Already quite an eventful week in the world of SBWU, with win after win & strike after strike rocking the nation! 🔥🔥🔥
In the midst of new stores filing and the 10th illegally fired partner being reinstated, our store suffered our most egregious unfair labor practice yet.
🧵
On Tuesday, management pulled aside one of our partners & told him that he'd have to take off his union hat or be sent home to go change into more "work appropriate" attire.
Our partner invoked his Weingarten Rights, concerned he was being written up but his request was ignored.
The next day, management noticed that several more partners were wearing hats with the union logo on them.
It should be noted that there has NEVER been a customer complaint about these hats.
Our store is 💯 unanimous pro-union so no one working the floor was offended either.
Yet, we were told wearing the hats was disruptive to the work environment.
Our district manager came in & attempted to tell partners 1-on-1 to take off the hat or go home.
By this point, several other partners noticed what was going on & put on their own union hats in solidarity.
We insisted we meet with our district manager as a group instead of cornered individually.
We're aware of our rights and we're aware of the NLRB case ruling that "any attempt to restrict the wearing of union clothing or insignia is presumptively unlawful."
nlrb.gov/news-outreach/…
If you attempted to enter our store at any point after 1 pm on Wednesday, you can guess the rest.
As it turns out, Starbucks would rather COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN a store 6 hours early than allow its employees to wear a hat with a union logo on it while serving customers.
Highlight of the meeting was our DM implying that refusing to be (illegally) forced to remove our hats was hurting the partner experience of our fellow partners.
Just as every. other. shift & barista working put on a union hat of their own and sat down to join the meeting.
🔥✊🔥
✨The solidarity in the room was powerful.✨
#UnionStrong
NINE partners were there, ready and enthusiastic to do the work and serve our customers. We were being forbidden to do so while wearing the hats.
And it was OUR PARTNERS management was claiming were being "disruptive."🤔
To our beloved customers, we're sorry that you were denied service that day over a logo on a hat.
If we were given the choice, we would have stayed open.
If this doesn't speak to the difference of priorities between management and the unionized baristas, we don't know what does.
While we were not striking today for #DoubleDownStrike alongside 100 other @SBWorkersUnited stores, several of our partners DID lose hours this past Wednesday from management's egregious ULP.
Please support our #Solidarity fund to replace those wages:
gofundme.com/f/willow-pfing…
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