Billionaire packed Supreme Court rules for Howard Schultz, Starbucks union-busting billionaire owner
minimum wage,NLRB,Unionization
"Supreme Court, in Starbucks Ruling, Curbs Labor Regulator’s Authority"
"The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Starbucks in a challenge against a labor ruling by a federal judge, making it more difficult for a key federal agency to intervene when a company is accused of illegally suppressing labor organizing...
The ruling came in a case brought by Starbucks over the firing of seven workers in Memphis who were trying to unionize a store in 2022... The workers, who called themselves the Memphis Seven, said that they were fired for their unionization efforts and that the company didn’t typically enforce the rules they were accused of violating." - NY Times
Billionaires have rigged the system to make it harder for workers to get a living wage, healthcare and safe working conditions. How? Follow the money that mega-billion corporations send to the Business Roundtable, GOP and union-busting law firms to get richer. What rights do workers have to organize? What does the National Labor Relations Board say about this? Resources from the Labor Lab and CWA? Follow along with this relationship map.
Follow the money that billionaires use to exploit workers with help from the GOP and the Business Roundtable
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Starbucks exploits workers
"Starbucks fired seven union activists, including five of the six members of the store’s organizing committee. The firings had the intended effect of spreading fear and frustrating the organizing effort in Memphis and other cities. The firings were part of a nationwide anti-union campaign by the corporation: Starbucks has committed more than 400 violations of labor law, according to federal authorities, including firing at least 59 union leaders and supporters.
Employers frequently fire or otherwise retaliate against workers during union campaigns; they’re charged with violating federal law in more than 40 percent of union election campaigns. These violations, which are called unfair labor practices, often have a stark multiplier effect: Reprisals against just one or two people send a strong message to co-workers, chilling them from exercising their rights and often nipping a campaign in the bud." - Slate
How billionaires have rigged the system
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, worth $3.7 billion, was annoyed when lawmakers called him a billionaire - Business Insider
Average Hourly Rate for Starbucks Corporation Employees - Payscale
Supreme Court: Gifts for Justices Explained - Newsweek
Howard Schultz anti-union speech
Starbucks launched an aggressive counteroffensive to hamper pro-union sentiment, intimidate workers, and interfere with daily operations. The company held weekly mandatory anti-union meetings, temporarily closed unionizing stores, flooded stores with corporate executives, raised wages, and brought in Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, to give an anti-union speech to workers in a hotel ballroom. - VICE
Read more about Starubucks and Howard Schultz' union busting
Unions are vital for economic justice
Unions promote a healthy democracy - Unions are democratically run organizations that have always been and continue to be the most powerful and effective counterbalance to the influence of corporate money and power in our American democracy. Union members are also more likely to take advantage of their right to vote and engage in the legislative process. Unions give working families a voice.
Unions promote economic justice - Historically, wealth inequality is at its lowest when union membership is at its highest. That’s because unions improve working conditions and wages for all workers, hold corporations accountable, and ensure the rules of the economy work for the people who do the work. Even non-union workers receive financial benefits when union membership is high because employers are forced to compete against good union contracts. Women and people of color also have higher wages and better benefits in unionized workplaces.
Unions promote social justice - Unions have been essential to narrowing the wage gaps between women and men, fighting workplace discrimination, and promoting community justice. For example, the civil rights movement aligned itself with unions because of the central role collective action plays in the struggle for social justice. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while taking part in the Memphis sanitation-workers strike, just as he was entering into a broader social justice strategy that engaged the working class on every level. Without strong unions, social justice will remain unattainable. - Labor Lab
Contact a union organizer
Right to organize
"Employees have the right to unionize, to join together to advance their interests as employees, and to refrain from such activity. It is unlawful for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights. For example, employers may not respond to a union organizing drive by threatening, interrogating, or spying on pro-union employees, or by promising benefits if they forget about the union.
Collective bargaining
Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (the Act) guarantees employees "the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection," as well as the right "to refrain from any or all such activities." - NLRB
TakeAway: Elections matter. Vote for President Biden and Democrats to fight for workerss rights - not their billionaire donors.
Deepak
DemLabs
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We can count on our corrupt supreme court to rule to whatever their billionaire buddies want them too. These monsters decided their comfort was more important than ruling in favor of the working class. They aren't worthy of the seats hey rule from.
Vote! We. Are. The. Calvary! 🌊