Opinion: Fear of a Unionized Starbucks
The coffee giant Starbucks has been in the news a lot lately as more and more of its stores unionize. Employees are walking out in an organized fashion and are starting to demand safe conditions and fair pay.
Naturally, conservatives tend to teabag the comment sections of these stories with horrific predictions. Soon a cup of coffee will be $20! All the stores will close! Karl Marx’s bearded visage will appear in the foam of every latte and begin uttering the dread spells of socialism directly to our children!
Under it all is the sentiment that baristas (and fry cooks and grocery clerks and the rest of the essential workers we previously championed for keeping the country functional) do not deserve these things. They should quit if they don’t want to be peons, not fight for the privileges that should belong only to the professional class. There is a fear leaking out of the holes made by all the exclamation pointed comments that the precious hierarchy of social importance is under communist attack.
But like, why though? Why is the idea of a someone making a nice living serving the public so abhorrent?
It’s a question that needs an answer. America primarily deals in service. Somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the workers in the country are employed in some form of the service industry, making it the backbone of the economy. For all intents and purposes, baristas and their brethren are the economy far more than manufacturing, health care, and the like.
https://www.houstonpress.com/news/why-conservatives-dont-want-starbucks-to-unionize-12686101
