Starbucks announced during the initial push for unionization in Buffalo last October that pay raises for tenured partners (one of the major goals for the movement) would come at the end of January. I, a long-time shift supervisor, couldn’t wait for my $1.50/hr.
It doesn’t seem like much, but that $160/month was gonna go into actual savings, into car repairs, quality of life improvements. And it didn’t come.
Today, I found out through an email left on our store printer, and not through my store manager (as one might expect) that because I make slightly more than “market value” (meaning $1.50 above the minimum starting wage of a shift supervisor in my area) that I was already earning what my experience and years of dedication through some pretty rough times was worth to them.
I’ve reached out to other spurned tenured partners in my area, and tonight I start learning our local and state labor laws; so that tomorrow, we start organizing.
In Solidarity, Clark Griswold