Much has been made lately of the news of the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is Starbucks Workers United which, in stark contrast to the 0-2 record of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s efforts to unionize Amazon, has enjoyed success after success. The giant coffee chain is known for being one of the better food-service retail outlets, at least in terms of pay and benefits, and tries to maintain an image of being a worker-friendly company. Nevertheless, not all is as it seems.

The Good

First, it is important to recognize the fact that Starbucks Workers United has been doing extremely well. Since beginning their campaign last summer, in the space of approximately six months, they have successfully unionized 21 of the 23 Starbucks facilities at which they have held elections. At one location, the vote was definitively against, and at the other, the NLRB was unable to call the election. Approximately 200 stores have petitioned for an election so far this year. SWU’s successes are not limited to regular Starbucks stores, either – at least one Roastery has also joined the union.

Moreover, having a union is often positive. The union is the proletariat’s vehicle for economic struggle against the bourgeoisie, and is capable of extracting concessions such as increased wages, more time off, benefits, etc. While none of these things mean the end of capital, they are nevertheless positive goods. The struggle over these issues, furthermore, teaches the proletariat how to fight as a class; it demonstrates that it is only through combined struggle that the proletariat is capable of exercising its power, and lays bare the antagonism between proletarian and bourgeois. It is the school of the proletarian revolution.

The fact that SWU is doing so well is clear proof of the lie that Starbucks spreads about itself. It constantly cries that it wants a direct relationship between itself and its employees, as if a corporation, an impersonal force, could have a direct relationship with anyone. It seeks to conceal the fact that the wages and benefits it offers were won through previous struggle. It’s also evidence that SWU is not simply treating the workers as passive observers, and is engaging them in the struggle.

The Bad

Starbucks has no intention of taking this lying down. The CEO has been sacked and Howard Schulz is now back in command, for the third time. Schulz has had success in beating unionization campaigns in the past.

The company is no stranger to union-busting. It has defeated both the UFCW and IWW, through characteristically ruthless tactics. It has fired workers, brought in scabs at higher wages than its current employees – with the clear implication that the workers joining the union are ungrateful and could be getting more if they would just stop – and spread anti-union propaganda. Efforts to buy off workers by offering more perks, and perhaps a small raise, would not be unprecedented, either.

Moreover, SWU is known to employ salts, union organizers who get jobs for the sole purpose of organizing a workplace, typically with no intention of maintaining their employment once the shop is organized. This can weaken the campaign as it has a strong potential to undermine workers’ confidence in the union, and lowers the actual number of workers on board with the union. Indeed, salts exist for the purpose of providing leadership within the shop to unionize, and, once a salt leaves or gets fired, leadership disappears. Organic leadership developed from workers whose intention to keep the job is not tenuous and tied specifically to their ability to organize there provides a solid foundation for lasting power.

The Ugly

Now we must turn to the heart of the question: is SWU the kind of union that will struggle for the workers that make it up, or is it merely capitalizing on discontent with no real intent of leading the struggle? Starbucks appears to be a particularly hot shop currently, which SWU is exploiting for its parent union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union notorious for its top-down approach to unionism, and the recently-departed President, Andy Stern, has established his own union-busting consulting company. Stern was notorious for shoving terrible contracts down members’ throats, a practice which has not significantly abated since his departure. SEIU is perhaps the model of the American regime union, a labor cop, acting as an agent of the state in imposing capitalist work discipline on its members.

The commitment of SWU to the shop-by-shop bargaining approach, the scheme envisioned by the most conservative forces of American labor and endorsed by the bourgeoisie, allows fissures between shops to persist and grow, divisions that can and will be exploited by the bosses. By allowing workers to bargain piecemeal, their combined power cannot be wielded against Starbucks, leaving them weaker than if they all spoke with the same voice. By permitting unequal treatment between shops, they leave themselves open to defeat in detail.

Moreover, the approach of unions such as SEIU is to sign away the power of workers to withhold their labor, the most powerful weapon they possess. The rule in such unions is “work now, grieve later;” which, all too often, translates into “just work and stop complaining”. While pursuing grievances with the NLRB is not intrinsically wrong, this process is byzantine, the domain of bureaucrats and lawyers, and cannot stop ongoing abuses, much less prevent future ones. Workers who interface with this process quickly become aware of this fact, and by signing away the right to strike or take other shopfloor action (the law effectively contemplates any concerted action as a strike), they become helpless in the face of their bosses’ willful and continuous disregard for the law.

Regime unions such as SEIU also divert workers’ struggle into the swamp of electoralism. Joined at the hip with the Democratic Party, they seek salvation through the very state whose laws bind them to servitude and degradation. Proletarians are aware that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted, and is just as much an enemy of their class as the Republicans Party. This encourages a false image of the state as a neutral actor, which can be made more friendly to them by electing the right people to office, rather than revealing it for what it is, namely the executive committee of the bourgeoisie.

As union density continues to decline through this historic relationship of subjection to the interests of capital, the labor lieutenants of the captains of industry fatten themselves at the expense of those whose interests they purport to represent. Avid seekers of labor peace, they actively restrain the struggle of the worker to better his condition. Where the opportunity presents itself for these piecards to advance the interests of the working class, they choose the opposite.

The Solution

As we have consistently maintained, such organizations must be dismantled and destroyed. We repeat again that unions are vital organs of economic struggle for the proletariat, but regime unions are worse than useless for this struggle. They are impediments, obstacles along the march to victory that must be removed. No more can we speak of these individuals’ acts as a siren-call. We must now speak of a cacophony. The purpose is not to draw us onto a different line of march, but to drown out the clarion call of the correct line of the class union.

Only by seeking each other out and amplifying our voices together can we defeat the bourgeoisie and fulfill our historic destiny. Under the leadership of the class party, united into a class union, victory is possible. Communism will – communism must – win.