Up With the Workers

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The Starbucks organizing wave is here

www.upwiththeworkers.org

The Starbucks organizing wave is here

Solidarity with all the workers who have had no choice but to keep working in unsafe conditions during the pandemic.

Amie Stager
Feb 11, 2022
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The Starbucks organizing wave is here

www.upwiththeworkers.org

Buckle up, folks! We have a lot of worker news this week.

☕ Wake up and smell the power

One Starbucks in Minneapolis at 47th and Cedar Ave and one in St. Paul on Snelling Avenue are demanding union recognition and have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election.

From a press release this morning:

“We as workers at Starbucks invest our time, well-being and safety into a company that has shown repeated apathy towards its employees. We work in the midst of an ongoing global health crisis, and see little to no support…We want to see Starbucks become a healthier and more equitable workplace… We are organizing a union at the Snelling and Stanford store in Saint Paul to improve our workplace for ourselves, for members of our community, and for Starbucks as a whole.”

Starbucks has been going heavy on the union busting tactics. This week, they just fired seven baristas for organizing in Memphis.

Twitter avatar for @SBWorkersUnited
SBWorkersUnited @SBWorkersUnited
If Starbucks thought firing Memphis union leaders would silence us they-they are mistaken. Our movement is only getting stronger, and we know that we will win our jobs back, our union, and our fundamental human & civil right to organize! Wake up and smell the power.
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9:14 PM ∙ Feb 10, 2022
2,141Likes521Retweets
Twitter avatar for @MorePerfectUS
More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS
EXCLUSIVE: Pro-union Starbucks workers in Memphis speak publicly for the first time since being fired. They say they were fired for “policies that were never enforced before” including “working off the clock” by “locking the door.” “It’s to silence us and we won’t be silenced.”
3:04 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2022
2,597Likes878Retweets
Twitter avatar for @CMRJB
CMRJB @CMRJB
MINNESOTA! There is sibling solidarity in the Twin Cities. Starbucks partners in Minneapolis AND Saint Paul are joining the @SBWorkersUnited movement.
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6:55 PM ∙ Feb 11, 2022
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As a former Starbucks barista, this is so exciting to me! Stay tuned for more!


✏️ 🗳️ St. Paul educators union authorized a strike vote

On Thursday, the executive board of the St. Paul Federation of Educators voted unanimously to authorize a strike vote for next Thursday.

Solidarity with members of SPFE and MFT Local 59 who are hosting a march tomorrow. 

An artwork depicting Black and Brown people holding up protest signs reading "living wage now" "the time is now"
“My Vote.” Work by Ricardo Levins Morales.

⚠️ Will our state government hold Amazon accountable?

On Tuesday,  Rep. Emma Greenman introduced a bill that would update safety standards for warehouse workers requiring transparency around quotas. The bill passed through the House Labor, Industry, Veterans and Military Affairs Finance and Policy Committee.

Many workers testified about Amazon’s work culture of fear and paranoia around productivity and retaliation. The NELP report released in December has details on injury rates and exploitative conditions. 

Twitter avatar for @athenaforall
Athena Coalition @athenaforall
“Working at @amazon was a nightmare. I worry about those currently there, and those who’ll work there in future. I want our lawmakers to hold amazon accountable. It must be held accountable for the injuries to workers who’ll have those injuries for life." Safiyo Mohamed #HF2664
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9:40 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2022
7Likes3Retweets
Twitter avatar for @athenaforall
Athena Coalition @athenaforall
"We only get one body. Only get one back. @amazon or no other company should have the right to tear your body apart. It’s our responsibilities to take care of each other." Ladell Roberts, former warehouse worker urging Minnesota House Committee to champion workers with #HF2774
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10:04 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2022

Listen to Amazon workers at this press conference held by the Awood Center. 

A piece from The Markup by Maddy Varner (@tenuous) and Dara Kerr (@darakerr) on how the COVID-19 rates inside Amazon warehouses reflect a harmful lack of transparency:

“Amazon has all this information,” said Debbie Berkowitz, former chief of staff and senior policy adviser at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA.) “They know exactly the risk that workers are facing. They know exactly how many are getting injured and sick. And it’s stunning that they’re deciding to withhold that from their workers.” 


💰 Frontline worker payments bill is through its first committee

On Wednesday, essential workers continued to give testimony about their experiences working during the pandemic. Rep. Cedrick Frazier introduced a bill that the House Workforce and Business Development Finance and Policy Committee​​ passed that would give $1 billion to essential workers.

Twitter avatar for @minnesota_faith
Faith In Minnesota @minnesota_faith
Zuleima with @UFCW663 shares her experience cutting meat in Worthington. In April 2020, she was one of the first people at her plant who tracked COVID and calls on lawmakers to pass HF2900. #MakeItRight #mnleg
8:13 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2022
3Likes1Retweet
Twitter avatar for @seiumn
SEIU Minnesota @seiumn
Essential workers didn't have a choice but go to work while many Minnesotans stayed home. Our economic recovery is possible only because of their sacrifices. #mnleg
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7:34 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2022
23Likes11Retweets
Twitter avatar for @EducationMN
Education Minnesota @EducationMN
Centennial educator Anne Thomsen urges #mnleg to pass $1,500 frontline worker pay checks for hourly school staff & other essential workers. "It would go a long way to acknowledge the sacrifices educators have made so we all can get through this pandemic." #edmnvotes #makeitright
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7:31 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2022
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👀 Watch: A roundtable of essential workers from ​​February 5.

One-time payments are not enough but they’re a step in the right direction. Workers don’t just need better pay, they also need better working conditions, and their employers must be held accountable for violations. They’ve expressed a need for urgency, but will the slow crawl of bureaucracy deliver our community members that we’ve exalted as heroes?


📈 📉1.78 Trillion: The amount of money taken from the working class in 2017. For In These Times, Eric Dirnbach (@EricDirnbach) and Colleen Boyle (@onaturtlesback) calculated how much money workers have been deprived of due to a rate of compensation disproportionate with productivity.


📣 Black people belong in Minnesota: Owner of Black Garnet Books Dionne Sims (@OhDionne) reflects on the emotions and realities of growing up here:

“What we don’t talk about much about being a Black child is that you don’t have to understand racism to understand fear, and I was scared to my bones. I knew then what hate looked like, even if I didn’t have the words for it.”

young Black girl stands above crowd next to a sign reading "protect young black lives"
This week, youth across the Twin Cities have been calling for more protection for young Black lives after the MPD killing of Amir Locke and multiple shootings of student.

This week, youth across the Twin Cities have been calling for more protection of young Black lives after fatal shootings of young Black men in the community, including the Minneapolis Police Department officer Mark Hanneman who shot and killed Amir Locke.


🛠️ 🔊 Listen: This KFAI MinneCulture segment with writer, carpenter, and activist Josina Manu Maltzman is awesome. They’re interviewed on their experience being a carpenter and a queer, nonbinary woman in the building trades, and how they started a career in writing.

“I deal with a ton of misogyny in the trades, but I’ve also had to face my own racism and my own class privileges as I learn and grow into carpentry. I felt like that was as much a part of the story and an important lens because the workplace is where all these power structures are fighting each other.”


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We are not machines. We are each other’s harvest.

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The Starbucks organizing wave is here

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