstract level, what makes someone an "actual producer"? As I read Marx, production is when workers labor upon objects to transform them. Seems to me almost all workers work on objects that other workers have already worked on - with the very limited exception of some agricultural and extractive workers (who still work with tools and machines and many of them work in areas that have long been shaped by human cultivation). After coffee beans are harvested they're shipped, the distribution workers produce change in location (see Marx's discussion on what he calls, if memory serves, "communication industries" in v2 of Capital). Then they're roasted, roasters produce beans that are ready to be made into coffee grounds. Then they're shipped again, where they have to be ground and combined with hot water. Some of that labor happens in Starbucks stores.

The same goes for fast food restaurants. Say we have two workers assembling various components into new objects which are then sold for individual use (rather than serving as material to be worked on by employees at another capitalist enterprise). Each component is itself the product of some other workers' labor. If the final product purchased for individual use is a computer, clearly they're a worker. Yet if it's a sandwich for someone reason people often think it's "service work." I don't see what the distinction is supposed to be.|

People can make their own coffee out of coffee beans thay cant make their own computer. I make my own coffee though I have in the past been silly enough to pay 5 dollars for one at Starbucks :) I'm not sure there would be any Burger Kings in an advanced communist society. More like food producers and distribution centers where people pick up food and make it for themselves. Food markets of a sort. There would in fact be less diversity in products but thats where most of the waste comes from under capitalism. I think this may be off topic a bit and looking further into the future- I'm glad to hear about the bean to cup unionization efforts but do you really think an advanced communist society would have the same wants and therefore need for a massive service sector economy?

[southernmissfan]

People can make their own coffee out of coffee beans thay cant make their own computer. I make my own coffee though I have in the past been silly enough to pay 5 dollars for one at Starbucks :) I'm not sure there would be any Burger Kings in an advanced communist society. More like food producers and distribution centers where people pick up food and make it for themselves. Food markets of a sort. There would in fact be less diversity in products but thats where most of the waste comes from under capitalism. I think this may be off topic a bit and looking further into the future- I'm glad to hear about the bean to cup unionization efforts but do you really think an advanced communist society would have the same wants and therefore need for a massive service sector economy?

While the service industry might not be "productive" and many of these jobs would be obsolete in a communist society, workers in this industry are still working class.

[x371322]

People can make their own coffee out of coffee beans thay cant make their own computer.

Really? I can. It's not difficult. My own coffee though? Not so much. :lol:

[Paulappaul]

I'm glad to hear about the bean to cup unionization efforts but do you really think an advanced communist society would have the same wants and therefore need for a massive service sector economy?

Honestly have you had some of that artificial crap they have at Starbucks? It's orgasmic. If there isn't coffee-chefs in your revolution, I don't want to be a part of it.

[Amphictyonis]

While the service industry might not be "productive" and many of these jobs would be obsolete in a communist society, workers in this industry are still working class.

I agree.

[Amphictyonis]

Honestly have you had some of that artificial crap they have at Starbucks? It's orgasmic. If there isn't coffee-chefs in your revolution, I don't want to be a part of it.

Ingredients are copyrighted and private property in a communist society? ;) Also, you just pointed out a great barrier to socialist revolution in advanced capitalist nations.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Are you kidding? A major task of revolution is eliminating individual domestic tasks. There will absolutely be restaurants, though obviously not in the form they exist now. When one person can make the food to feed dozens of people, why should dozens of people make food to feed themselves each day (and in practice that often falls upon the mother/wife in the family). Communal eating sprung up in all sorts of revolutions and strikes through history, for that very reason.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Actually this has been in the works for years, via a project called "from bean to cup."

At a more abstract level, what makes someone an "actual producer"? As I read Marx, production is when workers labor upon objects to transform them. Seems to me almost all workers work on objects that other workers have already worked on - with the very limited exception of some agricultural and extractive workers (who still work with tools and machines and many of them work in areas that have long been shaped by human cultivation). After coffee beans are harvested they're shipped, the distribution workers produce change in location (see Marx's discussion on what he calls, if memory serves, "communication industries" in v2 of Capital). Then they're roasted, roasters produce beans that are ready to be made into coffee grounds. Then they're shipped again, where they have to be ground and combined with hot water. Some of that labor happens in Starbucks stores.

The same goes for fast food restaurants. Say we have two workers assembling various components into new objects which are then sold for individual use (rather than serving as material to be worked on by employees at another capitalist enterprise). Each component is itself the product of some other workers' labor. If the final product purchased for individual use is a computer, clearly they're a worker. Yet if it's a sandwich for someone reason people often think it's "service work." I don't see what the distinction is supposed to be.|

Productive labor creates profit (ie. is exploited for surplus value).


“In order to labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first definition given above of productive labour, a definition deduced from the very nature of the production of material objects, still remains correct for the collective labourer, considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken individually.
“On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus value. The labourer produces, not for themself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that they should simply produce. They must produce surplus-value.
“That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolteacher is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of their scholars, they work like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out their capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune.” - Capital

"For example, when the peasant takes a wandering tailor, of the kind that existed in times past, into his house, and gives him the material to make clothes with. ... The man who takes the cloth I supplied to him and makes me an article of clothing out of it gives me a use value. But instead of giving it directly in objective form, he gives it in the form of activity. I give him a completed use value; he completes another for me. The difference between previous, objectified labour and living, present labour here appears as a merely formal difference between the different tenses of labour, at one time in the perfect and at another in the present...

"The pay of the common soldier is also reduced to a minimum - determined purely by the production costs necessary to procure him. But he exchanges the performance of his services not for capital, but for the revenue of the state....

"In bourgeois society itself, all exchange of personal services for revenue - including labour for personal consumption, cooking, sewing etc., garden work etc., up to and including all of the unproductive classes, civil servants, physicians, lawyers, scholars etc. - belongs under this rubric, within this category. All menial servants etc. By means of their services - often coerced - all these workers, from the least to the highest, obtain for themselves a share of the surplus product, of the capitalist’s revenue....

“Now, for the capitalist to undertake road building as a business, at his expense, various conditions are required, which all amount to this, that the mode of production based on capital is already developed to its highest stage. ... The separation of public works from the state, and their migration into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in the form of capital. A country, e.g. the United States, may feel the need for railways in connection with production; nevertheless the direct advantage arising from them for production may be too small for the investment to appear as anything but sunk capital. Then capital shifts the burden on to the shoulders of the state; or, where the state traditionally still takes up a position superior to capital, it still possesses the authority and the will to force the society of capitalists to put a part of their revenue, not of their capital, into such generally useful works, which appear at the same time as general conditions of production, and hence not as particular conditions for one capitalist or another - and, so long as capital does not adopt the form of the joint-stock company, it always looks out only for its particular conditions of realisation, and shifts the communal conditions off on to the whole country as national requirements. Capital undertakes only advantageous undertakings, advantageous in its sense. ... Capital must be able to sell the road in such a way that both the necessary and the surplus labour are realised, or in such a way that it obtains out of the general fund of profits - of surplus values - a sufficiently large share to make it the same as if it had created surplus value. The highest development of capital exists when the general conditions of the process of social production are not paid out of deductions from the social revenue, the states taxes - where revenue and not capital appears as the labour fund, and where the worker, although he is a free wage worker like any other, nevertheless stands economically in a different relation - but rather out of capital as capital. This shows the degree to which capital has subjugated all conditions of social production to itself ....” - Grundrisse

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The IWW should contact the workers who supply Starfux with coffee via their labor. I'm also not sure we should celebrate service sector economy jobs. I celebrate Starbucks unionizing but there's only so much one can demand from a service sector job, also, the more US workers gain in the service sector economy the more the actual producers are squeezed but at the same time it's good to see workers join the IWW. I guess I always look at things from multiple cultural perspectives not just from the American worker perspective.

If the IWW followed their own stated model of industrial unionism, they would attempt to organize along industrial lines (from agricultural workers who grow coffee, to transportation workers that ship it, to workers who roast it, to workers who deliver it, to workers who prepare it for consumption at cafes). But they don't. They organize by chain instead. I think this reflects much deeper problems.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Ex-Manager turned Union Organizer, Claudio Anzalone has seen the company move further and further from its employees-first mantra from when he started his career at Starbucks over ten years ago. “I feel great regret that Starbucks partners now need a union to protect their job and human dignity, but we do,” said Mr. Anzalone.

Sounds like just the kind of guy you'd want to be an organizer for a "rank-and-file" union which aims for the "abolition of the wage system."

[Amphictyonis]

Are you kidding? A major task of revolution is eliminating individual domestic tasks. There will absolutely be restaurants, though obviously not in the form they exist now. When one person can make the food to feed dozens of people, why should dozens of people make food to feed themselves each day (and in practice that often falls upon the mother/wife in the family). Communal eating sprung up in all sorts of revolutions and strikes through history, for that very reason.

I would think more emphasis would be put on mining, harvesting, processing, transporting rather than continuing a large service sector economy with Burger Kings and Coffee drive thrus on every other corner. I'm aware durring/immediately after the Spanish revolution the service sector remained in tact but wasn't the 'backbone' of the economy as it is in the US. I'm pretty sure if you had a time machine and went to some distant hypothetical communist society you would be hard pressed to find people who are willing to cater to your every need if it's entirely possible for you to do it yourself.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Specialization and the division of labor are other things that need to be broken down. There won't be any full time fry cooks, desperate people forced into a life of making coffees for others, etc. But the socially necessary labor will be divided up.

It seems much better to me to put in a few hours a month at a cafeteria and not have to cook food for myself the rest of the month.

[graymouser]

Yeah, Nothing Human Is Alien is right on about how post-revolution society would need to break up the mundanity of household work by socializing tasks such as preparation of food. Although I would think it would have to be on a radically different basis from Starbucks, I've heard a lot from workers about the sheer physical toll that actually preparing the coffee exerts (the way the espresso machines are set up makes it very hard to avoid repetitive stress injuries). This is also a feminist question, in that household work tends to fall more on women and their liberation from it is a serious political issue.

As for the OP, it's good news that the IWW has a little traction, but Starbucks is a massive employer and doing anything beyond this token campaign seems completely out of the reach of a relatively very small group like the IWW.

[Sosa]

Eventually, the crowd marched south. They ended up at the Astor Place Starbucks, where eight of that store’s workers presented a letter to an assistant manager declaring membership in the I.W.W. and presenting a list of demands. Those included a raise of $1 dollar an hour for all Astor Place workers, “fair performance reviews,” a voice for employees in determining schedules and day-to-day operations, and a monthly meeting run by workers to air grievances and share ideas.
The letter also demanded the rehiring of two workers, one in New York and the other in Omaha, Neb., who the protesters said were unfairly fired.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/starbucks-workers-celebrate-and-protest/?partner=rss&emc=rss

you guys should comment on the article if you can

Here's their demand letter:


To Adler Ludvigsen, Howard Schultz, et al.,



Today we are declaring our membership in the Industrial Workers of The World, Starbucks Workers Union. We have spent many months, some of us years, working at Astor Place and we have come to feel that things must change. We spend more of our time at the store than any other place outside of our homes. We depend on our jobs for our livelihood. We have joined the Union because we feel that as human beings we have the right to have a say in the decisions regarding our living and working conditions and because it is clear that if we do not stand up for ourselves, Starbucks will not act in our best interests. We also care about the work that we do and we feel that until we begin to be treated fairly we will be unable to provide the customers who patronize our store with adequate services.

The following is a list of specific demands that Starbucks must meet if they truly follow their mission statement of putting partners first and catering to the needs of our customers:

Fair Compensation For Time Worked: Astor Place is one of the highest volume stores in the country. We work extremely hard to make sure that the high level of demand from our customers is met - and with a smile and a positive attitude. Yet our wages place many of us below the poverty level and all of us below the level of a living wage for New York City. We demand all Astor Place Workers receive a $1 per an hour raise. We also demand that we are given fair employee reviews. As Astor Place workers we all put in an above average effort and our performance reviews should reflect that.

Fair Scheduling Practices: On top of low wages, many Astor Place workers are not given an adequate number of hours to make ends meet. Our schedules are inconsistent and given out last minute. We all have lives, friends, loved ones, and other jobs and commitments outside of the store yet we are treated as though our only obligation is to be on call to work when it is convenient for the company. Additionally while we are working we often find that we must work extra hard due to understaffing. We demand direct employee participation in the creation of the schedules; respecting workers requests for vacations and time off; regular scheduling for those who need it; giving workers as many hours as they need to make ends meet up to full time; schedules produced 3 weeks in advance. We also demand that the store is scheduled to be fully staffed at all times; and an end to hiring new partners while cutting hours for current employees.

Respect and Dignity: The relationship between managers and workers is always an unequal one. Nonetheless we are human beings – adults - and deserve to be treated as such. Management consistently talks down to workers and displays disrespect through their actions. For example at work we must ask permission to go to the bathroom like children. There is also a consistent show of favoritism in the store. We demand that management addresses workers with a tone of respect at all times; an end to favoritism in the workplace; when workers call out sick they should not be questioned as to the nature of their illness or be written up for being sick or be forced to take on the burden for finding someone to cover their shift.

Workplace Democracy: The following demand has two parts.

A) We live in a country that holds democracy as a central value. At work, the location where we spend almost half of our waking hours, we are denied any form of democratic rights. Decisions regarding the day to day operations of our store, including the organization of the floor, scheduling, the repair, maintenance, and replacement of equipment, the distribution of rewards, the deployment of labor, affect us as workers more than anyone else. We demand worker participation regarding all decisions made at a store level.

B) Not only are we excluded from participating in the decisions that affect our lives directly, we are not even provided with a forum to express our opinions. We demand a once a month optional meeting where all employees of Astor Place are invited to discuss the operations of the store; the meeting should be held twice the day it occurs so that all employees can attend, regardless of when they are scheduled to work; the store manager and ASMs must be present at both meetings; employees not managers, must run the meetings and union presence must be permitted at the meetings.

Justice For Our Coworkers: It is our right to form a union, and to stand up for ourselves as workers. Starbucks has consistently violated this right by unfairly disciplining and firing union workers. WE DEMAND THAT CATHERINE ARREDONDO of Astor Place and TYLER SWAIN of 15th and Douglas Omaha, Nebraska be reinstated immediately.

[x371322]

If the IWW followed their own stated model of industrial unionism, they would attempt to organize along industrial lines... But they don't. They organize by chain instead. I think this reflects much deeper problems.

This is actually something I've been wondering about. I've been thinking a lot about joining the IWW, but why is it being done this way? (not that I'm opposed to it or anything), But any current wobblies out there care to elaborate on this? I'd appreciate having this cleared up.

:confused:

[syndicat]

If the IWW followed their own stated model of industrial unionism, they would attempt to organize along industrial lines (from agricultural workers who grow coffee, to transportation workers that ship it, to workers who roast it, to workers who deliver it, to workers who prepare it for consumption at cafes).

this is not what industrial unionism was historically. an "industry" is defined by its product. workers who work at farms producing products sold in supermarkets are not in the same industry as the workers in the supermarket. the supermarket's product is its proximity to the consumer. that's why this is called "distribution". similarly workers who work at a steel mill aren't in the same industry as auto workers, even tho steel is used in cars.

you gotta walk before you can run. to organize a company is a first step in organizing an industry.



Ex-Manager turned Union Organizer, Claudio Anzalone has seen the company move further and further from its employees-first mantra from when he started his career at Starbucks over ten years ago. “I feel great regret that Starbucks partners now need a union to protect their job and human dignity, but we do,” said Mr. Anzalone.

sounds like this guy's consciousness is developing. good thing? not according to Nothing Human:


Sounds like just the kind of guy you'd want to be an organizer for a "rank-and-file" union which aims for the "abolition of the wage system."

Pot shots at an actual struggle based on a purist ideological criterion. Why am i not surprised? unlike an ultra-left political clique, a union needs to be open to all those who are prepared to fight the boss.

And all your constant quotes from Marxist Holy Writ make you sound like a fundamentalist.

[crashcourse]

People can make their own coffee out of coffee beans thay cant make their own computer.

"Can people make it themselves?" is a pretty bad criterion for productive labor. My dad's a life long electrician, really handy. He regularly buys computer parts and assembles them into computers, hobby of his. He also does all kinds of stuff at home, did a total gut rehab of a house we lived in when I was kid, made it from a two bedroom to a four bedroom place, with the help of an uncle of mine who works as a carpenter and some of their friends from work (really sucked living in it while that was going on but it was great when it was done). My brother works in a truck parts factory as a welder, he also welds various things on his own outside of work - he got into working as a welder because he liked working on cars and took up welding as part of that interest. My mother in law has an awesome garden, grows huge quantities of tomatos, squash, etc. According to your logic this ought to raise questions about whether or not computer assembly workers, construction workers, welders, and agricultural workers are productively employed.


I'm not sure there would be any Burger Kings in an advanced communist society. (...) do you really think an advanced communist society would have the same wants and therefore need for a massive service sector economy?

I think "will it exist in advanced communist society" is also not a good criterion. I'm sure there won't be Burger Kings. I'm also pretty sure there won't be luxury SUVs. Are the autoworkers who make Escalades therefore not productive workers?


For Marx, "productive" has two meanings. Marx in v1 of Capital distinguish use value production from value production. Facts about use values generally tell us very little about value. Generally "productive worker" in Marx refers to producing value for a capitalist, not use value production. He ties this into a distinction between the labor process and the valorization process. They're analytically seperable but in reality workplaces in capitalism are both at once. Use value production for Marx is basically any action that makes some thing that people can use in some fashion ("use" just means "do stuff with it", a use value is the ability to satisfy any need "of the fancy or of the belly" [something like that] as Marx puts it in the beginning of v1 of Capital). So in all three examples I named above about family members, each of the family members I named is engaged in producing a use value in their spare time. People whose job it is to produce those use values in a commodified form produce use values and simultaneously produce value (in the form of surplus value, the terms are wonky, Marx needed a better editor).

You also ignored my point that Marx in v2 calls workers who transport goods productive workers. Someplace, I believe in the Theories of Surplus Value, Marx also says that under certain conditions clowns and writers can be productive workers because they can produce value for an employer.
You don't have to agree with Marx, but I do want to point out that you're disagreeing with him, since your thinger here says your tendency is "Left Communists," which I've always understood to refer to a certain subtradition of marxism.

One other thought I had on this:
I worked briefly at Menard's, a big chain hardware store/home improvement place, like Home Depot. A big piece of Menard's business strategy is vertical integration, meaning they try to take over companies who produce the products they sell or they try to produce competitor products. So if you buy nails at Menard's they were likely made in a nail factory owned by Menard's. The grocery stores Aldi and Trader Joe's do the same. Starbucks does some elements of this, they own roasting plants for instance. I don't know if they own bean production or not. I raise this in part because it seems to me that what with the division of labor, much of the time productivity is a quality of a whole supply chain as much or more as a quality of any given point in a supply chain. I mean - if at one point in a supply chain there is productive work being done (coffee growing, coffee roasting) and at a later point in the supply chain workers from that point on stop being productive (you said baristas weren't productive workers) then where did the product go that the productive workers in the supply chain made? Some of it's bought directly by consumers (bags of beans). Some of it's ground up and turned into coffee in the store, which uses up a portion of the coffee beans that enter into the store. If that's not production then I guess must be unproductive destruction of the product of others' labor, right...?

People who are truly unproductive don't add to the recovery of value advanced plus a surplus, which means the company ought to be able to cut those functions at no loss at all. If food service workers are unproductive then why do fast food companies hire them? Are they making a mistake (under/according to the rationality of capitalism) when they do so?

Czad, about Nothing Human's comments, I've got a few replies. First, I think this offers a fairly good summation of Nothing Human's positions in general, and the criticism there is also quite accurate -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3T_xczFl5A

Second, about the particulars of the Sbux campaign... Just because folk have read the public message that says "Starbucks Union" doesn't mean people know the ins and outs of the actual organizing. It's been maybe two or three years since I was really active around that but I was heavily involved in parts of that campaign for a while starting about 5 years ago and I know some of the main organizers very well. You don't have to take my word for this, you can contact me privately and we'll figure out a way to get the campaign to vouch for me. The campaign has been interested in expanding industrially for all of the five years I've been plugged in. And literally every single person who I have some kind of relationship with who is organizing in the campaign (on a conservative estimate that's at least a dozen people who are active in the campaign across the country and I've met in passing at least 50 people involved, having attended two of the big internal meetings the campaign has held) is involved in other organizing in that industry. As just one example, Starbucks organizers were heavily involved in all stages of the Jimmy John's campaign and remain so now.

Third, all of that said, yes, the campaign is mostly focused on Starbucks and mostly focused on baristas. The reason behind this isn't complicated: most of the people involved work at, umm, Starbucks, and they work there as baristas (and baristas are the majority of Starbucks employees). So, they have more relationships with Starbucks baristas than they do with other job classes and with workers at other companies. And organizing tends to move in part according to the relationships people have in the workplace. I want to reiterate though that the campaign has been involved in organizing across the industry for at least five years - in other companies and up and down the supply chain at that company.

Lastly, building up presence in a single chain or employer or location is not necessarily not an industrial campaign. We're a small organization, as someone on here said in a somewhat uncomradely way. Let's say there are three cities where IWW members are beginning to organize. In City A there are 10 IWW members working in fast food and they all work for 10 different companies. In City B there are 10 IWW members working in fast food and they all work for the same company. In City C there are 5 IWW members who just moved to town and want to begin organizing in fast food. They plan to all get jobs in the industry. Should they try to look like City A, or B? That is, should they try to get jobs in different companies or the same company? And, should these groups of IWW members initially focus their efforts on places where they already have members or should they initially focus on expanding into new companies? In my opinion, there are strengths and weaknesses to every option here, but the best approach is to initially try to get as many people together against as few employers as possible, with the explicit goal from the beginning to eventually expand throughout the industry. That way people accomplish noteworthy things faster and retention is higher. In the IWW in the past five years campaigns that take that route tend to last longer and grow bigger than campaigns that spread themselves out more very early on.

And, getting back to the main point: all of these options are forms of organizing that fit with the IWW principles of industrial unionism.

It pisses me off to have to spend time saying all this in the face of ill informed opinion. I don't want to care what anonymous people on the internet think but a lot of people I care a lot about have worked really hard, some of them have spent 4 or 5 years and been through really intense stuff at work over this, so it's really hard to let misleading remarks like Nothing Human's go unanswered.