STARBUCKS WORKERS UNION EXPANDS TO MARYLAND

------------UNBOWED BY ILLEGAL TERMINATIONS, STARBUCKS WORKERS UNION EXPANDS TO
MARYLAND!------------

Dear Starbucks Union Activists,

The new year is starting off with a bang for the IWW Starbucks Workers Union
. Included below is our press release announcing the
expansion of the campaign to Maryland- our third state!

Thank you very much for giving generously during our holiday funding drive.
The funds raised are already being used to unite Starbucks workers toward a
better life for all multinational retail workers. If you haven't yet had a
chance to give, consider doing so at
<http://www.starbucksunion.org/contribute>. Every contribution helps!

We wanted you to be the first to know: the IWW Starbucks Workers Union and the
Justice from Bean to Cup! campaign are set to call for our first protest at
Starbucks' Annual Meeting on March 21, 2007 in Seattle. The Annual Meeting is
the day Starbucks showcases its false socially responsible brand image to
investors and the world. We're crashing the party this year and hope you'll
help get the word out. Details and materials are forthcoming.

Baristas have created a growing and independent voice on the job at Starbucks-
a feat some said was not possible. To continue the push, we need your
continued support. Whether it's reaching out to Starbucks workers in your
community, holding a fundraiser for the campaign, or endorsing a boycott of
Starbucks products with your organization, there's plenty of options to choose
from. Contact us at to get involved.

Thank you for your vision of a society where working people are free.

In Solidarity,

SWU

Starbucks Workers Union Expands to Maryland in Spite of Harsh Anti-Union Effort

Barista Struggle for Fair Wages and Secure Hours Extends Across Three States

January 19, 2007

Rockville, Maryland- Employees at a Starbucks store here announced their
membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union today
and served a list of demands on their manager including a living wage, secure
work hours, and the reinstatement of union baristas illegally fired for
organizing activity. The action marks the expansion of the SWU to a third
state- baristas began joining the union in New York City and the campaign grew
to Chicago last August. Starbucks cafes were completely non-union in the
United States before the Industrial Workers of the World initiated its
organizing drive in 2004.

"No worker should have to deal with understaffing on one hand and the inability
to get enough work hours on the other," said Seth Dietz, one of the Maryland
baristas who declared his union membership. "Only an independent voice on the
job will win baristas the respect we deserve and that's the why the expansion
of the organization to Maryland is so gratifying."

The union believes that consistent pressure applied against the company at
Starbucks locations, in the community, and in the public arena has resulted in
higher wages and more steady work hours for baristas. After about two and half
years of organizing, many NYC baristas saw their wage increase almost 25%. The
SWU has also remedied individual grievances with the company in areas as
diverse as sleep-depriving work schedules, unsanitary working conditions, and
abusive managers. The campaign has captivated imaginations around the world
with support for the baristas coming from Europe, Korea, and New Zealand, among
other places.

Despite the union gains, Starbucks workers still start at a poverty wage in the
$7 or $8 per hour range and no baristas are permitted full-time status. While
Starbucks frequently touts its health care offering, the company insures just
42% of its workforce- less than Wal-Mart, a company notorious for its poor
health care benefits.

"Starbucks public relations prowess won't change the fact that many baristas
live in poverty and the majority are not covered by company health care," said
Laura De Anda, an SWU member recently fired from an NYC Starbucks for union
activity. "As members of the Industrial Workers of the World, baristas are not
silenced anymore by Starbucks' fake socially responsible image."

Starbucks and its Chairman Howard Schultz have come under increasing criticism
from unions and human rights groups over labor abuses against baristas and
coffee farmers. In March 2006, the company entered into a settlement agreement
with the National Labor Relations Board over unfair labor practice charges from
the SWU. The company had to reinstate two workers discharged for organizing
activity and rescind national policies against sharing written union
information and wearing union pins.

After the settlement agreement, the coffee giant has continued union-busting
with impunity in a bid to destroy the SWU. Six SWU baristas are currently out
of a job in retaliation for their union activity. Company threats,
surveillance, and propaganda continue full steam ahead. Instead of moving
toward substantive respect for workers, the company has responded to its
increasingly vocal critics with more public relations efforts including
full-page ads in the New York Times defending its benefits and the slick but
hollow website www.whatmakescoffeegood.com
<http://www.whatmakescoffeegood.com>.

"If Starbucks respects employees right to join a union, a Caramel Frappuccino
is an authentic Italian coffee drink," quipped New York City barista and SWU
member Pete Montalbano. "Howard Schultz and Starbucks need to face the fact
that we're here, we're growing, and we have a right to exist."

###

The only thing these corporate giants understand is force.

A living wage and secure work hours are pretty reasonable "demands".

Why anyone would wait in an endless line for coffee is beyond me. But my other half does it gladly and I don't begrudge the amount spent because I do appreciate the companies ethics.

Their fair trade program is misleading. They are firing union organizers. They refuse to change from their janitorial company that has a very bad human rights record. Get my drift. There are other fast cup coffee houses etc...

http://poorfarmer.blogspot.com/2007/01/storm-in-coffee-cup-starbucks-defends.html

http://www.starbucksunion.org/

http://www.pww.org/article/view/3671/1/169/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=106&topic_id=29735




http://www.iww.org/en/node/3057

E-Mail Action: Tell Starbucks to Sign Ethiopian Coffee Farmer Agreement and Respect Right to Organize
Submitted by intexile on Wed, 11/29/2006 - 3:44pm.

The meeting of Starbucks' CEO with Ethiopia's Prime Minister has not changed the company's mind on a licensing agreement which respects the cultural heritage of coffee farmers. Starbucks says the coffee farmers don't need the licensing agreement just like baristas don't need a union- because the company is already so magnanimous. Tell that to coffee farmers living in brutal poverty and baristas struggling to make ends meet often without health care. More information about the proposed agreement is available on Oxfam's website: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/campaigns/coffee/s... . Please take a moment to register your distaste for this extreme corporate greed from Starbucks: http://starbucksunion.org/node/1127

Dear Chairman Schultz,

I am deeply distressed that you have once again rejected an agreement which would allow Ethiopian coffee formers to control their own cultural heritage. On November 29th, in a meeting in Ethiopia's capital city between Starbucks CEO Jim Donald and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopians assured Starbucks a royalty-free licensing agreement. Despite this assurance, you have insisted on maintaining your unfair market position while Ethiopian coffee farmers live in brutal poverty. How can you sleep at night knowing that you are profiting off the place names of exquisite Ethiopian Coffee- Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, Harrar- as coffee farming families struggle to feed themselves, access clean water, and send children to school?

I am also disturbed that you have taken the same paternalistic approach to Ethiopian coffee farmers that you have taken toward Starbucks baristas joining a union for a better life on the job. Your socially responsible marketing gimmicks do not put food on the table for baristas or coffee farmers.

I support the Justice from Bean to Cup! campaign linking baristas and coffee farmers across the Starbucks supply chain for a living wage and respect. Stop interfering with the fundamental right of baristas and coffee farmers to an independent voice on the job. Sign the trademark agreement with Ethiopia and respect the right of baristas to join a labor union.

I expect your prompt attention to this matter....Send the message by clicking here: http://starbucksunion.org/node/1127

http://www.phillyunions.com/phillyjwj/index.php?sectionid=61&pageid=143

In January 2003, the Union of Needletrades and Textile Industrial Employee (UNITE!) launched a campaign to organize laundry service employees of the Cintas Corporation. Philadelphia Jobs With Justice made Cintas and organizing priority in May, 2003.

The Cintas Corporation is the largest laundry service company in the world and is aggressively expanding its operations. 5 million people wear Cintas uniforms to work everyday and Cintas has over 500,000 customers including Starbucks (mats and towels), Ford Motor Company and Firestone. This gives Cintas more than 30% of the industrial laundry market. In 2002, Cintas recorded $234 million in profits.

Despite the economic health of the company, Cintas has a deplorable record of workers rights and has proven itself as one of the most vicious anti-union companies in the nation. UNITE has had no success organizing workers in any one of Cintas� 170 laundry plants, 10 depots, 10 cleanroom laundries or 14 manufacturing facilities (many of the manufacturing facilities are sweatshops in developing nations in Mexico and Central America). Despite the difficulties John Sweeny, President of the AFL-CIO, has called this campaign one of the most important unionization drives for the long term health of the labor movement.

Cintas has been able to successfully prevent unionization efforts by intimidating its largely female, immigrant workforce. To insure a divided workforce, Cintas uses gender and race divisions to prevent unity among laundry workers. I offer these statistics from the Cintas plants in and around Philadelphia as an example:

� Minorities make up 87% of the production work force.
� Whites make up 82% of the deliver drivers.
� Only two of the drivers are women.
� The majority of production workers are women.
� Indian/Southeast Asian workers at the NE Philadelphia plant are routinely hired at $1-$2 per hour less than their white counterparts.

The situation is much the same in plants all across the country. This structure purposefully imposes roadblocks to organizing by pitting whites against minorities and men against women. Not only is it illegal, it is immoral.

UNITE and the AFL-CIO has called on activists to help win this fight. But, as you probably have noticed, how do we, the general public, fight a company that largely operates behind the scenes of Philadelphia business?

Starbucks Coffee Company, which markets its product with a claim of being pro-worker and pro-environment, has an exclusive contracting agreement with the Cintas Corporation.

As long as Starbucks out sources its sweatshop practices, activists will be there to expose the hypocrisy. Though community activists have yet to call a general boycott of Starbucks, they have stepped up action in the last few months in order to encourage Starbucks to let Cintas know that their anti-union stance is jeopardizing their business relationship.

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/1795.html

Global Exchange and USFT Respond to Starbucks’ Fair Trade announcement

Global Exchange
April 29, 2004
Tim Kingston Val Orth
For Immediate Release: Thursday, April 29, 2004 Contact: Valerie Orth, 415-558-6938 Tony LoPresti, 831-246-3780

Fair Trade activists, human rights advocates and student groups appreciate Starbucks' decision to brew Fair Trade coffee during World Fair Trade Week (May 3-9, 2004). But they would be more impressed if the company made a permanent, significant commitment to Fair Trade purchasing. In 2000 Starbucks promised to sell Fair Trade Certified coffee—to head off a campaign by the international human rights group Global Exchange demanding that the company buy at least five percent of its coffee under Fair Trade Certified terms. Yet, in 2004 less than one percent of Starbucks' coffee is Fair Trade Certified.

"We're pleased that Starbucks is doing this and we are waiting for the day when brewed Fair Trade coffee at Starbucks' will be the rule instead of a newsworthy exception," said Valerie Orth, Fair Trade Organizer with Global Exchange. "That would really be something to celebrate. Starbucks has the ability and the responsibility to lead the industry in increasing Fair Trade sales."

"It's encouraging that Starbucks is responding to the student demand for more Fair Trade coffee," says Tony LoPresti of United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) a collective of over 300 student Fair Trade organizations. "But this is about building ethical relationships with producers, and producers suffer the global coffee crisis every day of the year, not just for one week. If Starbucks wants to fulfill its mandate for social responsibility in its buying practices, then it will work towards making this permanent."

Global Exchange has consistently urged Starbucks and other major companies, such as Procter & Gamble (owner of Folgers and Millstone), to buy Fair Trade. Fair Trade guarantees small-scale farmer cooperatives a minimum price, and thus a decent living. Fair Trade certification, unlike Starbucks self-regulatory plan, uses third party monitoring and a consistent standard that includes labor rights and environmental sustainability.

There is more going on during world Fair Trade Week than just the Starbucks announcement. Global Exchange is organizing a National Call in week to M&M/Mars, May 3 - 7, to get the company to buy Fair Trade cocoa beans for their chocolate. On May 8 Global Exchange will host a regional Fair Trade meeting for West Coast Fair Trade activists, while urging shoppers, more than ever, to look for the Fair Trade label and shop Fair Trade from May 3 - 9 and for the rest of the year.

Global Exchange is a membership-based international human rights organization dedicated to promoting social, political and environmental justice. USFT is a student-run organization working toward economic justice through the promotion of Fair Trade products, principles, and policies.

They use Republican type like good while being nasty tatics. Please talk to your other half to change to a different coffee shop.

the employees even want a Union is a surprise, I already assumed their employees made about $25 an hour. If we follow the Republican logic that Unions will make prices go up, a small cup of regular coffee will be $4 and a latte will go to $10.