Diabolical Lies - Don't Go to Starbucks This Holiday Season. Here's Why.

00:00:00.000 Starbucks workers are on an unfair labor practice strike because Starbucks has refused to come back

00:00:10.960 and negotiate for our first contract. They have the full capacity to pay us right now for a

00:00:16.400 multi-year union contract with one day worth of sales. Hey Starbucks you can't hide, we can see

00:00:23.360 Be your greedy side.

00:00:25.900 These are not demands of greed.

00:00:27.900 These are demands for decency.

00:00:30.220 These are workers who are simply being asked

00:00:32.440 to be treated with the respect that they deserve.

00:00:35.780 They're being asked that their labor be repaid

00:00:38.600 in a manner that allows them to build a dignified life.

00:00:42.080 What we're asking for is pretty simple and basic.

00:00:45.360 We want enough hours to meet the benefits.

00:00:49.400 Don't cross the ticket lines.

00:00:52.820 95.8 million, that's the compensation package

00:00:56.620 that Starbucks CEO Brian Nicol earned

00:00:59.320 for four months of work last year.

00:01:01.180 Some of us have to choose whether or not we get groceries

00:01:03.600 and medication for the next month.

00:01:05.320 400, that is how many labor law violations

00:01:08.840 the NLRB has found that Starbucks has committed.

00:01:11.660 We want enough staffing in our stores

00:01:14.000 so we're not overworked.

00:01:15.400 Staffing, pay protections like safety in the workplace,

00:01:19.760 but also like sexual harassment.

00:01:22.060 You guys do not give Starbucks any of your money, no money, to Brian Nichols, please.

00:01:33.720 He has had enough.

00:01:42.820 A quick little, a diabolicalized news brief, if you will.

00:01:50.880 the rare and infrequent news brief.

00:01:54.020 Yeah, this is fun.

00:01:55.160 Why don't you tell our friends about the mix-up we had this morning over text?

00:01:59.460 Okay.

00:02:00.640 Okay, so we are obviously on this conversation today to talk about Starbucks.

00:02:05.400 We're recording this on December 12th, for the record.

00:02:07.920 On December 12th.

00:02:09.220 And so you have been very involved in the Starbucks strike

00:02:13.000 in the work that they're doing in Denver, and so we talk about it a lot.

00:02:16.020 And so you went to some sort of union thing this week,

00:02:19.400 and at the same time the taylor swift documentary dropped and so i guess that there was like a the

00:02:25.540 event was a denver dsa screening of a right documentary about the strike right and today

00:02:33.220 the taylor swift documentary came out so caro text me this morning

00:02:36.860 at 6 13 a.m my time i get a text i texted up saying watching the doc and crying two minutes

00:02:45.920 in. It's online and I have thoughts, good and bad, LOL. And I go, because we've been talking

00:02:52.200 about the Starbucks documentary, I think she's talking about the documentary about the star.

00:02:55.780 And I was like, wait, I didn't realize it was like online. You found it? Like,

00:02:59.420 oh God, what's the bad? Tell me the bad. And I was like, look, I'm not trying to be negative.

00:03:04.700 There's a lot of good, but just enjoy it. We'll discuss later. And then we realized that I was

00:03:09.280 talking about the Taylor Swift documentary and you were talking about Starbucks.

00:03:11.660 I was like, wait, no, we're about to, I was like, what do you mean? I thought she was like

00:03:14.700 going to come out to me as being like anti-union. I was like, Caroline, we thought we would do a

00:03:19.420 quick hit about the ongoing Starbucks strike. And I think my hope here is that if you want something

00:03:29.360 to just quickly like send to a friend or family member who wants to know what's going on, that

00:03:33.920 this will serve that purpose. So we are having this conversation today because there is a pretty

00:03:40.340 historic labor movement happening right now in the United States specific to Starbucks Workers

00:03:46.940 United, which is the Starbucks union. So you may have seen workers striking at a local store,

00:03:51.260 or you might not have. Maybe everything looks normal at your store, but you've heard about

00:03:55.040 the strike, and so you're kind of confused about what is going on. Maybe you want to support.

00:03:59.020 The other night, I went to a documentary screening of the documentary Partners,

00:04:05.160 which actually a diabolical liar's friend made that documentary, which is really fun. So

00:04:10.160 we are one degree of separation from the filmmaker. And after this documentary was

00:04:15.080 about their unionizing effort and how they've pulled this off, I hosted a panel with five

00:04:20.880 striking workers from Colorado stores. And so we are in a very pivotal moment for organized labor

00:04:28.400 in the United States. This strike is very important, and I think it can have really

00:04:33.500 far-reaching impacts. And the reason that we wanted to talk about it is because it is a rare

00:04:38.320 opportunity for you to withhold your money as a consumer to contribute to something that might be

00:04:44.540 a pretty substantial shift in the direction that this economy and labor power is going in this

00:04:53.240 country. Yeah, I think that I really wanted to talk about this kind of like on the feed because

00:04:58.260 I know how much you have educated me on it. And I believe very strongly in not encouraging any sort

00:05:04.800 of like purity test with these types of conversations. I think boycotts can feel

00:05:09.000 overwhelming. There are often many taking place at once and there can often be like an element of

00:05:13.560 shame applied, which often can be a strategy, which sometimes is useful, but like people will

00:05:18.600 sometimes shame others into feeling bad about not participating in something that they don't even

00:05:23.480 understand. So I just want to be very clear here. If you go to Starbucks every day, it's not too

00:05:29.060 late to consider joining this strike. If you are like sipping a peppermint mocha while you listen

00:05:33.540 to this. I don't feel any desire to shame anyone over that. I think the goal of this is to be like,

00:05:38.800 this is what's happening right now. This is why it's actually a very important strike taking

00:05:43.640 place with major implications for workers all over the country. And so however much you can

00:05:48.760 participate, whether it's just understanding and supporting the workers at your store who are

00:05:53.480 striking or whether it's abstaining yourself or whether it's like passing this episode along to

00:05:57.960 someone who doesn't understand, all of that is useful. And this is just trying to contribute to

00:06:03.220 the numbers and the support for a very important strike. Yeah, that's a really good way to put it.

00:06:07.300 It's not about purity testing. It's about numbers. It's just a numbers game. And even if you are

00:06:11.980 somebody that like you live in a small town and like the only coffee you can buy in town is

00:06:16.280 Starbucks and you get it every single day and you're like, I'm going to cut out half. Even that

00:06:20.960 would be a big contribution. So I think that the reason that I get so excited about this particular

00:06:26.780 movement and effort is that it is one of those rare opportunities in American capitalism where

00:06:35.840 you actually can make a difference by not buying something. It's one of those disproportionate,

00:06:42.460 like 80-20 rule. Very little effort on your part is actually going to go a really long way

00:06:48.320 because so many people have already done the extremely grueling work of organizing. So

00:06:53.480 figured we would just kind of get into the basics today as well as like where they are right now,

00:06:58.540 what this might look like where you live, and why it matters, why this one matters and why

00:07:04.200 we're talking about this. Okay, to start with... Take us to church, Katie. I do want to start with

00:07:08.620 just two quick facts. So as a personal finance educator, this is something that I pay a lot of

00:07:15.860 attention to and care a lot about. And that is what is going to allow people to earn more money

00:07:21.260 for the work that they are already doing.

00:07:23.420 And what we know is that statistically unionized workers

00:07:27.060 earn 13.5% more than non-unionized workers.

00:07:31.400 That is significant.

00:07:32.940 You also see in unionized workplaces

00:07:34.820 that both the gender and racial wage gaps are smaller

00:07:38.020 and that workers are more likely to have benefits

00:07:40.440 like healthcare and pensions and paid family leave.

00:07:43.620 These are not like little tweaks at the margins.

00:07:45.940 These are substantial changes

00:07:47.480 to the quality of your working life.

00:07:50.600 So I think that there is a bit of a strain

00:07:53.720 of anti-union propaganda in the United States

00:07:56.200 because there are valid critiques of unions, to be clear.

00:07:59.060 Like, there is bureaucracy in unions.

00:08:00.860 There is corruption.

00:08:01.700 Like, just like every other organization,

00:08:03.840 they're not a silver bullet,

00:08:05.160 but there is a lot of anti-union propaganda in the U.S.

00:08:08.760 that explicitly claims that, like,

00:08:10.860 unions are just for people who, like,

00:08:12.540 don't want to work hard

00:08:13.520 and want to, like, coast off the effort of others.

00:08:15.660 That could not be further from the truth.

00:08:17.720 So much of what we take for granted today

00:08:19.700 in our working conditions were the result of union pressure.

00:08:23.140 So like the reason we have a 40-hour work week

00:08:25.820 and a two-day weekend, unions.

00:08:28.060 Union pressure in the 1930s.

00:08:29.480 Before, that was not the case.

00:08:31.740 Wasn't it the famous thing, 8-8-8,

00:08:33.820 eight hours for work, eight hours for rest,

00:08:35.580 and eight hours for you?

00:08:36.980 Mm-hmm.

00:08:37.760 So I think there's one other stat that, Carol,

00:08:40.660 I'm going to have you read just an abstract

00:08:42.520 from a research paper that came out recently

00:08:45.100 that is, I think, if there were like one statistic

00:08:49.680 that I would want Americans to know about the power of collective bargaining, it would be this.

00:08:56.320 Studies on labor union earnings premiums generally investigate their size through point-in-time

00:09:01.580 estimates. This study posits, by contrast, that point-in-time estimates of the union premium

00:09:06.960 overlook the cumulative earnings advantages of long-term persistent union membership.

00:09:12.100 Using a sample of men from the panel study of income dynamics from 1969 to 2019, that's a nice

00:09:18.100 long study, the authors investigate how lifetime union membership contributes to earnings

00:09:22.760 advantages. They find, first, that unionization throughout one's career is associated with a

00:09:28.800 $1.3 million mean increase in lifetime earnings, larger than the average gains from completing

00:09:35.640 college. Wow. Second, the lifetime earnings gains are channeled entirely through higher hourly

00:09:42.100 wages and occur despite earlier than average retirement for persistently unionized men.

00:09:47.760 Third, the union wage premium is not constant throughout a worker's career.

00:09:52.340 Instead, it increases with more years of union membership.

00:09:55.100 The cumulative advantages of union membership for workers' economic well-being are far greater than point-in-time estimates suggest.

00:10:02.820 So that's crazy.

00:10:04.440 I just want to ask a question just to make sure we're all foundationally aligned.

00:10:08.320 I think there are some people who don't understand why we're talking about unions in Starbucks.

00:10:12.460 And so just to be clear, Starbucks employees are trying to form a union, correct?

00:10:16.180 They have unionized.

00:10:17.780 They're trying to fight for their first contract.

00:10:20.440 So this is a kind of an interesting thing that I had to learn this this year.

00:10:24.920 I did not know this.

00:10:25.800 So I definitely don't want to position myself as like a labor activist or someone who's like,

00:10:30.660 has been in this space for a long time.

00:10:32.540 I have not.

00:10:33.620 However, I see the ROI here and I'm like, this is something to pay attention to. 0.95

00:10:38.480 This really fucking matters.

00:10:40.100 So to back up a step, you can form a union and you can have a union. 0.97

00:10:44.400 But once you have that union, you then have to use that collective bargaining power to basically force the company to agree to a contract that outlines these are the working conditions, these are the wages.

00:10:55.500 The reason that they're on strike right now is because despite unionizing four years ago and adding hundreds of stores since then, the company will not agree to the contract that they are asking for.

00:11:08.380 So we'll get into the details of all of that.

00:11:10.100 So that study is important to me because even during a time when the college wage premium was higher than it is now, when you gained even more from getting a college degree because fewer people had them, the financial benefit of being in a union was more significant than a college degree over time.

00:11:30.560 And so when we talk about these like 13.5% wage difference stats, like that is understating the lifetime value here of like union density. So all that to say, if you want higher wages, if you want better working conditions, pay attention to the labor movement. It is a critical component of that fight.

00:11:49.020 So, okay, let's do like a little bit of strike background and like background on this particular union. So Starbucks Workers United started in Buffalo in 2021, Buffalo, New York. It started with someone called Assault. So Assault is somebody who gets hired at a company specifically with the intent to organize its workers. Like you are going in because you want to unionize the company. And so the Starbucks employees are called partners.

00:12:15.240 So ironic that they're called partners and they're ignoring their effort to leverage their own value. And Starbucks is like, you're partners, but.

00:12:25.160 It's the pizza party model. You see in the documentary that pretty immediately the highest levels of executives at Starbucks are like crashing out over this.

00:12:34.360 That should be another signal to people. It's like if you have a store, if you have a company where you have like 10,000 locations in the United States and you have a dozen workers in three stores that are trying to unionize and you immediately start dispatching chief executives to those stores to like sit in them and watch the employees, you can learn pretty quickly here.

00:13:00.220 like they recognize how big of a deal this would be if this happened so they start sending in these

00:13:05.960 regional managers from all over the country they send in some comms officer who like they have her

00:13:11.240 like sweeping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms in the store they have all the regional managers

00:13:16.360 wearing the headsets that the partners will wear like when you're you're working drive-thru but

00:13:20.780 you're also like working in the store and you need to be able to like communicate and take orders

00:13:24.200 and like talk to one another they have the managers that they've flown in from all over

00:13:28.800 the country listening to these conversations at all times to hear what they're saying during

00:13:34.320 their shifts. So they're essentially spying. Right. And just right away, all of this mounts

00:13:39.740 to this like intense pressure campaign. They're trying all sorts of tactics. They're trying

00:13:44.820 intimidation. They're trying hiring sprees. So like when you are trying to unionize, you have

00:13:49.240 to vote and you have to get enough people to vote yes on the union. So they're basically just

00:13:53.580 it getting in a bunch of people to work in the stores. That way it dilutes the votes of the

00:13:58.620 people who have already decided they want to organize. They start hosting these like listening

00:14:03.740 sessions where they essentially plead with them not to unionize. Again, another Taylor Swift

00:14:08.760 crossover moment. Oh my God, you're right. Fuck. So the CEO of Starbucks has the burgers to his

00:14:17.700 penthouse he's like I baked you guys cookies and plays them a 1989 vault track so basically like

00:14:24.380 they leak audio in this documentary from these listening sessions and these corporate employees

00:14:30.980 are like we love you Howard loves you we like really love you you know how much we love you

00:14:36.360 we can fix this you don't need a union again we're talking about like a dozen people at three

00:14:42.080 locations in one city i just have to say the first time i ever heard about a union like in any

00:14:47.880 practical terms was in the episode of the office where the warehouse guys try to unionize and jan

00:14:52.580 comes in and she's like we saw what happened in in buffalo and no one wants things to happen the

00:14:58.000 way they did in buffalo and she like corporate comes in and shuts down their unionizing and

00:15:01.900 then they look up and jan it's the tan all over jan all over poster of her bikini that they printed

00:15:06.960 Anyways, go on.

00:15:08.880 Okay, so the long story short.

00:15:12.060 Sorry, did I make you lose your train of thought?

00:15:13.640 I kind of did.

00:15:14.640 I started thinking about Janet and Bikini.

00:15:16.580 Sorry, all right.

00:15:18.040 But the long story short is like David versus Goliath,

00:15:20.960 the Buffalo stores prevailed.

00:15:22.540 They unionized.

00:15:23.640 And pretty quickly, people from other locations

00:15:26.380 all over the country start reaching out to them,

00:15:29.420 being like, how did you do this?

00:15:31.220 Like, we want to do this too.

00:15:32.640 And the effort starts spreading very organically.

00:15:36.360 So Starbucks tactics obviously intensify because if they responded that way to three stores,

00:15:41.600 you can imagine how they're going to respond to dozens and then hundreds of stores.

00:15:45.140 They start outright just closing stores where they catch wind of organizing action.

00:15:49.600 They really intensify the propaganda campaign.

00:15:53.000 And then all in all, if you look from when that all started in 2021, it was almost four

00:15:59.220 years ago to the day that they unionized the first stores, to now Starbucks has broken

00:16:04.120 the law 400 separate times.

00:16:06.360 retaliating against workers.

00:16:08.460 When you say broken the law, what do you mean?

00:16:11.000 Can you give examples?

00:16:12.080 You have a legal right to unionize.

00:16:14.880 And so if a company fires you or shuts down your store

00:16:18.920 or retaliates against you for trying to unionize,

00:16:21.680 that's illegal.

00:16:22.940 But laws only matter if they're being enforced.

00:16:26.520 And so they just keep getting away with it, basically.

00:16:29.380 I mean, there's been some pushback,

00:16:30.800 but for all intents and purposes,

00:16:32.520 it's like a slap on the wrist.

00:16:33.900 And the average Starbucks employee

00:16:35.280 is not going to take the time to hire legal counsel

00:16:38.500 to sue Starbucks over being, you know,

00:16:40.860 they're just going to try to find another job.

00:16:42.900 I think what you're hitting on here is that, like,

00:16:44.640 this is why organizing that type of work is so difficult

00:16:48.140 because there is high turnover and it's low wages.

00:16:51.580 So, like, these people don't have access to legal teams in most cases.

00:16:55.400 They oftentimes, if it gets too crazy or too hard

00:16:59.280 or, like, if they are fired, like, they need money,

00:17:02.020 so they're going to have to go work somewhere else.

00:17:03.880 It's a really, really difficult environment to organize in.

00:17:09.920 So as we've covered, you can unionize without getting a contract where the company is actually agreeing to your demands.

00:17:17.020 So that is the phase that they are in now.

00:17:20.520 And it's partially about wages, but from the partners that I've spoken with, it's far more about working conditions.

00:17:27.480 It's about staffing issues.

00:17:29.220 They have too few people working at a time.

00:17:31.400 It's about scheduling.

00:17:32.320 We kind of talked about this in our AMA where like companies can dangle really nice benefits in front of you, but you have to work a certain number of hours to get those benefits and they can schedule you right up until you hit that limit and then essentially ensure that you're not getting those benefits.

00:17:48.180 And you have no say over that.

00:17:50.500 I think part of why I'm so happy we're having this conversation is because I think that there is a perception in a lot of people's minds that Starbucks is an above average employer.

00:17:58.560 Like, I think that there has been a lot of messaging around how you can go to college,

00:18:02.740 they'll reimburse you for all these degrees, you can become a manager.

00:18:06.080 Yeah, so I think one anecdote that I would like to tell comes from one of the partners

00:18:11.000 at the, I think it was either the Garden of the Gods or the Lafayette store here in Colorado.

00:18:15.980 There was a kid, I say kid because he was literally like 17 years old,

00:18:19.420 working at this location, and he wanted to join the union.

00:18:23.100 and the regional manager basically threatened him

00:18:27.740 because he was only working there

00:18:29.420 so he could get his college education paid for

00:18:32.080 so he could get tuition.

00:18:33.900 And the regional manager in so many words said,

00:18:35.920 if you join, we're not going to do that.

00:18:38.760 We will make it such that you do not get that tuition benefit

00:18:42.080 if you try to join this union.

00:18:44.160 So I don't know the specific hours threshold.

00:18:48.260 Last I heard, I think it's 20 hours a week

00:18:50.560 in order to qualify for any benefits,

00:18:52.660 but it might be higher. But I know that this is kind of a standard tactic for companies that

00:18:59.020 publicize their really good benefits is there are strings attached. Often those strings are hours

00:19:04.400 and you don't always have a say over how many hours that you get to work. And so your health

00:19:09.740 care can be taken away if you drop below a certain number of hours. And so there's quite a bit of

00:19:13.680 leverage that these companies can exert over their workers to control them. I will say I have never

00:19:19.200 experienced obviously this specific environment, but I worked at a number of media companies

00:19:23.620 where all of my shifts were set up such that I could never have like full-time employment next

00:19:29.880 to it. It was like close to a full-time job, but it was always just up to the exact amount that

00:19:34.680 would be necessary for them to basically give us health insurance and benefits. And so you're

00:19:38.560 always working right below that hourly. And I didn't even really understand that. I just felt

00:19:43.300 constantly like, oh, well, I'm so happy to be writing. I'm so happy to be doing this. And

00:19:47.980 And in retrospect, it's so predatory because you really can't take other work in addition.

00:19:53.240 And often these jobs are the stepping stone you need to get a college degree or to get

00:19:57.860 into the media industry.

00:19:59.120 It's like unbelievably predatory.

00:20:01.960 I'm glad that you said that because I think that what you're highlighting is that these

00:20:05.280 tactics are not specific to the service industry.

00:20:09.280 Service workers are a humongous part of our economy, but like every corporation in some

00:20:14.500 way or another will employ tactics like this in some area of their business. And white collar

00:20:19.820 workers are not exempted from this shit either. So like anytime any corporation is getting away 0.99

00:20:25.600 with shady stuff like that, it's the opposite of rising tide lifts all boats. It drags everybody

00:20:30.340 down. So essentially, they've been fighting for this contract for years. And on November 13th,

00:20:36.820 right before the holiday season picked up when they usually see this big influx of customers,

00:20:40.680 There's a lot of strategy to labor organizing. So you want to be very effective in like when you are planning to strike and how you're going about doing it.

00:20:48.320 They began an open ended strike where workers are walking out of stores in waves and they're trying to intensify pressure over time and add more stores over time.

00:20:57.640 So it's essentially like they're just like twisting the knife little by little and trying to mount that pressure to get as much attention on it as possible and to make people kind of understand what is going on and to force the company back to the table to agree to their terms.

00:21:12.480 So there are 10,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S., give or take.

00:21:17.420 Fewer than 1,000 of those stores are unionized.

00:21:20.220 And so far, only a couple hundred are striking.

00:21:23.000 So it is far more likely than not that you will not actually personally see a picket line in a location that you might visit.

00:21:31.460 It'll probably look like business as usual.

00:21:34.320 However, it is still very important that you do not go.

00:21:38.280 and tell your friends and family not to go either

00:21:41.100 to the extent that you can manage to avoid

00:21:43.940 peppermint mocha lattes, which I know is hard.

00:21:46.900 You know what? I get it.

00:21:48.520 Unless you want to go to the drive-thru

00:21:50.080 and ask for a cup of hot water,

00:21:51.580 and then when you get through the window,

00:21:52.860 you go unionize it.

00:21:54.180 You give them a little salute and say,

00:21:56.320 we got you, brother, brother and sister.

00:21:59.060 I think it's important that they see this reflected

00:22:02.520 in their sales numbers.

00:22:04.120 And I understand that this is confusing,

00:22:06.600 and some people have asked me questions

00:22:08.140 about this already to be like,

00:22:09.360 I don't see a picket line at my store.

00:22:10.940 Like, why isn't everybody striking?

00:22:13.660 Like, what's going on?

00:22:14.520 And again, I think it comes back to how hard it is

00:22:17.880 to unionize in places like Starbucks,

00:22:20.660 both because of this high turnover

00:22:22.180 where you constantly have people coming in. 0.97

00:22:24.260 This is really fucking hard. 0.96

00:22:25.600 You have to one by one, one at a time, 0.98

00:22:29.400 have individual conversations with people

00:22:31.620 and convince them that the risk is worth it.

00:22:35.420 And this is real risk.

00:22:36.740 This is people's lives.

00:22:37.380 This is real risk. And that's the second part of that is that the risk is high. We know that

00:22:42.080 Starbucks is straight up firing people and closing stores. So like the economic precariousness that

00:22:48.480 people feel right now is a big reason why they don't do it. Or they might be scared to join a

00:22:54.320 picket line or they might be like, I can't risk losing this job. This job is how I feed my family.

00:23:00.180 Right. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don't fight for better wages or conditions

00:23:03.460 because you cannot risk losing what you have already.

00:23:07.820 So these few hundred stores are on strike,

00:23:10.260 and this strike is indefinite, correct?

00:23:12.060 It's going to go for as long as it takes.

00:23:14.300 Okay, so this may extend past the holiday season.

00:23:16.880 Number two, are there organizations or, like, funding endeavors

00:23:20.100 to help people support those Starbucks workers

00:23:22.300 who are not currently getting wages,

00:23:23.660 and can we put those in the show notes?

00:23:25.480 Yes, so there's a general strike fund.

00:23:28.080 Like, if you go to the SBW website,

00:23:30.300 and we'll put that in the show notes,

00:23:31.380 There are also individual strike funds for stores.

00:23:34.820 So like if your store is striking, you can donate to a specific strike fund as well.

00:23:39.420 Right. So these are two things that you can do.

00:23:41.280 You can obviously not shop at Starbucks, not buy from Starbucks.

00:23:43.900 And also, if you want to go the extra mile, you can also support these strikers directly because they are basically unemployed right now.

00:23:50.980 They are not receiving wages right now and they are risking losing their jobs to be fighting for these better working conditions.

00:23:58.280 And if you are yourself in a position where money is tight and you can't afford to do that,

00:24:04.520 you can go be on the picket line with them.

00:24:06.660 Can we put some Diabolical Lies money towards it?

00:24:08.960 Yeah, of course.

00:24:09.860 I think we should do some of our Q4 redistribution to their strike fund.

00:24:12.640 I think that would be awesome.

00:24:13.460 But you can actually go to a picket line and literally march and chant with them.

00:24:18.980 That goes a really long way, both for morale and for optics to show that, like,

00:24:24.740 oh, our community members are striking with us.

00:24:27.100 So you don't even have to give money.

00:24:28.520 If you've got an hour on a Saturday,

00:24:30.620 literally just show up, bring some water bottles,

00:24:32.900 and march with them.

00:24:34.460 So why does this one matter?

00:24:36.300 More broadly, I think backing up a step.

00:24:38.620 A lot of the stuff that we complain about in our economy

00:24:41.340 is obviously downstream of the way that it is structured,

00:24:45.480 but labor's share of GDP is a really big component

00:24:49.360 of why life feels precarious.

00:24:52.040 It's not only that, there are also like,

00:24:53.940 there is insecurity in our employment schema

00:24:56.600 in the United States, like you can be fired for any reason. They don't have to give you pensions.

00:25:02.000 They don't like have to give you health care. So we know that life is precarious, but labor share

00:25:05.820 of GDP is a really big piece of this puzzle, which basically just means like the amount of

00:25:10.340 income that is being generated in this country, a smaller and smaller share has been going to

00:25:16.100 workers pretty steadily for about two decades. Workers used to get about 68% of GDP, give or

00:25:24.760 take. That was around 2000. Now it's in the high fifties. So we've really lost a lot of ground

00:25:31.460 and very little has been capable of disrupting this trend, partially because our political

00:25:36.980 system is corrupt and you basically have like capital capture of our legislature. But the

00:25:42.060 labor movement revival that we are experiencing now that I think you started to see a lot

00:25:47.060 post-Bernie 2016 is, to me, the absolute best example of how regular people can actually

00:25:55.560 leverage just their sheer size, like the fact that we outnumber those in the highest positions

00:26:00.540 of corporate and political power to force changes. So we can put simply, you withhold your work,

00:26:08.680 and withholding your work means you're withholding their ability to make more money. So it's like

00:26:14.020 leverage in its like simplest form. And it would also be correct to say

00:26:19.140 that a strike like the Starbucks strike is important because you can potentially set

00:26:24.580 legal precedent for other industries and other stores. Is there value in that as well? Or is it

00:26:29.800 more of like a cultural momentum in terms of understanding the value of organized labor?

00:26:35.660 I would say both. Okay. I would say that it's, it is cultural because I think momentum

00:26:40.260 really matters with mass movements.

00:26:43.860 Awareness really matters.

00:26:45.360 We got Mom Donnie, yeah.

00:26:46.740 You got Mom Donnie. 0.79

00:26:47.800 Gotta do this while Bernie Sanders is alive.

00:26:49.380 Yeah, exactly.

00:26:50.940 Momentum is key,

00:26:52.420 but also there are real knock-on wage benefits

00:26:56.440 where if you have a major employer

00:26:58.780 in the fast food industry

00:27:00.800 that has unionized workers

00:27:02.480 that has to pay higher wages,

00:27:04.720 that puts pressure on every other employer

00:27:06.540 to offer higher wages

00:27:07.660 because they have to now compete with Starbucks

00:27:09.660 for employees. In my opinion, you will see higher wage knock-on effects when they get this contract

00:27:17.740 because Starbucks is competing for workers against other industries. It won't just be fast

00:27:23.200 food. There are people that you might get a job as a home health aide or a barista. You're going

00:27:28.120 to see it show up in other industries. So that in itself is very important. And the other reason

00:27:34.720 why I think this one matters. There are so few opportunities for a consumer boycott to actually

00:27:39.540 do anything. But when you pair it with a labor boycott in solidarity with workers, you are

00:27:45.200 magnifying their message to a stunning degree, because it is sending a message to the company

00:27:50.500 that not only are your workers going to withhold labor from you, but your customers are going to

00:27:55.600 withhold their money from you. So when you pair these two things together, you find yourself in

00:28:01.940 a situation where you really can exert pressure on a company by not shopping there for a short

00:28:07.120 time, which is like a very unique and rare opportunity. Do you know much about the Target

00:28:11.500 boycott? Would it be because the Target boycott was purely consumer led, right? It's not labor

00:28:16.080 as well. I believe that's correct. Yes, I didn't follow that one as closely. I just want to create

00:28:20.960 that distinction because, again, I think that we see there is such a flood of information all the

00:28:25.480 time around like which corporations are bad and like, spoiler alert, none of them treat their

00:28:30.260 employees very well and how do you basically like divert your attention and your self-control and

00:28:36.080 how do you do the thing that basically bucks your schedule which is already hard especially if you

00:28:40.000 have kids or if you have a long work day like where do you make the decisions where do you put

00:28:44.360 that effort where do you put the effort yeah and so again i think that you can think of this even

00:28:48.600 as like a triangle where it's like at the top of the list don't go and go beyond that and support

00:28:53.940 the strikers, whether that's striking with them or like sending them $10, $20, $100 to their

00:29:00.260 fundraisers. And then below that is if you go to Starbucks five times a week, go once a week. And

00:29:04.740 when you go, don't get the grande, get the tall. When you think about like, all right, if I'm

00:29:08.840 spending $50 at Starbucks each month, can I drop that to 25? Can I hold that to $10 for the next

00:29:15.640 three months? And thinking about that, I think can often make something that feels very inconvenient

00:29:20.620 suddenly extremely doable.

00:29:22.940 Oh, my kid loves the cake pop.

00:29:24.440 I'm just going to get the cake pop

00:29:25.620 and I'm not going to get myself the second coffee

00:29:27.620 and I'm going to make a coffee at home.

00:29:29.080 I want to make this extremely accessible to anyone

00:29:32.040 and to know that every little thing you do,

00:29:34.480 if you make those changes,

00:29:36.000 is contributing to what could be a major tipping point

00:29:39.340 in labor power in America.

00:29:41.460 I want to repeat what you said at the beginning.

00:29:43.320 This isn't about purity testing yourself

00:29:45.160 and doing it all or nothing.

00:29:46.520 If for some reason you're like,

00:29:48.620 listen, my kid is going to crash out

00:29:50.500 if they don't get the cake pop, just spend less there.

00:29:53.700 Any little bit that you can contribute

00:29:56.120 by withholding your cash from them

00:29:58.560 is going to make a difference in this moment.

00:30:01.160 In my mind, it's just like a really easy way

00:30:03.120 to be a part of something

00:30:04.180 that I hope will be a turning point in the 21st century

00:30:06.840 because Starbucks has so many employees

00:30:08.920 and is such a dominant force in the service sector

00:30:11.600 that when they win this contract,

00:30:13.380 it will push wages up and improve conditions

00:30:16.320 for many more people than just Starbucks workers.

00:30:19.700 So even if you are just behaving completely selfishly, I think I could still mount an argument that, like, it is still in your best interest for them to get this contract.

00:30:29.060 You'll get better drinks.

00:30:31.440 There's a stat you've shared in front of me in the past that's always really staggering about how much more the Starbucks CEO makes.

00:30:36.980 When the Starbucks CEO was hired, the new one, Brian Nickel, his compensation package was like obviously some cash, but mostly stock. And it was worth, I think, $96 million in a single year that he like got this package.

00:30:52.400 and the difference between like the median Starbucks partner

00:30:56.820 and what he makes is something like 6,600 times more.

00:31:02.280 So to my knowledge, at least in that year,

00:31:04.640 it was the largest CEO worker pay gap in the country.

00:31:07.660 That brings me to,

00:31:09.240 I want to read you a post that I saw in the Starbucks Reddit

00:31:13.180 where some customer had posted a picture

00:31:15.500 of striking workers outside their store

00:31:17.600 and they were like,

00:31:18.980 hey, I'm a Starbucks customer,

00:31:20.720 I'm sympathetic to your cause,

00:31:22.040 But like, why are you doing this? These workers just seem upset about executive compensation, like the signs were about the CEO pay. But like, I still got my coffee and like the mobile order worked as usual. Like, I'm kind of confused. A, if conditions are so bad, why don't you just go work somewhere else? And B, if conditions are so bad, why isn't everyone striking? Like, why are people still working in there?

00:31:43.400 I think we've covered like why not everyone is striking at the same time or like why that would be harder to do. But at the same time, I think it's also important. I want to read the top response that came from a striking worker.

00:31:57.920 Part of what they said was,

00:31:59.700 people tell us constantly,

00:32:01.000 if you want more pay, just quit.

00:32:02.760 Well, if we quit, who is going to make your coffee?

00:32:05.540 We are essential to people's daily lives.

00:32:07.800 What if we all get fed up?

00:32:09.160 No job, especially a billion-dollar company, 0.99

00:32:11.460 should be paying their adult employees

00:32:13.320 less than $40,000 a year,

00:32:15.300 and that's barely getting by

00:32:16.760 or not even getting by in some areas.

00:32:19.060 If you think otherwise, you need to reevaluate.

00:32:21.580 People constantly go, oh, but it's not a hard job.

00:32:24.760 Trust me, this job is extremely hard.

00:32:26.600 People would not survive 30 minutes at my store on a Saturday.

00:32:30.080 Even if it was the easiest job in the world,

00:32:32.180 you are still working and human beings deserve a livable wage,

00:32:35.100 not paycheck to paycheck. 0.99

00:32:36.460 This company makes so much money and treats their employees like crap. 0.99

00:32:40.080 They say they care about us, but they clearly do not. 1.00

00:32:43.700 Unionizing a rabidly anti-union company is fucking hard. 0.88

00:32:48.160 It is a full-time job that you are doing for free for years. 0.98

00:32:53.540 Yeah.

00:32:53.720 A lot of these people are doing this because they care, because they care about their own working conditions, because they care about Starbucks, because they love their jobs, because they see it as a craft, because they love their customers, and they want things to improve, not just for them, but for the people who are hired after them.

00:33:11.460 When I moderated the panel on Wednesday night, I asked one of the workers, Raven, from Garden of the Gods, why are people sticking it out? Why are workers still taking up this fight despite everything you guys have been up against? And she was like, because I want the next person who is hired at my store to not have to go through the bullshit that we go through.

00:33:29.580 The people who organize union strikes are basically the real people that our politicians claim to be. 0.97

00:33:35.520 That is exactly right.

00:33:37.100 Like these are people who genuinely care about their country. They care about their community. They care about their own job. They care about workers' rights. And I don't want to say that labor rights are fundamentally American because they are not and they existed far before the American Project and they will exist far after the American Project.

00:33:53.040 But if you want to talk about, like, get your fucking chest puffed about what freedom is and what it means to fight for liberty and to, like, cross bipartisan lines and to come together with people regardless of how you feel about other things, that is what it looks like to form a union.

00:34:08.120 It is finding a common shared denominator of we all deserve to be treated a certain way when we go to work. 0.97

00:34:15.240 I mean, when you think about the Amazon workers, these are people who have been, like, dogged by police officers.

00:34:19.780 Like, it is incredibly risky.

00:34:22.100 It is incredibly dangerous to be trying to do this. And the people who are doing this, when you think about like, well, why don't you just quit? They kind of just did. What they just said is we are not working until we get better jobs.

00:34:35.360 And so I think that there is something incredibly binary about a strike, which is, well, oh, if you don't like it, why don't you go somewhere else? We just did. We just went to the street and said we will not work there until we have better conditions. And in that way, I think it's so illuminating and so clear. And the clarity of that is confusing for Americans because we don't ever see what it looks like for workers to demand better.

00:34:58.260 We need to get your ass on a picket line. 0.98

00:35:01.840 Amen. Can I get an amen? 0.99

00:35:04.880 Damn, Caro. 0.99

00:35:05.840 Just trying to do my part. 0.99

00:35:07.020 Yeah, I mean, I love that you highlighted the bipartisan part of this here, too.

00:35:10.480 Actually, Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, is trying to introduce legislation that, like,

00:35:16.300 essentially means that when you get—if your company unionizes, like, you have to agree to a contract within a couple months. 0.98

00:35:21.740 It's trying to, like, put more penalties and, like, pressure in place so that companies can't just drag this shit on for years. 0.96

00:35:29.240 Because what they're banking on is that they're going to get tired of it, and they're going to quit. 0.98

00:35:33.320 And, like, from what I've seen, it's only ramping up.

00:35:36.820 I want to show you a headline that came out this morning, and I want to talk about it really quickly, and that's kind of how we'll wrap today.

00:35:43.800 Will you read this?

00:35:44.820 This is from Forbes.

00:35:46.220 The headline is Starbucks strike drags into second month as deadlock deepens and global support grows.

00:35:54.240 As global support grows, that right there is in some ways just as important as their sales numbers getting hit right now.

00:36:03.120 The reputational damage that they are going to sustain as the tide continues to turn. 0.99

00:36:09.460 And you know that that executive communications team is watching this shit like hawks. 0.99

00:36:14.400 They are tracking these headlines. 1.00

00:36:15.940 They are sentiment monitoring.

00:36:17.280 And when they see headlines in Forbes, that global support is growing for the Starbucks

00:36:23.260 workers in America, they are taking that to the board.

00:36:26.140 They are taking that to the CEO.

00:36:27.440 And they're saying, we are losing.

00:36:29.400 And that is why we're having this conversation, even though we touched on it on a recent AMA,

00:36:33.060 is because we want this to be a headline that exists in our feed.

00:36:36.400 We want this to be a thing that people share.

00:36:38.220 Like, you want to be changing not just consumer sentiment, but you want to be changing the 0.92

00:36:42.460 online conversation and making these fuckers nervous so if these people are still listening 0.99

00:36:46.820 to this watch your fucking watch your five watch your five caro is 30 minutes into one episode 1.00

00:36:54.200 about labor organizing and she's already like employing teamsters tactics she's like what if 1.00

00:36:58.800 we brought a gun what if we put a gun on the table yeah i'm only gonna get involved if it can be like

00:37:03.200 the irishman okay so in conclusion right now starbucks executives are betting on one thing 0.99

00:37:11.260 They are betting that we are all a bunch of dumb fucking consumers with no sense of solidarity, with no idea of our own class interests, who cannot go somewhere else for our little treat for a month or two. 0.97

00:37:25.260 And they are betting that they're going to outlast the strike, that we're not going to care, that we're going to be saying stuff like, oh, well, if you don't like it, go work somewhere else. 0.99

00:37:34.940 and every single day that they are proven wrong,

00:37:39.200 that pressure intensifies

00:37:40.600 and we are one step closer to actual material change.

00:37:46.200 Don't go to Starbucks.

00:37:48.560 Support, that's my addition.

00:37:51.220 Don't go to Starbucks

00:37:51.780 and I know that you don't like to toot your own horn,

00:37:54.880 but I just want to say

00:37:55.740 you have been so much more involved on the ground

00:37:57.720 than I have been and I have learned so much from you.

00:38:00.160 And so I just want to give you your feathers

00:38:01.640 that you are really walking the walk with this conversation

00:38:04.680 and I really admire it.

00:38:06.180 And I'm proud to know you.

00:38:08.120 Oh my God, Carol.

00:38:08.720 Because I think that that is something

00:38:09.820 that's incredibly brave. 0.99

00:38:10.860 Shut up right now. 0.99

00:38:12.200 Well, it's not just about you. 0.99

00:38:13.420 I'm going to expand it a little bit.

00:38:14.700 I also have a very good friend

00:38:15.860 who is a therapist

00:38:16.920 who was striking for Kaiser for a long time.

00:38:19.900 I know how hard it is.

00:38:21.620 I know what a grind it is.

00:38:23.140 And I just have so much respect

00:38:25.040 for anyone who contributes

00:38:26.540 in any way, big or small,

00:38:28.160 to the labor movement in America

00:38:30.220 because we live in an incredibly hostile country

00:38:32.680 for this labor movement.

00:38:33.860 And this could make a big difference.

00:38:35.400 So Mamdani Nation, rise up.

00:38:37.220 And that is spiritual.

00:38:38.160 It is not geographical.

00:38:41.480 Beautiful.

00:38:42.800 Okay, that's it.

00:38:44.080 Okay, that's the end.

Diabolical Lies - December 16, 2025

Don't Go to Starbucks This Holiday Season. Here's Why.

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