The Starbucks Ruling Proves That Workers Can Only Rely on Their Own Power

In February, Starbucks finally agreed to sit down at the bargaining table with their workers’ union. They agreed to this not out of the goodness of their shriveled heart, but after being dragged by their hair, kicking and screaming and union busting the whole time. They agreed to bargain after the union spent two years organizing hundreds of stores, and filed hundreds of unfair labor practice charges against the company, and did strikes all over the country, and got Bernie Sanders to berate Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in front of a congressional subcommittee.

Starbucks did their absolute utmost to illegally fire and intimidate and retaliate against workers who were organizing, and then to stubbornly refuse to bargain in good faith with those who did, and to lie wildly about all of it the whole time. Thousands of Starbucks workers and thousands of their allies across the country had to fight and claw for months and years to get this $90 billion company just to sit down and begin negotiating, as they are required to by law.

That was all just to get to the bargaining table. I always chuckle now when I read the periodic joint statements released by Starbucks and the union, Workers United, because they all sound like the Hatfields and McCoys being forced at gunpoint to shuffle uncomfortably in front of the camera and say, “We continue to make good progress in this mutually agreed upon process.” The fact is that if Starbucks could purchase a magic wand for $50 million that would cause all of their company’s union members to catch long Covid and resign and allow the union to die, they surely would. They were brought to this point by the power of organized labor, and nothing less.

It only took a few years of the NLRB actually enforcing existing labor law for much of corporate America to decide that they are willing to throw the entire post-New Deal labor peace framework in the trash in order to stop it.

Even while Starbucks has been engaged in this, ahem, good faith bargaining, their case seeking to restrict the power of the National Labor Relations Board has been winding its way through the courts. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in Starbucks’ favor, in a case where the company complained that the NLRB’s demand that they reinstate seven workers in Memphis who were illegally fired for organizing was made according to an unduly burdensome standard. The ruling will restrict the ability of the NLRB, which, under Jennifer Abruzzo’s leadership during the Biden administration, has been an aggressive advocate of workers’ rights, to hold companies responsible for their retaliations against workers, which are so common and numerous that 99% of them never make the news.

I am not here to play legal analyst, except to point out (as many actual legal scholars will as well) that rulings like this are really political judgments on what the proper balance of power between workers and businesses are, not some sort of unbiased judgment flowing from a perusal of hallowed heavenly law. The Supreme Court may soon make things even worse for the NLRB thanks to more corporate-funded lawsuits attacking the agency’s power, which I wrote a bit about here. It only took a few years of the NLRB actually enforcing existing labor law for much of corporate America to decide that they are willing to throw the entire post-New Deal labor peace framework in the trash in order to stop it. The Starbucks case this week was only an appetizer. Gird yourself for worse.

Companies are tigers in cages. You can lock them in there and pet them and feed them for years, but let them out for one minute and they will eat you. That’s it.

Mostly, Thursday’s ruling, and everything that led up to it, is a fantastic illustration of a point that is very basic but that it is important to name and hold up and repeat at regular intervals, because it is always in danger of being obscured: Power is the only thing that gets workers under capitalism anything. Here we sit with an encyclopedia’s worth of labor law and 150 years of industrial relations history around us, and none of it means a damn thing. Companies would throw it all in the fire at the earliest opportunity, were such a thing to become politically possible. If you are a working person and you want fair wages and decent working conditions and a fair share of what your company produces and protections from exploitative treatment, the only way to get those things is to come together with your coworkers and exercise your collective power to withhold your labor. You can shut the companies down because you do the work. That is your power. All the rest of labor’s power flows from that. All the wage increases and workplace safety regulations and favorable NLRB rulings and pro-union politicians who will come sit on stage at the rallies exist only due to organizing and being willing to strike. Everything else can go away, but those things can’t. The ability to exercise that power resides exclusively in the hands of the workers. That is the seed from which the entirety of organized labor has grown.

This is one reason why the Starbucks Workers United are so admirable. Starting with nothing, they organized one store, and then another, and then dozens, and then hundreds, and they made a lot of noise in the media, and they pulled in their political allies, and they struck, and they built up such a wall of pressure that the company was finally forced to listen to them. Everything they have was won with labor power. Starbucks, the famously progressive company, tried to squash them at every turn, but wasn’t able to. But if conditions change, or if the union’s will to power flags, the company would jump right back up and try to squash them again. There is no such thing as permanent labor peace. Companies are tigers in cages. You can lock them in there and pet them and feed them for years, but let them out for one minute and they will eat you. That’s it.

It may sound weird to say, but I find the plainness of this dynamic comforting. There is no need for anxiety. All of the questions are answered up front. Will my company treat me fairly? No. Will the boss do the right thing and look out for us? No. Now that we have a union, can we take it easy? No. Now that we have a contract, can we assume the company will follow it? No. Won’t the company follow the laws that protect workers? No. Won’t the regulators and the courts enforce the laws that protect workers? No. Won’t the elected officials stand up on our behalf? No. Your employer will hold you down and drown you in a pool of the lowest possible wages unless you use your collective power to prevent that from happening. Better take care of yourselves, together.

There will be times and places when things will go workers’ way, and that’s nice. There will sometimes be nice bosses and supportive politicians and Jennifer Abruzzos at the NLRB, and that’s something to be enjoyed. But none of that, I promise you, lasts forever under capitalism. The pendulum will swing. Right-wing courts will wipe away your legal protections and greedy investors will install a cruel boss and racist voters will boot the friendly Congressman. No need to cry when it happens. We know it will happen. And we know, most importantly, that we still hold in our hands the power of our own labor. The one thing they can’t take away. We do the work. If they won’t do the right thing, we won’t work. And upon that foundation, we can build the whole thing over again.

Hamilton Nolan is the author of the book The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor. This piece is reprinted from his publication How Things Work.