Are Starbucks Workers Really Getting ‘Organized’?

An Organizer’s Op-Ed of Sorts on the Recent Starbucks Unionizing 

I’m seeing a lot of excitement about the recent flurry of “unionizing” at Starbucks. I welcome this trend too and I hope that it spreads far within and beyond the giant coffee chain, but I can’t help also feeling a bit of skepticism about what this unionization actually entails and what it leaves to be desired.

I’m going to offer a summarized critique of the run-of-the-mill “business unionism” that I see Starbucks Workers United practicing, provide a bit of historical context for the organizing that the press is leaving out, and lay out a brief argument for a better, more effective model of organizing that will be useful not only to workers at Starbucks, but at any workplace in any industry, right now.

Before I explain my skepticism, I’ll say this: I’m rooting for the Starbucks workers. But - while I don’t want to assume too much about how the organizing at Starbucks is being done, what I’ve seen so far fits into a pattern of “unionizing” that’s very familiar and has a lot of problems. 

It’s helpful to understand the unfortunate truth that there’s often a very big difference between “unionizing” a workplace and truly “organizing” workers, which is what really shifts the balance of power on the job in favor of the workers so that they can address their grievances effectively. “Unionizing” and “organizing” as concepts are not necessarily at odds, but the difference can be profound and have vastly different outcomes.

Unionizing is often a numbers game: the formula is essentially to get 30% of the workers to sign cards authorizing an external organization to bargain on their behalf, make a pitiful public appeal to the moral decency of the powerful, and POOF!, you have a “union”. But what history and my own experience demonstrate time and again is that this tired formula not only de-emphasizes (if not deliberately prevents) workers’ actual involvement in the process, but it puts union bureaucrats in the driver’s seat of the organizing campaign and sets it on a trajectory that’s much more predictable and deferential to the employer. But that’s not all. 

Usually the campaign is crushed, because it was playing by the rules that were written by and for the employers in the first place (see also: virtually all labor law). Then sometimes they “succeed” (meaning, they won an election), but the problem persists: the workers have little or no training on how to conduct their own organizing effectively and have learned to rely on their very docile (despite occasional big talk) union brass and a legal system better described as a cruel joke for workers. The employer may play along and throw peanuts at the workers, but their power over workplace conditions remains essentially uncontested. Often, promises are unkept and conditions backslide. Oh, in the process, maybe you helped some “pro-labor” politician who spoke at your rally get a few more votes. It’s “unionism” on the terms of the employers and the law, and it’s a path rife with costly shortcuts when it comes to truly building workers’ power. 

Organizing looks very different. It understands that the workers hold the key to their own better future, and it focuses on worker-to-worker relationship building—fostering the bonds of solidarity that allow workers to discover this “key” and then use it. It means starting with what matters most to the workers and organizing around that, instead of projecting issues and solutions onto them. It means offering education and training that empowers and emboldens workers without insulting their innate intelligence. It means mobilizing supporters without them acting in the stead of the workers. And by damned, it means discovering and flexing that muscle of collective power on the job, where workers are most powerful. It’s “unionism” on the workers’ terms, and it doesn’t matter if the employer, the press or anyone else decides it’s a “union” or not. You can call this phenomenon a “union”, or you can call it “banana” for all I care. The content—workers acting like a union—is what’s important. 

With this understanding, “organizing” is essentially about building relationships with workers, while “unionizing” is about building a relationship with the employer. If a union’s purported aim is to advance the interests of workers, then why would it spend so much energy on the latter? 

If it wasn’t already clear - I’m not anti-union. Quite the opposite. What’s important here is how we define and practice unionism, and I take exception to the prevailing definition and practice of it today. I often say that “union” is a verb more than it is a noun. If in a “union” you don’t see workers themselves in the driver seat, together, taking action on the job where they have the most power, developing their own sense of agency to change their conditions, and practicing meaningful solidarity with workers in adjacent nodes in the supply chain and beyond when called upon to do so… then it’s hard for me to think of it as much more than an expensive dog and pony show put on by highly paid “Labor Relations” professionals. That’s a lot less compelling isn’t it? 

It takes time to build up a solid committee of workers who can take successful action on the job, win better conditions and defend their gains, who are prepared to weather the storm when the employer inevitably pushes back, and who truly share and take ownership over the work of organizing. Building workers’ power through organizing is not a numbers game (although clearly the more workers involved, the merrier); there are no shortcuts, and no ballot victory or formal bargaining agreement will replace the far superior power of the organized workers.

Interestingly, there is actually historical precedent for this kind of genuine organizing at Starbucks. While the press is sounding the trumpets for the “first unionized Starbucks” locations in history, you may be surprised to learn that the recent organizing led by Starbucks United is not the first organizing effort at Starbucks. Like, at all. In fact, it was the grassroots Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) that made the first major organizing foray into the coffee chain starting around 2004. The IWW’s Starbucks campaign lasted for several years and involved hundreds of workers, and it was arguably the IWW’s most visible and successful organizing endeavor during that time. The workers’ creative, ambitious, and often successful direct actions made tangible improvements in workplace conditions and transformed those involved from despondent subjects of corporate tyranny into dignified workplace militants. Their actions also generated considerable buzz in the press, as did the nefarious union-busting tactics employed by then-CEO Howard Schultz (sound familiar?). But perhaps because none of those workers attempted the formalized union election process (which was actually a strategic decision on the part of the workers), even sympathetic media today somehow do not consider this union activity “unionizing” and they make zero mention of it today. 

That particular wave of IWW organizing at Starbucks eventually waned. Victories were achieved, mistakes were made, and many of its participants eventually transitioned into other industries. The campaign’s successes, as well as its blunders, proved to be valuable lessons that the IWW absorbed into its training curricula and its organizing methodology. The campaign also dispelled any illusions the IWW had about working within the “labor relations” system.

But the more important piece here is that the experiences the workers shared and the lessons they learned during those years have followed them, and they continue to provide them with a rich source of confidence and wisdom as they confront new injustices in the workplace and beyond. They’ve taken the union with them and it will likely be with them for life. The task of the labor movement today should be to find better ways of sustaining what these workers started, especially as unprecedented numbers of new Starbucks workers step onto the stage of history to assert their dignity. 

So, it remains to be seen how things will play out in this recent unionizing wave at Starbucks. I’m hoping for the best outcome for the workers and I’ll gladly do what I can to support them in improving their conditions if called on to do so. But this is a timely opportunity to address some lingering concerns I have with unions in the mainstream today, and to advocate for a better unionism that workers can actually get excited about and use today.

To learn more about organizing and how you can also do it, visit www.iww.org. 

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Mike H is a longtime organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World union and is a co-author of Wobblyism: Toward a Revolutionary Unionism for Today. Big woop. He couldn’t be bothered with Twitter but he does respond to good faith inquiries at shelloftheold@gmail.com. Holler.