Venti Wobblies

Employees at a Midtown Starbucks are attempting to unionize. Management sends in the Pinkerton agents. New York Magazine has the story — “A Union Revolution is Brewing”:

It sounds very Brave New World, but [Barista Daniel] Gross prefers an Old South analogy. “We’re talking about wage slavery here,” he says, slamming his hand on the table in a non-multinational East Village café so hard that a water glass jumps. “We are very aware of the implications of that term. We wouldn’t use it if we didn’t think there were inherent similarities to plantation slavery.”

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.

Gross scoffs. “Their dirty little secret is the repetitive strain injuries,” he says. “Starbucks 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.” There’s 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 “Third Place”—welcoming customers into a sphere that is neither work nor home—sounds more like a Dickensian workshop.