News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo http://tinyurl.com/32l23k
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: January 22, 2008
The dramatic battles of the American labor movement were often fought in
hazardous settings like the coal fields of Kentucky or the textile mills
of Massachusetts.
In recent times, though, a different type of labor dispute has become
familiar in New York, focused on the retail outlets that keep upscale
customers fed and caffeinated.
And so it was that a crowd of about 50 people wrapped in scarves and
bandannas against the cold gathered Monday morning outside a Starbucks
at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 33rd Street.
As their breath steamed the air, they chanted and sang. They carried
long banners bearing the logo of the Industrial Workers of the World, a
union founded in 1905 that has been trying to organize Starbucks workers
since 2004.
Red and black anarchist flags waved in the wind, and one woman held
aloft a placard depicting a pouncing black cat toppling what appeared to
be a venti latte cup emblazoned with a dollar sign.
This type of labor action has become a familiar story in a city that
takes its coffee and takeout seriously. For example, the Teamsters
accused FreshDirect, the grocery delivery company, of firing workers
just before a union vote last fall, an assertion the company denied. The
unionization effort failed.
In October, the National Labor Relations Board said that two Saigon
Grill restaurants, among the most highly rated Asian restaurants in New
York, had illegally retaliated against workers who banded together. The
owner has denied wrongdoing.
The home of the caramel macchiato, Starbucks, has drawn some of the most
consistent criticism, often from employees associated with the
Industrial Workers of the World. Last April, the National Labor
Relations Board accused Starbucks of breaking the law 30 times in
fighting union activity at four Manhattan shops. The company has
attributed the accusations to a handful of disgruntled workers.
Outside the shop Monday, Daniel Gross, 28, a former Starbucks employee,
said the group was there to advance its union organizing effort and to
protest Starbucks’s refusal to pay workers overtime for working on
Martin Luther King’s Birthday.
Inside the shop a Starbucks company spokesman, David Vermillion,
distributed a written statement saying the company pays overtime for
working on several other holidays, like Memorial Day and Thanksgiving.
After about half an hour outside the Starbucks, the crowd walked east to
hold a second demonstration outside another target of the I.W.W., Wild
Edibles, a seafood store on Third Avenue.
The protesters lined Third Avenue in front of the seafood shop, chanting
and holding placards. A man delivering a laundered supply of white
uniforms for Wild Edibles approached. Rather than pass through what he
was told was a picket line, he wished them well, went back across the
street and waited in his truck.
Among those protesting was Cesar Barturen, 47, who said he had worked
for 10 years as a driver for Wild Edibles, delivering seafood from a
Long Island City warehouse until September, when he and several other
workers were fired after trying to organize a union drive.
“The owner, he told me he didn’t want the union,” Mr. Barturen said.
Thomas J. Bianco, a lawyer for the shop, did not respond to a request
for comment.
http://www.iww.org/
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3akhhr
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_.
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_
