[Q&A] How Would Communists Lead the Campaign to Organize Starbucks?

Thousands of Starbucks workers are engaged in a struggle to organize a union and win better wages and working conditions. How can this fight be brought to a successful conclusion? 

Communists start by seeing the big picture. We want all workers in this industry to be organized. The campaign to organize at Starbucks should not be confined to this company alone. Companies like Dunkin Donuts, Panera, Pret a Manger and others like them should be included in the campaign. Every worker in the supply chain should be included—from baristas to those who work in the warehouses, distribution, and roasting facilities.

Tell workers the truth—it won’t be easy but it can be done

Anyone worker alive today knows that winning union recognition and a significant increase in wages and benefits is not easy. But anything worth having is worth fighting for. This will take a real struggle and the workers must wage it. Nobody will do it for us and we should have no confidence in the bosses’ government to help us.

How can we attract workers across all locations?

Organizing workers in a union must be connected to real change on the job, and a successful campaign must put forward concrete demands. How we win these demands and how long it will take will become clear as the struggle progresses, but we will never mobilize workers on the basis of abstractions. As an example, fighting for a minimum wage of $30 per hour and the right to bargain over dress codes, schedules, and staffing levels is concrete. Furthermore, anyone who joins the union should be covered by the union agreement, no matter which location they work at. Demands like these would give all workers in the industry a stake in joining the union and taking the action necessary to attain their collective demands.

Should we just organize store by store?

The SBWU is doing this because they are following federal labor law, which was written to help the bosses, not to help workers. But our strength comes from our numbers, and instead of remaining atomized in our individual stores, any serious organizing campaign must start by bringing together all workers in this industry in a particular metropolitan area. These aggregated numbers will increase the workers’ confidence and help with the cohesion and education of worker-organizers, the backbone of any successful campaign.

How would strikes or other job actions be organized?

To coordinate the struggle, every area should hold all-members meetings and elect a strike committee to spearhead the fight against the company, with decisions taken by the committee accountable to the general meetings.

The only way to win is to have real support among the workers. Members and supporters of the union must decide what actions to take and when. Workers must want to engage in strikes and other actions and the union and its supporters must have the numbers to actually shut down the stores.—protest pickets don’t affect the company’s bottom line. Solidarity from others who can reinforce the picket lines are always welcome, but they cannot substitute themselves for the workers.

As workers engage in struggle, their class consciousness, confidence, and unity grows. On the basis of experience, their political understanding is transformed and they begin to draw more general conclusions about the state of the world and the need to change it. The realization that the bosses need the workers but the workers don’t need them is a powerful thing. The communists will be right there with them in struggle and helping them connect the dots!