Beau of the Fifth Column: Let's talk about Starbucks, unions, and you....

[TexasTowelie]

[Warpy]

1. I've had union jobs and I've had non union jobs

and union jobs are always better. Even a bad union is better than no union.

The last organizing push I was involved in failed. Night shift, my shift, 95% signed union cards. Day shift, fewer than 10%. Why? The place spent millions on union busters who came in and convinced everybody that unions were for fat, sweaty old guys in stained T shirts, not for angels in white in a hospital. Yeah, it was just that dumb and it worked.

It wasn't wasted effort, I got the first raise I'd had in 13 years and my fellow gadflies who joined me in spending breaks getting people to sign cards are still brothers and sisters. That was it, though, raises since then have been chump change and didn't even cover the increased cost of employee deductions.

"United we bargain, divided we beg" sums it up very succinctly. Think about that the next time a drive is on and a bunch of suits you've never seen before are huddled with management. Those fat, sweaty old guys in the stained T shirts were onto something.