“corporation as one that prioritizes “customer connection,” even at the expense of its workers”. Sounds like Trader Joe’s to me. They just fired a guy for writing the CEO a letter.

Until Starbucks (and frankly all corporations) sees people (partners and customers) as humans, not just input and outputs, things like this will continue to happen.

I had a ruthless and cruel DM. She would tear into us in front of coworkers, she didn't care. She once decided against promoting this incredible lady to shift lead because she thought her Thai accent was too thick for customers to understand her. But she's never had a problem interacting with customers, so WTF? Well, the DM was low-key racist it turns out. Openly homophobic too, but always expressed it in a way ambiguous enough to get past partner resources, and since it was the late 90s-00s, homophobia was more accepted.

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Years after my promotion to customer, I ran into a SM that was also in my district and he was always a chill dude. we catch up and i ask about our former DM, she had died. I was not sad to hear the news, she made our jobs more miserable for no good reason.

The comment from the article that partners are "extremely loyal to Starbucks and myself (DM)" is laughable. Starbucks, Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Amazon have this 'it would hurt the culture' anti-unionism. What that means is we will give our workers token concessions whether that be relaxed dress-code, mark-outs, some $15+ positions, etc. that do not fundamentally affect the bottom-line. Collective action is the only way to achieve real change, you can't wait for paternalistic managers to go-against their best interests.

It sounds like your area (Philadelphia) has interest in unions, maybe it is time to try again. (Completely selfish rational) In this example and in an example of one of my former work places, union attempts even the half-assed kind resulted in monetary benefits, legal settlements, for the leaders.

Oof. I had a decent DM. She could be an ass, but if you actually committed yourself and admitted you didn’t know something, or messed up, she had your back and would teach you. She also hopped on the hot bar all the time when she was in our store.

Well then...

link to article: https://www.inquirer.com/jobs/labor/starbucks-union-fired-nlrb-20210301.html