Look ma I'm on TV!! Gonna put the contents of our letter beneath the read more for anyone who wants to check it out and doesn't want to click on Twitter
Dear Howard,
In solidarity with partners from coast to coast, beginning in Buffalo one year ago, we are officially announcing our intent to unionize in order to bring our store more in line with the original mission and values of our company, and to ask that Starbucks honor its promise to elevate the partner experience by recognizing our right to bargain and have a seat at the negotiating table.
While some of us have only just become partners and others have made it into a lifetime pursuit, we are all united by one undeniable realization: That our employer is no longer prioritizing our health and financial stability over corporate profits and investor payouts. Time and time again, we have been assured by our leaders that our concerns about compensation and scheduling will be addressed, only for them to not only persist but become exponentially worse, during what is traditionally our busiest and most stressful time of the year. While stockholders celebrate, we have partners in our store who cannot afford to partake in the holidays this year due to inconsistent pay rates that not only fail to account for seniority in any consistent fashion, but also fail to meet the reality of the market we currently live in. We have been pressured into keeping the majority of our week open and unobstructed for ease of scheduling, only to have our individual hours slashed and the store’s overall hours stymied, creating a near-constant churn of overworked and underpaid partners running on the bare minimum amount of bodies to keep the store afloat. Throughout all of this, our leadership is entirely absent save for when it’s to chastise us for failing to meet arbitrary expectations based on metrics that we cannot control, and promptly vanish once again when we request scheduling that fits our actual needs, and not what corporate dictates.
We are choosing to unionize because we believe in Starbucks’ ability to do better, despite the mounting evidence that they are actively opposed to doing so. We believe that compensation should be consistent and equitable across all partners, and that it’s unacceptable for partners who have given years of their lives to the company be given mere pennies more than those who are just beginning. We believe that when our store is scheduled properly, in accordance with individual availability and with enough hours to meet all partners' needs, that we can create a superior customer experience without sacrificing our own health and wellbeing. We also believe that unionization is a necessary step in order to prompt the company to take our beliefs seriously, and respect them as we have collectively respected the company for so many years.
In solidarity, [list of signatories]