Bad labor practices, bad coffee, bad food, bad vibes. We deserve better. The story is ultimately an uplifting one, because workers fought a giant corporation and won, and Blanc shows how this kind of independent, bottom-up organizing work has the potential to revive the moribund American labor movement.
There are a lot of reasons to dislike Starbucks. Most importantly, their labor practices are indefensible. Starbucks has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the bargaining table to negotiate contracts with its workers, and the National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly found that Starbucks has violated the rights of its workers.
In , an NLRB judge found that in Buffalo, the company had engaged in " egregious and widespread misconduct ," punishing workers for exercising their legally protected right to organize. Starbucks has long made a big public show of being an ethical company. The reality is uglier. Or the food. Starbucks coffee is infamously disappointing. Food Republic has an explainer on why Starbucks coffee tastes burnt. Starbucks is a global empire that has to cut many corners to serve its millions of customers, and most of those customers are not coffee purists.
Has a defrosted croissant ever tasted good? Given the heinous violations of basic labor rights, it may seem comparatively trivial to complain about the coffee and the food. But the corporate structure that makes bad conditions overworking and underpaying baristas also makes bad customer experiences. When I was young, I went to a Starbucks that was open all night and had big squishy chairs that you could lounge in for hours. They got rid of all that, though, replacing it with deliberately uncomfortable furniture to keep people moving along, changing the model of the store from a community space to hang out in to a factory designed to get as many drinks into as many hands as possible in the shortest period of time.
This has backfired somewhat, because Starbucks is struggling and has been losing customers, who complain about the assembly-line feel of the place. There is reason to believe that Niccol will fail at his task of turning Starbucks around.
