Starbucks Anti-Unionism

Starbucks is really pushing the bounds of legality, one assumes believing the right-wing courts will back them up, in its union busting campaigns.

Starbucks introduced new financial-focused employee benefits on Monday, but they are only available for non-unionized employees.T

he company outlined two new efforts to help employees with their finances: My Starbucks Savings, which will allow workers to contribute a portion of their pay to a personal savings account through Fidelity Investments, and Student Loan Management Benefit, a program designed to give employees access to resources and individual coaching to help them manage student loan debt, refinancing and repayment options, the company said.

“As we reinvent the future of Starbucks, together with our partners, we knew we had an opportunity to further support the financial well-being of our partners and their families,” Ron Crawford, the senior vice president Total Rewards at Starbucks, said in an announcement.

This is patently cynical. But the Starbucks union campaign has slowed to a crawl in the face of this overwhelming union-busting. We will see what happens. The NLRB coming down hard on Starbucks would really help here.

I would also note just how worthless these programs are–you can take some of your wages for this program but we aren’t matching them and then we will hire some consultants to tell you how to pay off your unpayable debt. But it might work for them.