{"id":248,"date":"2005-05-23T10:52:31","date_gmt":"2005-05-23T18:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/05\/venti_wobblies.html"},"modified":"2005-05-23T10:52:31","modified_gmt":"2005-05-23T18:52:31","slug":"venti_wobblies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/05\/venti_wobblies.html","title":{"rendered":"Venti Wobblies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Employees at a Midtown Starbucks are attempting to unionize. Management sends in the Pinkerton agents. New York Magazine has the story &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nymetro.com\/nymetro\/news\/features\/12060\/index.html\">&#8220;A Union Revolution is Brewing&#8221;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>It sounds very Brave New World, but [Barista Daniel] Gross prefers an Old South analogy. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about wage slavery here,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says, slamming his hand on the table in a non-multinational East Village caf\u00c3\u00a9 so hard that a water glass jumps. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are very aware of the implications of that term. We wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use it if we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think there were inherent similarities to plantation slavery.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Unlike an antebellum cotton farm, however, Starbucks does offer comprehensive health-care benefits to two thirds of its workforce, those clocking twenty hours or more a week. And Fortune magazine just rated it the second-best large employer in the nation.<\/p>\n<p>Gross scoffs. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Their dirty little secret is the repetitive strain injuries,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Starbucks is not some old-world European coffeehouse. We face an extraordinary demand every day, while an epidemic of understaffing requires us to work at lightning speed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the bending and stooping, the risk of steam burns, the carpal tunnel syndrome from pulling hundreds of espressos. By the time Gross pauses for breath, Starbucks, which prides itself on being a comforting \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Third Place\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwelcoming customers into a sphere that is neither work nor home\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsounds more like a Dickensian workshop.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Employees at a Midtown Starbucks are attempting to unionize. Management sends in the Pinkerton agents. New York Magazine has the story &#8212; &#8220;A Union Revolution is Brewing&#8221;: It sounds very Brave New World, but [Barista Daniel] Gross prefers an Old South analogy. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about wage slavery here,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says, slamming his hand on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class_war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}