With brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• From the Seattle Times:
"Workers at a second Seattle Starbucks location have joined the nationwide wave of unionization at the coffee giant — this time at one of the company’s flagship roastery locations.
"Employees at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, located at Pike Street and Melrose Avenue in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, voted 38-27 to unionize with Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. About 100 workers were eligible to vote, and three ballots were challenged. The National Labor Relations Board announced the vote count Thursday.
"The hometown vote shows 'we’re really just hitting the gas with this movement,' said barista Liz Duran. Starbucks said in a statement Thursday, 'We will respect the process and will bargain in good faith. … We hope that the union does the same'."
Workers at more than 200 Starbucks stores in the US have voted to unionize; the company owns more than 8,000 in the US.
This one has to really stick in Howard Schultz's craw - the roastery format is his baby, but there are just six of them, and my sense is that they've never captured the public imagination in the way he hoped. As Shakespeare once wrote, "Those who are betrayed do feel the treason sharply." Though, to be fair, he added, "Yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe." We'll see how this all turns out.
