For Some Starbucks Workers, Job Leaves Bitter Taste
CBS MoneyWatch - September 26, 2014, by Alain Sherter - Liberte Locke, a 32-year-old "barista" at a Starbucks (...
CBS MoneyWatch - September 26, 2014, by Alain Sherter - Liberte Locke, a 32-year-old "barista" at a Starbucks (SBUX) in New York City, is fed up.
"Starbucks' attitude is that there's always someone else can who can do the job," she said in running through her complaints about life at the java giant.
If that isn't necessarily the consensus among Starbucks workers, interviews with nine current and former baristas at the company make clear it's not an isolated opinion, either. Even those who say they like their job paint a picture of a business that underpays front-line workers, enforces work rules arbitrarily and too often fails to strike a balance between corporate goals and employee needs.
Of course, such complaints are nothing new in retail, where low pay and erratic schedules are the norm. But by its own account, Starbucks is no ordinary company and is ostensibly a far cry from the fast-food outlets now facing a nationwide uprising by employees tired of working for peanuts.
That's evident in the company's recruitment pitch. Starbucks invites job-seekers to "become a part of something bigger and inspire positive change in the world," describing it as a chance to discover a "deep sense of purpose."
Damage control
That image suffered a serious blow last month after The New York Times vividly chronicled a Starbucks worker struggling with the company's scheduling practices. The story, which centered on a 22-year-old barista and single mother, amounted to a public relations nightmare for Starbucks. Perhaps not coincidentally, within days of the story's publication top executives were promising reform.
In a memo to employees earlier this month, for instance, Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead vowed to "transform the U.S. partner experience," referring to Starbucks' more than 130,000 baristas. Inviting worker feedback, he said Starbucks will examine its approach to employee pay, revisit its dress code, make it easier for people to ask for time off, and consider other changes aimed at helping baristas balance work and their personal lives.
Among other changes, the company said it would end the practice of "clopening," when an employee responsible for closing a store late at night is also assigned to open it early in the morning.
"We recognize that we can do more for our partners who wear the apron every day," he wrote.
Some baristas did not feel this August memo from Starbucks went far enough in proposing ways to improve work conditions, so they marked it up with their own ideas.
Although Starbucks workers welcome this pledge to respect the apron, they fear the company is more intent on dousing the PR flames than on genuinely improving employees' experience. After the retailer last month sent an email to workers outlining possible solutions to the kind of scheduling problems and related issues detailed by the Times, a group of baristas gave the proposal a C- and posted online a marked-up version of the memo listing their own demands (image above).
"We hope you're ready for a commitment to give us schedules that don't mess with taking care of kids, going to school or holding onto that second job we need because Sbux wages don't make ends meet," wrote the baristas, who are working with a union-backed labor group, the Center for Popular Democracy.
Retail jungle
Despite the recent media focus on Starbucks, the company's labor practices are generally no worse than those of many large retailers. In some ways they're better, with the company offering health care to part-time, as well as full-time, workers; unusually generous 401(k) matching contributions; annual stock grants to employees; and tuition reimbursement.
Starbucks highlights such benefits as an example of its commitment to employees. "Sharing success with one another has been core to the company's heritage for more than 40 years," Alstead said in the September memo.
Meanwhile, some baristas say they enjoy their work and feel valued by Starbucks. "It's a decent place to work, and my manager and co-workers are great," said one employee who asked not to be identified.
But other current and former workers claim Starbucks has changed in recent years, saying that corporate leaders' intense focus on slashing costs has short-circuited its professed commitment to workers. Mostly, they say Starbucks doesn't listen to employees and even punishes those who identify problems.
"The biggest problem is that baristas don't have a voice," said Sarah Madden, a former Starbucks barista who left the company this spring after two years with the coffee vendor. "They can't speak to issues that they know exist. Workers know how to fix them, but when [they] speak up there are serious repercussions -- your hours get cut, you're transferred to another store or isolated from other people."
Employees interviewed for this article said one result of Starbucks' cost-containment push is that stores are frequently understaffed, hurting customer service and forcing managers to scramble to find staff. That problem is common across the big-box stores that dominate the retail sector, experts said.
"One the one hand, retailers overhire, but they're also understaffed, so everybody's running around and then there aren't enough people on the floor," said Susan Lambert, a professor at the University of Chicago and an expert in work-life issues. "Companies are effectively loading all the risk onto workers so that they're not the ones incurring the risks inherent in business."
Starbucks denies that its stores are short-staffed. "We're proud of the level of service we provide in our stores," said Zack Hutson, a spokesman for the company. "We know that the connection our partners have with customers is the foundation of the Starbucks experience. It wouldn't be in our best interest. We want our customers to have the appropriate service level when they come to our stores."
To be sure, Starbucks is hardly the only U.S. corporate giant to keep a gimlet eye on its bottom line -- among Fortune 500 companies that approach to management is the rule, not the exception, and CEOs across the land defend it as an inviolable fiduciary duty to shareholders.
But baristas say Starbucks' focus on profits and cost-cutting has increasingly led its leadership to tune workers out. Locke, who has worked for the company since 2006 and who earns roughly $16,000 a year, said she yearned for the Starbucks of old.
"When I started they had a training program and taught you how to be a coffee expert. There was more of a culture of supporting each other as co-workers. Store managers were sympathetic. I really enjoyed it."
Asked why she stays at Starbucks, Locke said her employment options are limited because she lacks a college education and because her only professional experience is in retail.
Living wage?
According to workers, the best thing Starbucks can do for its apron-wearers is to raise their pay and offer full-time hours instead of the 20 to 30 hours that most employees work.
Samantha Cole, a barista in Omaha, Neb., said she struggles to get by on her supervisor's salary of $11.25 an hour. Such pay may be better than what she would earn working for other retailers, but the 30-year-old mother of two say it's still not a living wage.
"I'm definitely not making enough money," said Cole, who has been with the company for six years. "A lot of us are right there with what fast-food workers are making."
Such frustrations are also evident in comments on the Facebook page Starbucks uses to communicate with employees and where it is asking baristas for input regarding the company's labor practices. Wrote one employee: "I've worked for the company for 7 years in January, and I don't make enough to support myself on one job so I work 2 jobs, 6 days a week.... I've seen a lot of amazing partners leave because they don't make enough."
Starbucks declined to disclose compensation data, citing competitive reasons and saying that pay varies widely according to workers' experience and where in the U.S. stores are located. It didn't respond to emails requesting clarification regarding other aspects of its labor policies.
It's worth noting that low pay isn't unique to Starbucks -- in retail it is the norm. As of 2012 (the latest year for which data is available), the median hourly income for retail salespeople is $10.29 per hour, or $21,410 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hourly pay for full-time retail workers range from a high of $14.42 to $9.61 for lower-paid people, according to Demos, a liberal-leaning think tank in New York. Part-timers typically make much less, with the average cashier earning $18,500 a year.
"Until [Starbucks] gives a living wage to every employee, they can't claim to be a good employer," Locke said, who added that it has been roughly two years since her last pay raise.
"Race to the bottom"
Another priority for baristas: stable, regular schedules. Like most large retailers, Starbucks uses scheduling software to try to match the number of workers it has in a store at any given time to the amount of business it gets. Workers also may be scheduled according to the sales they generate or their facility in promoting certain products. The technology also can enable other savings, such as limiting overtime.
For employees, however, that approach -- known as "just-in-time" or "on-call" scheduling -- often results in lower income and chaotic hours.
Stephanie Luce, a professor of labor studies at City University of New York's Murphy Institute, characterizes the widespread adoption of scheduling and so-called workforce optimization technologies as a "new race to the bottom."
"Companies that have already reduced operating costs by making deals with irresponsible subcontractors and using the cheapest available materials are now cutting corners in the form of the 'just-in- time scheduling' of their workforce," she and her co-authors wrote in a recent report. "These 'lean' manufacturing practices take advantage of sophisticated software and an increasingly desperate workforce to cut labor costs to the bone."
By the same token, tighter control of worker schedules helps Starbucks contain payroll costs. But it also means employees who had expected to work a certain number of hours every week can see their schedules dramatically cut back and fluctuate wildly. The result? Smaller paychecks and a disturbance to family life.
"It makes it very hard for parents to participate in an intimate family routine and structure it in such a way that experts agree is good for children," Lambert said.
Irregular schedules also make it hard for workers who do need extra income to work a second job, schedule appointments and plan other aspects of their lives.
Baristas said Starbucks posts their schedule only days in advance and that they are often subject to change. Following the Times story, Starbucks said it would post schedules at least one week in advance. That's not enough time, several workers said, asking the company to provide at least two or three weeks notice, as retailers ranging from Walmart (WMT) and H&M to Victoria's Secret (LB) do.
Meanwhile, despite Starbucks' promise to end clopening, the practice continues, some workers said, although the company insists that this is only in cases when people request such shifts.
"Partners should never be required to work opening and closing shifts. That policy is clear," Starbucks' Hutson said, adding that the company is studying ways to give workers more input in their schedules. "If there are cases where that's not happening, we want to know about that."
Given the scrutiny on Starbucks, the company can count on baristas to do just that.
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Retail and restaurant workers have the worst schedules. Oregon plans to change that.
Retail and restaurant workers have the worst schedules. Oregon plans to change that.
In the next upcoming battle for workers’ rights, activists aren’t asking for more money or more time off. They just...
In the next upcoming battle for workers’ rights, activists aren’t asking for more money or more time off. They just want workers to get a little advance notice about what their schedule will be.
Activists for better working conditions have scored victories lately. This year, 19 states increased their minimum wage — the result of a coordinated state-by-state campaign to take action on an issue that the federal government has basically ignored for a decade. And a handful of cities and states have passed laws requiring employers to offer workers paid parental leave.
Read the full article here.
A National Solution
New York Times - June 25, 2014, by Peter Markowitz - For too many years our nation’s discourse around immigration has...
New York Times - June 25, 2014, by Peter Markowitz - For too many years our nation’s discourse around immigration has been distorted by anti-immigrant activists who have advanced bold but regressive state immigration policies. State laws in Arizona and elsewhere have powerfully, but inaccurately, framed the immigration issue through the lenses of criminality and terrorism. While these laws have not generally fared well in court, their impact on our national perception of immigration has impeded federal immigration reform. Meanwhile, states like New York continue to suffer the consequences of our broken immigration laws. Our families continue to be fractured by a torrent of deportations. Our economic growth continues to be impeded by the barriers our immigrant labor force faces. And our democracy continues to be undermined by the exclusion of a broad class of New York residents.
The New York Is Home Act, recently introduced by New York State Senator Gustavo Rivera and Assembly Member Karim Camara, with support from the Center for Popular Democracy and Make the Road New York, charts a path forward on immigration — a path that like-minded states and ultimately the federal government could follow. The legislation would grant state citizenship to noncitizens who can prove three years of residency and tax payment and who demonstrate a commitment to abiding by state laws and the state constitution.
The bill is an ambitious but sensible assertion of a state’s well-established power to define the bounds of its own political community. Unlike the Arizona law, this legislation is carefully crafted to respect the unique province of the federal government. As misguided and brutal as the federal immigration regime is, New York cannot alter federal deportation policy. However, it is absolutely within New York’s power to facilitate the full inclusion of immigrants in our state. By granting state citizenship, we would extend the full bundle of rights a state can deliver — the right to vote in state elections, to drive, to access higher education, among others — and we would define the full range of responsibilities that come along with citizenship, including tax payment, jury service and respect for state law. By reorienting our national conversation on immigration around the more accurate and productive themes of family, economic vitality and political inclusion, this legislation will move us toward a real solution to our nation’s immigration quagmire.
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Fed votes to keep key interest rate near 0%, stays mum on future hike
Federal Reserve policymakers Wednesday voted to keep the central bank’s benchmark interest rate near zero percent and...
Federal Reserve policymakers Wednesday voted to keep the central bank’s benchmark interest rate near zero percent and offered no new hints of when it would enact the first hike since 2006.
After a two-day policy meeting, officials released a monetary policy statement that was little changed from June in its guidance about what they would need to see before raising the interest rate.
11:40 a.m.: An earlier version of this article said the Fed's policy statement was identical in its guidance about what officials would need to see before raising the interest rate. The statement contained a small wording change.
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An increase would come when members of the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee have “seen some further improvement in the labor market” and is “reasonably confident” that the low inflation rate will move back toward the Fed’s 2% annual goal in the near future, the statement said.
The statement, approved by a 10-0 vote, left open the possibility of a rate hike after the Fed’s next meeting, in September. But it did not lock policymakers into taking that step in case upcoming economic data, including jobs reports for July and August, indicate the economy isn’t strong enough to handle higher interest rates.
The Fed said recent data suggest the economy “has been expanding moderately in recent months” and that the housing market “has shown additional improvement.” The Fed’s view of the labor market improved, with the statement saying there had been “solid job gains and declining unemployment.”
But Fed policymakers raised concerns about what they called soft business investment and exports.
And the statement noted inflation continued to run well below the Fed’s 2% annual target, attributing that partly to declines in energy prices as well as the lower cost of imports caused by the rising value of the dollar.
For the 12 months ended May 31, the price index for personal consumption expenditures, the Fed’s preferred gauge, was up just 0.2%.
The central bank has kept its benchmark federal funds rate near zero since December 2008 in an attempt to boost economic growth during and after the Great Recession.
As the economy has strengthened, pressure has built on Fed policymakers to start raising the rate.
Fed Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen has said that she expects an interest rate hike this year but that policymakers would continue to keep rates low for “quite some time” to continue providing support for the economy.
A survey last month by financial information website Bankrate.com found that a majority of Wall Street experts expected the Fed to raise its short-term interest rate in September.
Fed policymakers are closely watching economic data to determine when to hike the rate for the first time since 2006.
The economy shrank at a 0.2% annual rate from January through March, largely because of unusually bad winter weather and a labor dispute that slowed activity at West Coast ports.
The Commerce Department is expected to report Thursday that growth returned this spring. Analysts are forecasting that the economy expanded at a 2.9% annual rate in the second quarter.
The job market has shown solid gains in recent months, and the unemployment rate in June dropped to 5.3%, the lowest in more than seven years.
But wage growth has been sluggish. The Center for Popular Democracy has criticized the Fed for not focusing enough on wage improvements as a key factor in deciding when to raise rates.
And even with the overall economy performing better in the second quarter, growth this year is expected to be subpar. The Fed’s most recent projection, made in June, is for overall economic growth of just 1.8% to 2% for the year, which would be the worst since 2011.
Source: The Los Angeles Times
Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Multiple Arrests In Midtown During May Day Protests Outside Banks
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against...
Hundreds of labor and immigrant advocates marched through east midtown early Monday in a demonstration against corporations which they say are profiting from President Trump's agenda—one of a series of May Day protests scheduled to take place throughout the city (and beyond) on Monday.
The specific targets of this action, according to organizers from Make The Road New York, are the Wall Street banks that help finance private prisons and immigrant detention centers. To that end, organizers said twelve protesters were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience while blocking the entrances outside of JPMorgan Chase, which is one of the companies named in Make The Road's and the Center for Popular Democracy's Backers Of Hate campaign.
Read full article here.
Activist Group Takes Out TV Ad Calling for Trump to Keep Yellen
The Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed...
The Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign broadcast a 30-second TV spot urging Mr. Trump to offer Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen a second term. The ad ran during "Fox & Friends," a morning show the president watches and often reacts to on Twitter.
Read the full article here.
New Report Details Plans for Low-Wage Worker Justice
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013, by Jason Lewis - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to...
The Village Voice - February 14, 2013, by Jason Lewis - When a worker in this city has to endure a three-hour walk to work because his minimum wage salary doesn't allow for him to afford public transportation, that's a problem.
Low-wage workers across the city have stood up in the past year to demand that such insecurity be eradicated and to pressure employers to finally begin to provide them with just compensation for their labor.
Building on the progress generated by these worker-led movements--in industries such as retail, fast-food, airline security and car washing--UnitedNY, the Center for Popular Democracy and other advocacy groups held a symposium and released a report yesterday analyzing the state of the city's low-wage worker movement.
"It's very difficult to try and make ends meet on $7.25 minimum wage in New York City," Alterique Hall, a worker in the fast-food industry, said during a news conference following the event. "Some nights you want to lay down cry because you [feel] like 'what's the point of going to work and putting all of myself into a job, [if] I'm going to be miserable when I get off work, miserable when I go home...and don't want to wake up and go to work the next day...to get disrespected, treated poorly and paid poorly.'"
Hall, who's been active in the push for fairer wages in the fast-food industry, is the worker who is often forced to embark on the three-hour treks to work. Hall said that his boss will sometimes said him home as a penalty for his tardiness--without considering the ridiculous journey he has to travel just to get to there.
"Working hard, and working as hard as you can, isn't paying off for them," mayoral hopeful and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, said during the news conference. "They're being underemployed, They're being underpaid. They're being taken advantage of. They're being ignored. They're becoming a permanent underclass in the city of New York."
The UnitedNY and CPD report lays out four specific initiatives that workers and advocates must pressure the city to implement in order to help better the plight of low-wage workers. The reports calls on the city and employers to :
[Raise] standards for low-wage workers. [Regulate] high-violation industries where labor abuses are rampant. [Establish] a Mayor's Office of Labor Standards to ensure that employment laws are enforced. [Urge] the State to allow NYC to set a minimum wage higher than the State minimum--due to the higher cost of living in the City.The report pays close attention to the need for City Council to pass the paid sick-leave bill, and increase the minimum wage in the city to $10/hour--a salary that would net a worker with regular hours about $20,000/year in earnings.
"We can't continue to be a Tale of Two Cities, where the path to the middle class keeps fading for thousands of New Yorkers," said New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. "We must break the logjam and pass paid sick leave in the City Council. We have to protect low-wage workers fighting union busting employers. We can't tolerate inaction any longer. It's time for real action to fight for working families."
During one of the symposium workshops, a panel of labor experts discussed the obstacles facing low-wage workers in their fight to obtain such rights.
"[We've] shifted from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy," Dorian Warren, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University, said during the discussion. "[The job market is filled with] part-time jobs, low wages, no benefits, no social contract, no ability to move up in the job the way 20th century workers were able to."
Warren says that the quality of jobs in the American economy will only decline if something isn't done. He noted that 24 percent of jobs were low-wage in 2009. By 2020, that number is expected to nearly double and hit 40 percent. To make matters worse, technological "advances" are expected to increase unemployment rates by 3-5 percent moving forward.
"We're looking at an economy only of low-wage work in the future, but also of high and permanent levels of unemployment," Warren said.
The panel was moderated by acclaimed labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse of the N.Y. Times and included Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, Deborah Axt, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, M. Patricia Smith, the solicitor of labor for U.S. Department of Labor and Ana Avendano of the AFL-CIO.
Several panelists stressed the need to combat attacks from right-minded forces seeking to erode worker wage and benefit rights. Falcon says that those fighting for worker rights must correct popular narratives, many of which categorize wage and benefit increases for workers as business-killers.
"When we talk about the minimum wage, the immediate response from business is, we're going to lose jobs because, we're only going to be able to hire a few people. We have to have an answer to that objection," Falcon said. "Through raising the minimum wage, you create job growth in terms of people being able to put more money into the economy. You're [putting] less pressure on social welfare systems...the system is still subsidizing business [when the public provides] welfare and other social services."
Warren* argued a similar point.
"I think we have to be much more explicit about targeting the right the way that they've targeted us. There's a reason why the right has gone after public sector unionism," Warren* said. "They know that's where the heart of the labor movement is in terms of funding and in terms of membership. We have to get smarter about which parts of the right do we target to destroy ideologically, organizationally so that we can advance further our movements."
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Under scrutiny, New York Fed sets short list for Dudley successor
“Community and labor activists led by the Fed Up coalition demonstrate and call for the selection of a Federal Reserve...
“Community and labor activists led by the Fed Up coalition demonstrate and call for the selection of a Federal Reserve Bank of New York president independent from Wall Street, outside the Fed bank in New York, March 12, 2018.”
Read the full article here.
Post Navigation Report Finds Lack of Proper Fraud Oversight at Charters in State
LA School Report - March 24, 2015, by Craig Clough - California is extremely vulnerable to fraud at charter schools and...
LA School Report - March 24, 2015, by Craig Clough - California is extremely vulnerable to fraud at charter schools and as a result can expect to lose $100 million in wasted tax money in 2015, a new report released today finds.
The report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Public Advocates found that there are “structural oversight weaknesses” in the state’s charter system.
Among the problems it found:
Oversight depends heavily on self-reporting by charter schools.
General auditing techniques alone do not uncover fraud.
Oversight bodies lack adequate staffing to detect and eliminate fraud.
California has the largest number of charter schools in the nation — 1,184, according to the California Charter Schools Association. The number in LA Unified grew this year to 285, 231 of which are independent.
The report recommends a few solutions, including requiring oversight agencies, such as the State Comptroller’s Office and Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, to conduct audits on charter schools once every three years, and not only when requested to do so.
“There’s no proactive system for auditing California’s charter schools by state officials… They wait until someone has whisteblowers come forward and the media has put something out, but there’s not a regular system for auditing schools,” said Kyle Serrette, director of education at the Center for Popular Democracy, in a call with reporters.
The report stated that over $81 million in fraud has been uncovered at charter schools to date, but that it is likely the “tip of the iceberg” and estimated the state will lose $100 million this year alone to waste, fraud and mismanagement at charters.
“We have a situation where we are losing millions of dollars to fraud in the charter sector every single year. We now know what the problem is,” Serrette said, adding that the backers of the report will be pushing state lawmakers for policy changes based on the findings of the report.
Serrette also said there are other states that do a better job of applying rigorous oversight of charters.
“Pennsylvania is a great example where the auditor general audits all of Pennsylvania’s charter schools every three to five years and the districts, which tend to be the authorizers there, they do the same thing,” Serrette said.
Click here to read the full report.
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Transcript: Netroots Annual ConfeCPD and Local Progress Mentioned in C-Span during Netroots Conventionrence
Transcript: Netroots Annual ConfeCPD and Local Progress Mentioned in C-Span during Netroots Conventionrence
...codirector of Local Progress, a national group that unites progressive local officials and allied organizations. It...
...codirector of Local Progress, a national group that unites progressive local officials and allied organizations. It is run by the Center for popular Democracy...
Read the transcript here.
1 month ago
1 month ago