The old Progressive Labor Party (PLP) song, “Power to the working class,”or at least its chorus, rang out once again on the Starbucks picket line this afternoon. Starbucks United Workers has been carrying out pickets with large numbers of striking workers and their supporters, leading militant chants and at times taking bold actions in front of the stores. PLP members are actively supporting the strike, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with workers.
These actions are important, as they show the working class is willing to defy the bosses and fight back. Next, Starbucks workers, along with fellow working class comrades, must push beyond picketing and take actions towards building a movement for workers’ power: communism!
New store in the crosshairs
Today, the target was a Starbucks store located in the Empire State Building on 5th Avenue and 34th Street. A tourist mecca during the holiday shopping season, people heard all the loud chants of “what’s disgusting, union busting” and “no contract, no coffee” while passing this Starbucks location. To chants of “Brian! Brian! You can’t hide! We can see your greedy side!”, a dozen Starbucks union members blocked the entrance of the shop and were arrested.
Once again a principal speaker was a young woman from the south who once worked in a North Carolina Starbucks but transferred to a Starbucks in NYC where scheduled hours are more common. She is a rank and filer we have met three times now who keeps speaking out against capitalism and its system of oppression. She pointed out that the new Starbucks boss, Brian Niccol, earned 96 million dollars in his first three months of work (Fortune, 1/25). Meanwhile, Starbucks workers need to get government support such as food stamps and Medicaid and are unable to get secure shifts and work enough hours a week to make a living. The contract demands are around these issues and similar ones like safety and health and arbitrary management. Workers have unionized but cannot get management to meet their demands.
Meanwhile, the fight keeps growing, because workers aren’t backing down. Hundreds of union baristas from 26 new stores joined our national ULP strike this week. That brings us to 3,000 baristas at over 145 cities holding the picket line. Ninety-five percent of the Union membership voted to strike without a contract.
A number of labor unions sent supporters to stand in solidarity with striking baristas, including SEIU Local 1199 of the hospital workers union, members of the UFT retired teachers chapter (Party members and friends are active in this group), and some building trades members.
A vice-president of SEIU spoke glowingly of the strikers’ courage and her wishes that this movement will someday create a whole new world. A rank and file leader told us that she was hopeful they will win the strike, and in the meantime they have strike benefits, and in New York State can collect unemployment insurance while out of work. But thus far the Starbucks management, one of the richest corporate entities in the world, has made no offer.
Need to fight reformism
Unfortunately, many members of the DSA (which many strikers are part of) really just want to reform capitalism to become more fair. This is a perspective many people carry around. But the capitalist system, while it sometimes can be pushed back through mass struggle, always regains its footing. Then, with the ferocity of its murderous forbears, it makes life worse for working people. We sang “ain’t gonna let no capitalist turn me around, turn me around”.
Capitalists can be Democrats or Republicans. They have some differences in their style and manner, but the engine of capitalism’s ever expanding growth for profits through the exploitation of the worker and the natural world will not cease unless the working class rises up and makes a revolution. The capitalist system must be replaced by a communist egalitarian world. History has shown that socialism does not lead to a classless society but maintains some capitalist ideas and eventually returns to capitalist modes of production and thinking.
The Progressive Labor Party, while still small, seeks to bring its revolutionary communist ideas to the working class on the picket lines, in the work place, and in schools, churches, mosques and synagogues. We are building an international multiracial movement to win!
