Talk:Starbucks unions

Title

Unlike some of the other company worker organization articles, Starbucks unions are further along in development/reliable source coverage such that the whole article could be construed as Starbucks unionization efforts or Starbucks unionization. Open to alternative, descriptive names that would encompass the forms of worker organization that preceded any singular union entity. czar 21:32, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I posted a similar question in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour#Rfc on transnational company worker organization articles Many people are likely to fall upon this article by simply searching Starbucks union, Starbucks workers, etc so they’re likely to fall upon this encyclopedic resource either way. I find the ambiguous spelling of organization and singular/plural annoying but that’s fixable with redirects either way. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:13, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Being that there is officially a Starbucks Union in one store, and likely multiple if the NLRB follows past precedent, which is tends to do. Starbucks workers have moved past organizing and I highly suggest changing it to either Starbucks Union or the Unions name “Starbucks Workers United” as the 6 other stores have all filed need the same union. LittleRoisin (talk) 01:25, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

LittleRoisin I do think that such suggestions should be redirects to this article, but if this article is about the broader/global starbucks unionization/worker organization efforts it cannot be too specific. That doesn't preclude Starbucks Workers United from becoming its own article (currently redirects to Buffalo section), the same way Alphabet Workers Union and Google worker organization are closely related but separate articles. Given the limited editing in general, I'd pragmatically suggest to keep it united, until the recent news settles down and we can see what's best way to improve the article(s) ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:56, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Structure

This should have an intro on industrial composition of Starbucks including number of workers, locations and not treat this as a stand-alone US article without specifying so. Will do more research on other countries too and contribute ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:13, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Union law in the US is significantly different from the rest of the world. Especially with the issue of “right to work” states, having this article focus mostly on the US or just the NAFTA Region would most likely be best. LittleRoisin (talk) 13:19, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Shushugah, what sources do you have in mind for that? I can see adding a Background section for context but the scope of the coverage/article is worker efforts to organize, not the corporation's labor relations, which would also entail covering work conditions, etc. czar 20:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Czar Agreed. If there was more comprehensive sourcing, the further info about labour relations including subjective/objective micro/macro conditions would be interesting, alas a briefer summary of employee count/worksites would be adequate. Apple worker organization is an example of that, without diving into what that means. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:29, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Old Starbucks Workers Union article

This page only appeared recently and the old article for the Starbucks workers Union has seemingly disappeared. There was a lot of archived evidence of Starbuck’s taking union-busting stances and local papers taking strong anti-union stances. If anyone still have those resources they should be added as the current Starbucks Workers United has had overwhelmingly positive coverage in line with the recent increase in union support across the Us. LittleRoisin (talk) 01:22, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@LittleRoisin Starbucks Workers Union was merged into this article; you can find the full history [1] here. I'll add a notice that this article was merged into this one. I agree with the merge, but do think it's worth checking what existing material there was. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:48, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Most of the content was unsourced or unreliably sourced, so there was nothing to "merge" apart from using some of the sources to rewrite those sections from scratch. czar 16:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Breadth

For purposes of breadth, are there any other major sources, markets, or concepts missing from the article? czar 18:15, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

• The IWW sections are currently in article but likely could be expanded.
• International Union of Operating Engineers failed organizing in Kent, Washington.
• Chile exists, further material here.[2]
• Missing Airport Starbucks workers in the US are unionized in highest numbers, but there's not as much attention about them.
  • Racial pay disparity report conducted by UNITE HERE
  • HMS Host (major provider/host of Starbucks franchises in North America airports. Orlando/Denver airport workers fired for unionizing, seems with UNITE-HERE (which has overlapping jurisdiction with SEIU often).
• Nice to haves: State of unionization in Food service sector/across coffee chains in general, and relation of fair trade/unionization. Not essential tho for breadth requirement imho.

References

~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:58, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

NLRB confirms 2nd NY store union vote

Am too tired to read article properly and see where/what needs to be updated but thus just rolled in: Starbucks Union Wins Vote at Second Store, Labor Board Rules. Happy editing/brewing! ☕️ ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:30, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Order by geography

I wanted to wait to see where it was going before commenting but I don't agree with the article's reorganization by geographic region. Unless the small sections have reliable, secondary sources with which we plan to expand, they're more likely to remain anemic in perpetuity. We are not expecting paragraphs on Starbucks unions in Oceania, for instance. It would be sufficient to summarize the international union drives in their own section and cover the U.S. in its own, given its abundance of coverage. This is how the article was organized previously. czar 02:43, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

The article was confusing previously for someone not in the US, as it was organized by "Early unionization" and "Buffalo". I came here to find out if there were other unions besides Buffalo, and that information was not easily parsed as it was organized previously, and felt US-centric. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 00:39, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@Czar: Reorganized, thoughts? SquareInARoundHole (talk) 00:46, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@Czar @SquareInARoundHole I personally don't care for consistency always, for example see Amazon union which has USA, Canada, Europe for geographic taxonomy. I am content with the layout of the Starbucks unions article at the moment. When more countries are added/structured, we can deal with new layouts. For now, with Starbucks Workers United being a likely ongoing update, it makes sense to keep that in a separate live section, and eventually maybe even a separate fork/article, the same way Amazon Labor Union and Alphabet Workers Union became forks. But for now, I'd keep it unified and am happy with the direction it is going in. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:04, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Shushugah! Hopefully we have consensus with @Czar on the current structure. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 17:40, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Looks good! I would remove some of the sections in the Historical section and merge the Union busting into an existing section, either the overview of precedent and/or the SWU section. czar 17:55, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Revisiting this: The last year has proven out that the small sections will remain small. The reorg'd structure is hard to follow and maintain and is missing many of the updates from recent months. I plan to revert to the prior format as discussed above, with level two headings for the U.S. and International. czar 07:20, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Additional sources

Instead of adding to the Further reading section, I'll add sources here (in ascending date order) until someone adds them to the article. czar 07:45, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

• "US trade unions: Inside the revival brewing at Starbucks". Financial Times. September 4, 2022.
• Wallace, Abby (September 10, 2022). "Meet the union leaders powering a wave of organizing at Amazon, Starbucks, Target, and more". Business Insider. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
• Sainato, Michael (October 16, 2022). "More workers say Starbucks retaliated for union efforts: 'I lost everything when they fired me'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.
• Eidelson, Josh (October 20, 2022). "Starbucks Corporate Workers Doubt Company Values in Internal Poll". Bloomberg.com.
• Scheiber, Noam (October 24, 2022). "Starbucks Showdown in Boston Points to New Phase of Union Campaign". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
• Geraldo, Renata (October 25, 2022). "Starbucks alleges union broke rules by recording talks in 5 places". The Seattle Times. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
• Farhi, Paul (October 30, 2022). "Starbucks will get reporters' messages with union, federal judge rules". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286.
• Haddon, Heather (October 31, 2022). "Starbucks Union Expansion Slows a Year Into Labor Drive". WSJ. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
• Brown, Jon (November 22, 2022). "Starbucks to shutter first Seattle store to unionize, citing 'safety and security incidents'". FOXBusiness. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
• Eidelson, Josh (November 30, 2022). "Starbucks illegally refused to negotiate with union, NLRB rules". The Seattle Times. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
• Jones-Gorman, Jessica (December 1, 2022). "Staten Island Starbucks location reopens with a new look, quieting union-busting controversy". Staten Island Advance. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
• Sarkar (December 6, 2022). "The NLRB Has Filed Repeated Charges Against Starbucks for Illegal Union Busting". Jacobin. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
• Scheiber, Noam; Creswell, Julie (December 11, 2022). "Why Is Howard Schultz Taking This So Personally?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
• Scheiber, Noam (December 16, 2022). "Starbucks Union Strikes at Dozens of Stores as Talks Stall". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

czar 07:45, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

On source for NLRB data

Just to avoid an edit war, could you explain why you think that source isn't usable. You're allowed to use user created content (I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I'm assuming you mean non news sources) given that its verifiable which it very much is, easily so. "The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. The best sources have a professional structure for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments. The greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source." This clearly fits that definition.

I'm not here to promote any particular source, simply to use what's reliable.

In addition,Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications The author of the site is a professor of political science focusing on unions and has peer reviewed research on the topic, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21565503.2021.1908149?journalCode=rpgi20. - LoomCreek (talk) 19:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Self publication is not grounds for an immediate dismissal of it. It simply means greater scrutiny. "Self-published sources can be reliable, and they can be used (but not for third-party claims about living people)." (that last part per WP:BLP)-LoomCreek (talk) 20:02, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

While your "established expert on the subject matter" is potentially pertinent, what we are looking at here (if the website's CLAIMS are true) is an agglomeration of raw data, by one individual, who is doing it as a hobby. Even if the website's CLAIMS as to who is behind it is true (which we have no way of proving), that site says: "Who made this website? My name is Kevin Reuning, I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Miami University. You can find out more about me on my website. Although I am interested in the labor movement, my training is more focused on political parties and social movements." By no means is he considered an expert in the field of labor, and again, this is raw data, which can be gained form a Reliable Source, the NLRB site itself. To my knowledge, it is standard policy on Wikipedia to not cite to un-Reliable reprints or republications of Reliable Sources, but to cite the RS directly. ---Avatar317^(talk) 20:30, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

That's a lot of all-caps associated with some weird, ranty, obviously wrong statements. Here's Kevin Reuning's profile at Miami University's Department of Political Science; it shows that this is his individual website, which confirms that https://unionelections.org/ is his project. He studies labor unions as part of his research. The claims on his website about how he's collected the data are entirely plausible and would be well within his expertise; moreover, you haven't given any reason to doubt the veracity of the data. I am going to restore the link (and if you revert you can be sure of a quick trip to the edit warring noticeboard). --JBL (talk) 23:58, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Another standard piece of evidence for reliability is being quoted by other reliable sources; here's the Guardian, here and here are the Capital Times, here I think is one of the Business Journals (I actually can't read the article, I'm trusting that my search engine told me the truth that it's referenced there), and here is Jonah Furman (writing at his blog, but unquestionably a subject-matter expert on the US labor movement). --JBL (talk) 00:26, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Your first paragraph's arguments are garbage; if you understood Wikipedia's policies you'd know that we don't care what people claim to do, we care about what others recognize them for successfully doing. In the academic field it is also known as "peer-review." Being a professor of something doesn't grant someone automatic reliability.

Your second paragraph is valid: it is called WP:USEBYOTHERS, but this was never shown to be the case until you provided those links. ---Avatar317^(talk) 04:59, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Apology accepted; perhaps next time spend 5 minutes checking before making a fool of yourself. --JBL (talk) 17:16, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Friendly suggestion that everyone here consciously endeavor to be civil :) --Jerome Frank Disciple 19:40, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Neutral Point of View and OneStarbucks site

I've attempted to make a minor edit - to add the OneStarbucks site to the "External Links" section, and had this reverted by one of the editors. Because this article is about Starbucks unions, the corporate response to unions is indeed relevant. To fail to include this goes against the Neutral point of view required of all Wikipedia articles. It appears that several of the editors have a close connection to the topic and this is reflected in recent edits and sources cited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SONORAMA (talk • contribs) 01:29, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

There's a difference between an organizational website and a PR campaign. If you'd like you can reference it in a response section if you have a reliable source that references it. A link however in this case clearly violates WP:NOTPROMO. Wikipedia is not a place for public relation campaigns. - LoomCreek (talk) 04:19, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello LoomCreek. If you review the Wikipedia guidelines on external links, you will see that external links do not require inline citations. The rule against self promotion that you cite applies to Wikipedia pages themselves, not to outside pages Wikipedia links to. The official company response to a union is indeed very relevant to an article about a union. Based on these rules, I am going to restore the external link to the OneStarbucks site. To avoid any confusion I will make clear it is a Starbucks corporate site. SONORAMA (talk) 12:18, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@SONORAMA I'll refer you to WP:LINKSTOAVOID. Particularly point 4 & 13. I will revert such an edit because it is still a clear violation of the WP:NOTPROMO and within the particular policy you mention. LoomCreek (talk) 13:42, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@LoomCreek Point 4 refers to online petition or crowdfunding sites. Point 13 refers to sites only indirectly related to a Wikipedia article's subject. Neither of these cases apply to the https://one.starbucks.com/ site. And again, the NOTPROMO rule refers to Wikipedia articles themselves, not to outside sites that articles link to. At this point it appears that your reversions are in bad faith, and you seem to have a close connection to the topic of the article itself. Perhaps it is time to step back and let more neutral editors improve the article. SONORAMA (talk) 14:21, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@SONORAMA I'll open this to a general editors comment which is the next step. You're understanding of NOTPROMO is wrong, it applies to every aspect of wikipedia as it was clearly intended, and is clearly stated. Your attempts to bludgeon through this process, not to mention the way you've levied accusations in those attempts isn't something to look kindly on. After that, it may require arbcom. LoomCreek (talk) 14:31, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

That's fine @LoomCreek, I'm glad to read that you will follow procedures rather than trying to "bludgeon through" and engage in back and forth reverts. Improving the article - and not promoting a cause - is the goal. SONORAMA (talk) 14:39, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with LoomCreek. WP:LINKSTOAVOID point 4 refers to crowdfunding as an example, that doesn't mean something can't be promotional just because it's corporate propaganda instead of crowdfunding. The official company response to unionization is best characterized by what quality secondary sources say about it, not by providing a link to a propaganda page. Separately, per WP:BRD, adding the link again without acquiring consensus first would constitute unambiguous edit-warring; please don't do that. --JBL (talk) 17:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

A secondary source preferable to a primary source? That's ridiculous. Regarding "corporate propaganda," we could just as easily characterize the union website as "union propaganda." Articles about controversial subjects have quality sources on both sides and delve into the issues in dispute. Neutral point of view Wikipedia:NPOV is non-negotiable on Wikipedia. SONORAMA (talk) 18:21, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

A secondary source preferable to a primary source? That's ridiculous. Possibly you should better acquaint yourself with basic sourcing guidelines. we could just as easily characterize the union website as "union propaganda" Yes we could do that if we were rather stupid and didn't realize that this was an article about unions and consequently links to their official websites are explicitly sanctioned by WP:ELOFFICIAL. --JBL (talk) 18:36, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@JayBeeEll The article is about Starbucks unions so obviously a link to an official Starbucks site about unions is a relevant and sanctioned external link. SONORAMA (talk) 20:12, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

RfC about company external link

Should the article include https://one.starbucks.com, in the external links? LoomCreek (talk) 14:38, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

• Well I don't really think an RfC is necessary at this stage, but if we're going to have one then the answer is "no, of course not, corporate propaganda pages do not add to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject; the views and actions of the Starbucks corporation are better presented through the lens of secondary sources and their analysis." --JBL (talk) 18:39, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

*No - (We shouldn't need an RfC here, those are for when there are disputes with equal number of editors on both sides.) It is NOT standard policy to point to a website which represents the opposition arguments to whatever the article is about. The Brady campaign's website is not listed on the NRA's website, nor versa vice. ---Avatar317^(talk) 01:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• No echo the arguments above. Nemov (talk) 18:58, 26 November 2023 (UTC)