Starbucked
Page 26
Gross may appear to be just kicking up dust, but the facts show he has a point. Out of Starbucks’s entire workforce (two-thirds of which is part-time), only 42 percent of employees receive health insurance from Starbucks. This rate is even lower than that of the widely condemned benefits scrooge Wal-Mart, which covers 46 percent of its employees. (Starbucks claims the comparison is unfair, since its workers are younger and may be insured by their parents or college.) And employees have cause to grumble about the company’s scheduling software, called “Star Labor,” which assigns each worker a skill rating and then churns out bizarre, inconsistent schedules designed to maximize productivity. Thus, a barista might find herself working four to eight p.m. one day, then five to nine the next morning. Employees have no recourse in the matter; as the Partner Guide warns, “There is no assurance or guarantee that any hourly partner will receive the hours desired, the same schedule each week, or a minimum or maximum number of hours.”
Rather than address these employee complaints, Starbucks went for the union’s throat instead, attempting to crush the organizers’ efforts before they could gain any steam. Store No. 7356 suddenly became the recipient of what Starbucks spokeswoman Audrey Lincoff called “random acts of kindness”; the would-be Wobblies called them bribes. Managers gave baristas at the store free pizza, passes to a local gym, and tickets to Mets games. One shift supervisor told New York magazine that Starbucks management had instructed her to “look for red flags, like if employees hang out too much.” Several union sympathizers — Alex Diaz, Anthony Polanco, and Sarah Bender — found themselves fired over what they deemed minor offenses. Regional executives showed up at the store and warned baristas that joining the union would entail losing a number of perks.
The company was overreacting. Though the IWW had attracted a modicum of support, it never went through with the union election. (Gross refuses to say how many employees had signed up, citing fears of retribution from the company. He claims at least six New York stores have a majority in favor of the IWW, plus one in Chicago.) Instead, the Starbucks Workers Union focused on wreaking havoc (and drawing media attention) through protests. Its organizers seem to enjoy nothing more than marching into a Starbucks en masse during a busy afternoon and presenting a list of demands to the bewildered manager, or dressing up as “billionaires” and handing a district manager an award for “Outstanding Unfair Labor Practices,” or stopping up stores completely by having dozens of union members pay for drinks with pennies. This rabble-rousing gained a measure of vindication when Starbucks decided to settle the 2006 claim by the National Labor Relations Board that it had illegally tampered with the union’s organizing efforts. The company admitted no guilt, but it did have to offer Polanco and Bender their jobs back, reverse a number of warnings given to union sympathizers, pay $2,000 in lost wages, and pledge not to interfere with the IWW’s efforts again.
But putting Starbucks’s hostility to unions aside for a moment, there’s a larger question waiting to be answered here: is this even the kind of job where a union makes sense?
McBaristas
In 2003, the editors at Merriam-Webster triggered a minor controversy when they decided to add one simple word to the eleventh edition of their popular collegiate dictionary. That word was McJob. Defined as “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement,” the slang term had been in common use for more than a decade. But by the time the Merriam-Webster editors elected to legitimize the term, the proliferation of McJobs had become a national issue, bemoaned in bestsellers like Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation; the general contention was that they were dehumanizing, tedious, dead-end posts that did no favors to the tens of millions of people who worked them. Realizing it had to protest or risk admitting its culpability in the trend, McDonald’s executives lashed out at Merriam-Webster, calling the inclusion a “slap in the face” to the nation’s service workers and claiming that “a more appropriate definition of a ‘McJob’ might be ‘teaches responsibility.’ ” (In the 1991 novel Generation X, Douglas Coupland quipped that a McJob is “frequently considered a satisfying career choice by those who have never held one.”) The editors, apparently convinced that the companies that created the McJobs were the ones doing the face slapping, kept the word.
While the Starbucks baristas of times past needed considerable coffee expertise to perform their work, today’s company baristas must carry out a series of tasks that are as simple and deskilled as possible; the chain emphasizes speed and efficiency above all else. “It is absolutely mindless labor,” one former Starbucks employee told me. “They’ve made it so that anyone can do it.” In other words, the position is now a textbook McJob. As if to underline this point, one source recently overheard a disgruntled barista at a Manhattan Starbucks complaining to a coworker, “You know, we’re just glorified McDonald’s employees.”
Calling the post a McJob in no way implies that Starbucks baristas ought to resign themselves to feeling ill-treated and disposable or that they don’t deserve union protection. But one unavoidable fact makes unions at Starbucks all but impossible: as long as the work remains so unfulfilling, very few people will want to keep the job for long, no matter what Schultz says to keep them inspired. Recent events bear this point out. As it turns out, the Wobblies’ New York crusade actually wasn’t the first time baristas moved to unionize under Schultz. In 1996, 116 Starbucks employees from ten stores in British Columbia joined the Canadian Auto Workers Union and succeeded in negotiating several concessions from the company, like higher wages and more rights for long-tenured workers. While this union campaign lacked the fireworks of the IWW’s raucous struggle, it is far more illuminating about what it means to organize a chain coffee-house.
Starbucks was similarly hostile toward the Canadian union, refusing on several occasions to come to the bargaining table to hammer out a new contract and publicly declaring that “We don’t believe we need a third party to act on behalf of our partners.” Yet the organizers soon encountered problems of their own. Starbucks’s 80 percent turnover rate is low for the quick-serve industry, but it still means the vast majority of workers leave within a year — and consequently, union leaders began having trouble keeping the stores organized. As Frank Sobczak, the CAW Local 3000 representative in charge of the Starbucks bargaining unit, told me, employees started staying for ever-shorter tenures. As more employees came to view the job as a tolerable version of fast-food work, Local 3000’s future looked increasingly bleak. Finally, in April 2007, high turnover and worker apathy sunk the union for good; the CAW stores voted to decertify. As one frustrated Local 3000 worker told the Vancouver Sun, “For a lot of people in the service sector, their job is not a significant part of their life, so they don’t really care.” This is the dilemma with McJobs: you can’t unionize them if no one wants to keep them.
Which complicates the case of IWW versus Starbucks somewhat; in a sense, both sides are wrong. And neither party emerges from the fray looking especially sympathetic. On one hand, Starbucks has been bafflingly tone deaf on the union issue, inundating employees with company propaganda and chafing at the notion that anyone else could take better care of its employees than it does already. After some roasting-plant employees attempted to reunionize in 1999, their representative from the Operating Engineers Local 286 told Northwest Labor Press, “In 30 years of working for the union, the worst employer I ever dealt with in their attitude toward the union was Starbucks.” (The bid ultimately failed.) On the other hand, IWW members have shown little in the way of tact or discretion in their campaign. Besides comparing Starbucks to a sweatshop, Gross has claimed the company’s baristas suffer under the yoke of “wage slavery,” adding that “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.” The union has also complained that Starbucks makes its baristas gain weight — because it offers employees free drinks and leftover pastries.
To be fair, each party has its virtues. The union has won a few substantial concessions from the company, including pay raises, holiday bonuses, and some policy changes to address repetitive strain injuries. And Starbucks still offers far better benefits and wages than any other similar retail company. If you accept the job as just another menial and slightly demeaning corporate gig, not as a career, the perks can’t be beat.
But beyond all of the bad taste and heavy-handedness, they’re both in error. In trying to unionize a McJob, the IWW organizers are attempting the impossible. But in a way, Starbucks is guilty of making them think they should do this. After all, what we believe a Starbucks barista can fairly expect depends on how we view the job: is it dehumanized fast-food labor or a lifelong vocation descended from fussy Italian craftsmen? Gross claims it’s the latter, and ironically, the company has to back him up in this. Starbucks’s employees obviously aren’t in the same league of artistry and obsession as those who vie for perfection in barista competitions, yet the company depends on its workers to maintain its romantic aura. If customers realized that Starbucks baristas are merely pushing buttons to get lattes — almost like a glorified vending machine — would they still be willing to pay four dollars for their daily cup?
When I asked Gross whether Starbucks baristas could really expect careerlike benefits and wages from a job devolving into fast-food work, I saw that he had obviously given the matter much thought. “It’s a good question,” he said. “Our expectation is that in a company that is seeing record profits — one that says it values the contribution of its workers above all else — those workers should not have to live in poverty. There’s a misconception that retail workers are just looking for arcade money, or beer money. That’s not true. Retail workers have families, and they have rent to pay.”
“But you’re a bright guy,” I said. “Why not just quit and move on to something better?”
“Because I think this could be a decent job,” he replied.
He’s right. Being a barista can be a great and fulfilling job — but probably not at Starbucks. And perhaps Gross will soon find that out for himself. In August 2006, the company fired him, allegedly for making a hostile statement to a district manager at a union rally. After conducting its own investigation into the incident, the NLRB has filed a lengthy complaint against Starbucks on Gross’s behalf, claiming that the company intentionally subverted the union on dozens of occasions. Starbucks is contesting the charges. Despite it all, Gross wants his job back.
9
The Seattle Colonies
Le Procope, the first café ever built in Paris — and, by extension, the forefather of all the world’s coffeehouses — is still open for business today, in the very same spot on the city’s Left Bank where it started serving patrons over three centuries ago. In a contest of café bona fides, few can even put up a good fight against Le Procope. The size of a Parisian café’s reputation corresponds to the number of famous people who have visited it, and Le Procope’s guest list reads almost like a history textbook: Voltaire, Rousseau, Robespierre, and Hugo all frequented it in their time, as did Benjamin Franklin, who reportedly worked out many of the ideas for the Constitution within its scarlet walls. A young, broke Napoleon ran up such a high tab playing chess and drinking coffee here that the proprietor once made him leave his hat behind as collateral. The establishment has changed considerably over the years — it’s now a pricey, lobster-serving restaurant — but its collection of antique brewing devices still lines the walls, reminding visitors of Le Procope’s prominence in the formidable French café tradition.
If you walk out Le Procope’s back entrance into the quiet cobblestone alley, take a right turn, then go about thirty paces, you’ll hit the bustling Boulevard Saint-Germain, home of the famed next-door rival cafés, Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore. (Both lay claim to the loyal patronage of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir; both award their own literary prizes; and both are outrageously expensive tourist traps.) Directly to your left, you will see the French translation of a Tex-Mex restaurant, which offers American culinary classics like “Indiana Fried Chicken,” “U.S. Fries,” and a “Burger” made with a chicken breast, a sunny-side-up egg, and a dollop of Thousand Island dressing. Just south of where you’re standing, families will be strolling across the palatial grounds of the Luxembourg Gardens, where a hard-up Ernest Hemingway used to catch pigeons for dinner. And right in front of you, sandwiched between a Bureau de Change and a lingerie store called “Women’secret,” you will find a new kind of Parisian café, one that has been appearing all over the city as of late: a Starbucks.
To step inside this Starbucks is to enter a twilight-zone version of the traditional Parisian café, where all of its defining attributes are twisted and inverted. Instead of the clanking of dishes and the din of conversation, the sounds of Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Lovin’ Spoonful dominate the air. Instead of tiny porcelain cups of strong, high-priced coffee (what the French call an “express”), it serves huge paper cups of strong, high-priced coffee. Instead of immaculately dressed waiters who have perfected dozens of inventive ways to communicate disdain for your order, it employs polo shirt–wearing teenage baristas who field your requests courteously and with a smi — actually, the French are still working on the whole customer service thing. Parisian cafés are relaxed and radiate authenticity, whereas Starbucks is efficient and feels sterile. In short, one is quintessentially French, while the other is quintessentially American.
Which is fine, except this isn’t America; it’s France, one of the proudest and most culturally distinct nations on the globe, a country so concerned with preserving its national identity that it has enacted laws to stop people from using English words and phrases. Here, one can become a national hero by destroying a symbol of American cultural imperialism, as we learned after the farmer-turned-activist Joseph Bové bulldozed a partially built McDonald’s in the southern town of Millau in 1999, winning widespread praise. Obviously, France has no interest in assimilating money-hungry American corporations into its strong, vibrant culture.
At least that’s what you’d think. But that’s not the reality of things. Paradoxically, France is one of McDonald’s’ most profitable markets — so much so, in fact, that the company’s French operations helped keep its American restaurants afloat when McDonald’s entered a slump in the early 2000s. All over Paris, one spies French people shopping for jeans at the Gap, devouring sandwiches at Subway, and nibbling cones of Chunky Monkey at Ben & Jerry’s. It’s not abnormal to see a UPS truck pull up behind a Ford coupe, right in front of a building with a Century 21 for-sale sign out front. And every day, those infamous white-and-green cups become more pervasive.
Starbucks made its French debut in January 2004, near the peak of U.S.-French tension over the Iraq war. Howard Schultz tried to reduce the friction by portraying his company as a sort of liquid bridge between the two nations, announcing that Starbucks had come “to share our interpretation of coffee.” “When we opened in Paris, the editorial coverage leading up to the opening was brutal,” he told me. “But people were lined up from day one. CNN covered it live. We’ve never looked back in Paris.” Just as it did in every major American market, Starbucks has blanketed Paris with stores. Within two and a half years, the company opened twenty-three of them in the region, and more are in the works. There’s a Starbucks near the national library, just across the street from a new office tower with a ground-floor Accenture office, the whole tableau looking like a patch of Southern California that has been transported as is across the Atlantic. There’s one down the street from the stately Palais Garnier opera house, situated among a few sex shops that advertise “Japan system video,” “librairie X,” and, frighteningly, “zapping.” As one might expect, there’s a Starbucks inside the Forum des Halles, a bewildering, labyrinthine underground shopping mall that feels as though it were designed by hyperactive children. (Seriously — you almost need to scatter breadcrumbs along your path in order to
find your way out.)
The French appear to be embracing Starbucks, even as they make a show of despising it. (When I asked a manager at the Café de Flore what he thought of the new Starbucks down the street, for example, he replied by issuing a dismissive snort.) Starbucks stores in Paris contain the expected American visitors talking on mobile phones and working on spreadsheets, but they also attract a surprising number of locals, generally young Parisians who seem quite comfortable with American brands. In one Starbucks, I spotted a young Frenchman wearing blue Converse sneakers, baggy Levi’s jeans, and a red T-shirt with a giant abercrombie & fitch logo splashed across the front. As I watched him wash down his cheesecake with gulps of venti hot chocolate, I had to wonder: can’t they revoke your French citizenship for this sort of thing? When I pointed out to Schultz that his best customers in Paris were predominantly young, he responded, “Young people, but French people.” That is to say, who cares what the older people are doing? The future of France is going to Starbucks.
In coming years, this story of clashing cultures will become a familiar one as Starbucks greatly expands its global presence. Schultz wants to hit a total of forty thousand stores, and with the U.S. market moving closer to saturation, most of that growth will happen abroad. Already, you can find the chain in thirty-seven countries, including unexpected locales like Oman, Qatar, Chile, and Cyprus. Seoul, South Korea, is home to a two-hundred-seat megastore that spans five full stories — the largest Starbucks in the world. Many of these places have no coffee-drinking tradition whatsoever, yet they take to Starbucks as a status symbol or as a place to just hang out. Often, it’s a simple matter of convenience. For instance, Starbucks has obvious appeal to the French: in a conventional Parisian café, one cannot get coffee (a) to go, (b) in under twenty minutes, or (c) for less than six dollars. (I realize how perverse it is to think of Starbucks coffee as a bargain, but such is the magic of Paris.) And according to Schultz, Starbucks will soon come full circle, colonizing the country where he first received his vision for the company a quarter-century ago: Italy. *