Mediaboss Marketing

Starbucks workers to unionize workplaces in Seattle and all over the country.

Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York were the first to certify a union through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and their success has inspired workers across the country to follow suit. Founded over 50 years ago, Starbucks turned Seattle into the caffeine capital of the United States, becoming the largest coffee chain in the world. It generates more than 10 times the revenue of its closest competitor. Today, its workers are taking matters into their own hands, organizing for living wages and the provision of health insurance.

As we all know, essential workers are the real heroes of this pandemic. The only reason the economy hasnt ground to a halt is because they keep showing up for work. We applaud them for making a living, but their bosses are making a killing. As of 2020, CEOs average earnings are 351 times that of their employees but it's the baristas who keep the money moving and the coffee flowing.

60 stores in 19 states have organized their workplaces for unionization. Starbucks Workers United, the new Starbucks labor union, is fighting an uphill battle unions have been on the decline for decades, and real wages have gone down with them. Organized labor creates inclusive growth in the economy and fortifies the health of American democracy.

Rachel Ybarra is a Starbucks worker and union organizer. She recalled her excitement upon learning that the Starbucks in Buffalo had filed for a union.

It was kind of like finding out that they had done something that a lot of us had presented to one another as a joke, Ybarra said, describing how forming a union was something that almost everyone in her workplace favored, but considered an impossibility.

Seeing Buffalo win their union election prompted Ybarra and a coworker to meet with Starbucks Workers United in the days following.

We had that meeting on Friday, and over that weekend, we got all of our [union] cards signed and were able to get them filed by Monday, Ybarra said.

The National Labor Relations board requires 30% support to file for an election, where 50% support is needed to certify a union.

At their small coffeehouse, it only took three days to gain a majority, proof of the common desire for improved working conditions. Ybarra was ready for managements attempt to break their organizing efforts.

We had a couple of meetings with managers, Ybarra said. I had a three-on-one with my store manager, my [general manager], and another store manager that I had never met I decided to be maliciously compliant. They responded with a lot of hostility My district manager offered for me to leave three times during the meeting.

Why do corporations hire union-busting specialists, pay for costly legal battles, or spend money on anti-union campaigns? Because its cheaper than paying workers more than what is absolutely necessary. Unionized workplaces grant workers the ability to collectively bargain, allowing them to negotiate the terms of a union contract. With Starbucks Workers United, Ybarra expects increased pay and healthcare coverage.

Unionizing a workplace is difficult, and there are huge, huge advantages for employers who can make vague threats to punish workers for unionizing. Jake Grumbach, assistant professor of political science, said. Emerging moments of unionization in a place like Starbucks can show that it is possible even in difficult situations.

The recent organizing push is the result of a long term slowdown in the social mobility and economic outlook for low wage workers. When a business generates immense profit and chooses to not compensate the employees, low wage workers are left with no choice but to bargain for better wages through unionization.

Establishing living wages through labor union collective bargaining provides huge benefits for raising children, lowering crime, having a strong middle class with living wages for workers across education levels, across geography and industry, Grumbach said. That is absolutely crucial for an economy to work, and it can supercharge economic growth by having ordinary people have more money to spend in the economy stimulating demand by reducing inequality.

When labor unions are strong, they can drive up wages for both non-union and union members by offering better wages, creating competition for employers to attract employees. Moreover, private sector unions represent their workers politically by endorsing pro-worker candidates.

[Labor unions] serve to organize the working class politically and thats actually really crucial for democracy, Grumbach said. Imagine you live in some place where all the manufacturing is being outsourced and offshored, your town is changing, and there's an opioid crisis and things seem really bleak People in those positions are very susceptible to politics based in fear of immigrants or racial conflict, and labor unions are a way to organize mass politics in a more democratic way, so people have control over policies that affect their material lives, rather than just culture war politics.

When workers unite on the basis of shared interests, they can win and win big. Starbucks workers in Seattle are proving that labor unions are still possible in the most unlikely of places.

A union is just what happens when your team comes together and decides to take control of their workplace, Ybarra said.

The national labor struggle is ongoing, sending shockwaves from coast to coast. Ybarra hopes for a successful result in their union election next month. Our community must support essential workers like Ybarra and labor unions like Starbucks Workers United in their fight for fair wages and representation.

The old union song rings true: Oh miner, wont you organize wherever you may be, and make this a land of freedom for workers like you and me.

Reach writer Thomas DuBeau at opinion@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @thomas_dubeau

Like what youre reading? Support high quality student journalism by donating here.

View post:
Democracy starts in the workplace | Critical Conversations | dailyuw.com - Dailyuw

The following is an excerpt from a longer piece offering perspectives from various authors on multiple fronts of United States foreign policy ahead of President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on March 1, 2022.

By comparison with the dismal performance of former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden refreshingly promised a foreign policy guided by human rights. But despite some positive steps, Bidens approach has been disappointingly conventional.

For starters, we can be thankful no longer to have a president who embraces every friendly autocrat under the sun even Russian President Vladimir Putin. In addition, reversing Trumps moves, Biden rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council, re-engaged with the World Health Organization, supported global efforts to fight climate change, and cancelled sanctions against the International Criminal Court prosecutor for examining torture by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan and war crimes by Israeli officials. Biden also has continued the longstanding practice of pressing U.S. adversaries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba to curb their abuses, including by imposing targeted sanctions.

On China, Biden signed into law the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which presumptively bars imports from Xinjiang. After labeling atrocities targeting Uyghurs as genocide and crimes against humanity, Biden joined a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics to undermine President Xi Jinpings efforts to sportswash his repression. Yet despite these important discrete steps, Biden has yet to put forward a comprehensive strategy, with clear goals, to curb Beijings oppression at home and its efforts to undermine international human rights institutions.

When it comes to relations with abusive allies, Biden showed little sign of a human rights-guided approach. Apart from modest tweaks, he continued large-scale U.S. arms sales or military aid to Egypt despite the worst repression in the countrys modern history, to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates despite their devastating airstrikes and other atrocities against Yemeni civilians (casualties surged after Saudi arm-twisting succeeded in lifting U.N. scrutiny in October), and to Israel despite its attacks on large civilian apartment and office buildings in Gaza and its crime against humanity of apartheid affecting millions of Palestinians. Silence from the White House matched Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis silence before his supporters increasingly virulent attacks on Muslims.

Even some of Bidens positive steps have been half-hearted. After his summits with key leaders such as Russias Putin, Chinas Xi, and Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the White House said human rights were discussed but provided no details, leaving in the dark the persecuted people from those countries the primary agents for change and missing an opportunity to use the moral influence of the presidents office to support them. Just days after Bidens Summit for Democracy, the administration invited autocratic leaders from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand to a U.S.-ASEAN summit. The administration implemented economic restrictions on Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover that are severely harming the Afghan population, which now faces a looming humanitarian crisis and large-scale starvation. And while some migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border have been allowed to seek asylum, many are still summarily turned back despite the considerable danger of violent attack.

Read the original post:
US State of the Union: Democracy and Human Rights - Human Rights Watch

While defending Confederate statues, Marjorie Taylor Greene said she is opposed to taking any down, even one of Hitler, because: Our history is our lessons and our lessons is how we learn to make our choices going forward. ... Its so that I could tell my children and teach others about who these people are, what they did and what they may be about.

This may explain why Greene and so many others in my Republican Party have drawn ugly parallels relating to Hitler from mask mandates to the education of our children.

Unfortunately, Greene and many of her congressional colleagues have either learned very little of Hitlers history or, worse yet, they choose to ignore it.

They should be reminded that Hitler was a narcissistic demagogue who, when he lost a presidential election to Otto Von Hindenburg, claimed that he was stabbed in the back by a conspiracy of his political enemies and began a course of sedition and insurrection. Not long after Hitler lost the election, the Reichstag building, which housed the German congress, was burned to the ground. It was the Reichstag fire which gave Hitler and his Nazi Party the excuse they needed to take the power that the voters had denied him.

His rationale for taking complete power was to bring security to the German people.

The day after the fire, February 28, 1933, Hitler embarked on a course of enacting decrees and urging executive orders that eliminated all political opposition and began the merciless purge of his political enemies. The following month he opened his first concentration camp at Dachau, and in the years that followed he pursued his genocidal rampage.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler spoke of the big lie ( Der groe Lge) the use of a lie so breathtaking that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Hitler used the big lie to not only blame Jews and communists for every ill, real or imaginary, that beset Germany including the Reichstag fire, but also as a device to frighten and divide the German people.

You cannot reflect on this history without remembering the message delivered by George Washington in his farewell address. He warned of the demagogue who agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms to foment riot and insurrection. Our first president realized that this agitation and disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Our second president, John Adams, was also worried about the rise of a demagogue in this country. Shortly after the British burned down our Capitol building in 1814, Adams, responding to a letter that criticized him for not patriotically applauding the virtues of democracy, cautioned that vanity, pride, avarice or ambition were irresistible temptations to individuals that led to the subversion of democracy. In his words: Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.

Sol Wachtler, a former chief judge of the New York state Court of Appeals, is a distinguished adjunct professor at Touro Law School.

View post:
Commentary: The main dangers to our democracy come from within - Albany Times Union

Day one of the two-day Democracy and Constitutionalism: Civic Education Series kicked off at Constitution Hill on Monday with the terrible reality of democracy under threat from a Medusa.

Top of mind for the gathering of more than 30 global speakers turned inevitably to the Russian invasion of sovereign Ukraine that the world has witnessed in the past week. But attention to conflicts 8,500km from Joburg circled quickly back to the room at the womens jail at Constitution Hill where the topics to be covered throughout the course of the day showed that South Africa, like the rest of the world, is in urgent need of confronting the many ways democracy and constitutionalism are coming under threat.

Panellists outlined that current-day threats to democracy have manifested in a variety of ways, including the rise of populism designed to create divides of us and them; racism still untamed, but put on the back burner of issues; pressures arising from a shrinking reliable media thats also up against a machinery of fast replicating false facts and fake news.

Its also grassroots movements not getting their voices into the room and essentially shut out without resources or access. Its weakened and captured state security apparatus, evident during the July 2021 riots in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, and unchecked abuse of power.

Underpinning it all is the mounting pressure of climate change with the reality that it will be the poorest and most vulnerable who will face the worst of the impacts of a world getting hotter. The climate justice movement, panellists said, is therefore entwined with the social justice movements aims to undo the economic structures that keep society deeply unequal and the corporate might of polluting industries that still dominate and pull political strings.

The lecture series hosted by Section27 and Casac (Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution) in partnership with Constitution Hill has at its chief aim reinvigorating broad public interest in strengthening constitutional democracy and the rule of law.

In her opening remarks, Faranaaz Veriava, head of education at Section27, spoke of a backsliding of civil society gains made in the past few years.

The grassroots activism and civic education programmes that characterised much of the struggle against apartheid, and the early days of our democracy and constitution-making all but disappeared from the South African landscape.

While the core work of Section27 has been to advocate for health and education rights in pursuit of socio-economic equality, we are concerned that our rights-based campaigns and many of our cases that we have successfully led will not be effective if government at all levels is riddled by corruption and dysfunctionality.

We now believe that it is equally important for all of us to focus on education in human rights, she said.

The disconnect between the ideals of the Constitution and the ultimate hope of creating a better life for all was also highlighted in the keynote address of Justice Jody Kollapen, who is newly appointed to the apex court.

The question arises on how the peoples struggle deeply rooted in the lived reality of the millions who drove it and gave it sustenance and legitimacy relate to the new institutional framing of the Constitution that was meant to deliver on the expectations of that struggle. But we may well have fallen short, he said.

Kollapen called the Constitution supreme, but said it was unable to provide all the answers that we need all of the time and said that parallel processes that harmonise and live in synergy with the Constitution [are] necessary in ensuring that the oxygen of a democracy is always maintained and sustained.

The first days session bought together a strong mix of panellists with the hope of being able to find more connecting points between social movements around the world and also to incorporate global perspectives with home-grown realities as a way to cover more angles, see past blind spots and start to find the strategies of growing awareness, sharing information and resources, strategic collaboration, better organising, stronger analysis and effective mobilising.

The global threats to democracy, civil liberties and freedoms from across the world have terrifyingly similar impacts despite varying mechanisms of execution and implementation.

Speakers raised alarms from their countries, including increasingly militaristic and undemocratic practices and policies under the presidency of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, including his denial of Covid-19 at the cost of many Brazilian lives.

In India, its a Hindu populist democracy marked by minority exclusion under Narendra Modi. Modi has severely limited the rights and freedoms of Muslims including through an exclusionary citizenship law and has defended his actions within a framework of democratic politics and within the framework of a constitution.

Closer to home, the absolute monarchy of eSwatini continues to curb political freedoms including the appointment of judges by the king. For nearly half a century the people have been denied the right to elect their leaders or just be recognised as citizens, not the kings subjects. Last years pro-democracy protests in that kingdom left at least 29 people dead and dozens of others injured and maimed.

Bringing the days session to a close was a focus on strengthening institutional democracy. This session homed in on the July 2021 riots in South Africa and insights from information that had since emerged.

It raised red flags on power struggles within state security agencies, including this past week, with the exodus of the national police commissioner from the South African Police Service, ostensibly at loggerheads with the minister of police.

The fingers now being pointed at Cabinet ministers also showed up whose power bases were weakening and it left questions on why there were not more legislative measures to push back against political power and to demand transparency. This included how budgets were used, the operational direction of departments and even which cases for investigation were prioritised.

The full recording of the first days sessions are available on YouTube, under Democracy and Constitutionalism: Civic Education Series. Day twos session will continue at Constitution Hill and will also be live-streamed on the same platform. DM/MC

Related Articles

See the article here:
Democracy and constitutionalism under threat from unche... - Daily Maverick

What is the difference between NATO enlargement and the expansion of Russia?

While the first takes place on voluntary terms and with the agreement of its members for the sake of defending democratic countries, the second shows an authoritarian nuclear power in the grip of nostalgia for its empire trying to extend its influence through a brutal breach and self-serving interpretation of international law.

In all this, Russia has not been provoked by the enlargement of NATO, which has created a peaceful and stable neighbourhood around the Russian borders, but rather by the pain of losing a totalitarian empire and witnessing the success of its former vassals in building democratic and free societies. And that poses an existential threat to the authoritarian regime in Russia.

Some days ago, between meetings in Moscow, I took a moment to lay flowers on the spot where one of the best known democrats of modern Russia Boris Nemtsov was killed on Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge in the shadow of the Kremlin.

Boris had been a good friend of mine and we had always had fascinating discussions about the present and the future of Russia. His absence is profoundly felt in Russia today. The authorities are doing everything they can to erase Nemtsov from the popular memory because a country with totalitarian leanings cannot allow the existence of freedom of expression or debates about alternative routes to development among its citizens.

Through the decades, Russia has painted democratic Western countries as scary enemy figures trying to obtain access to its riches and destroy its thousand year old civilisation.

People have been told since childhood that the United States and NATO are trying to surround Russia on all sides and annihilate its nationhood. This lie has been used to manipulate millions at home and abroad to justify Russias aggressive foreign policy vis--vis the democratic West.

Historical parallels offer us food for thought. Just like in the 1930s, Russia has come to the realisation that the situation in Europe is ripe for changing the current status quo.

In addition to restoring its empire, totalitarian Russia dreams of forcing its rules on the democratic West, setting up new zones of influence, and marginalizing the role of the United States in global politics. To this end, even the nuclear button is not out of bounds, at least in words.

One question has been asked repeatedly of late: Why is Russia ramping up the tension now of all times?

Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference last year that it is all the fault of the West, which has set out to destroy the architecture of international relations based on the Charter of the United Nations, with no consideration for Russias security fears or honouring its own promises.

Lavrov reiterated the Kremlin narrative of how NATO had broken its promise and enlarged, and how the coup in Ukraine was a threat to Russias security. As expected, he said not a word about Russias own aggressiveness, using force to move borders, or neutralising internal democratic institutions and dismantling civil society, which pressured Russias democratic neighbours into seeking a security guarantee by joining NATO.

Those who have witnessed the advance of the Russian war wagon with their own eyes, are probably keenly aware that it cannot be stopped by gentle words alone.

As a young journalist covering the first Chechen war from 1994-1996, I learned what Russian authorities were capable of. The carpet bombing of Grozny killed thousands upon thousands of citizens. For what? To stop the empire from disintegrating and the free will of the people from becoming the norm.

Just as the destruction of the Chechens benefited from the mass dehumanisation campaign of the entire nation back then, current propaganda is attempting to obliterate Ukrainian independence and nationhood. The Kremlins appetite has only grown in 30 years and has not been thwarted by Western diplomacy, which is built on good will and hope for peaceful coexistence.

In all of this, NATOs enlargement has not been directed against Russia, but against threats to use total force and surround us on all sides. Russian society has been taken hostage by its own history and has not succeeded in breaking free for objective or subjective reasons from the repressive grip of the deeply rooted authoritarian regime.

As the Kremlins intention to destroy a democratic Ukraine is only a part of its quest to erode European security architecture, it makes it particularly hard to find even a somewhat sustainable modus vivendi in the relations between Russia and the West.

Russias leaders seem prepared to escalate tensions to the maximum. This is done through war and use of force, as well as by permitting a public belittling rhetoric towards ones partners in diplomacy.

What is to be done? Russian authorities are fully aware that NATO is not a threat. Just like no democratic neighbouring country is a threat to Russias security or territorial integrity.

Absolutely no country can have the right to hegemony in Europe, nor a veto on how security of the continent is shaped. European security architecture has withstood the test of time well and there is no good reason to bring it down. Instead, there are always opportunities to fortify it.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

Follow this link:
Russia Feels Provoked by Democracy and Loss of Empire - The Moscow Times