Letter in Solidarity with Starbucks Workers
Dear Mr. Narasimhan:
We wanted to take a moment to welcome you as the new CEO of Starbucks Coffee Company. It’s our hope that you uphold Starbucks’ reputation as an inclusive and welcoming third place for the community by taking this opportunity to redefine the company’s relationship with Starbucks partners working in cafes, reserve stores, and roasteries across the country.
As our nation’s leading advocacy, environmental, civil rights, gender justice, and labor organizations, who represent nearly 62 million members and supporters, we stand by workers exercising their fundamental and constitutional right to form a union. Freedom of association is a constitutional right, and by joining together to bargain collectively with employers, unions give workers the opportunity to have their voices heard and help make decisions to make meaningful changes in their workplaces.
Unions are good for workers, businesses, our economy, and our democracy. They are vehicles that advance equity across class, race, sexual orientation, gender, and immigration status. While our organizations represent many facets of the progressive movement, we know our fights are inextricably linked to that of Starbucks Workers United. We cannot have justice – racial, gender, immigrant, climate – without economic justice.
Instead of continuing on the current path Starbucks has taken, we urge you to create and build a healthy working relationship with unionized partners. We encourage you to affirm workers’ legal right to organize a union by signing the Fair Elections Principles and by committing to bargain in good faith with over 7,500 workers who have formed Starbucks Workers United.
Signed,
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
AFL-CIO
AFSCME
American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
APIVote
Asian American Power Network
Blue Green Alliance
CASA
Center for Popular Democracy
Communications Workers of America (CWA)
Community Change Action
DemCast USA
Detroit Action
Future Coalition
GreenPeace
International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers
Jobs With Justice
League of Conservation Voters
Mi familia vota
MoveOn
National Domestic Workers Alliance
National Education Association (NEA)
National Wildlife Federation
North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU)
North Carolina Asian Americans Together
Occupy Democrats
Other 98
Our Revolution
People’s Action
Public Citizen
Repairers of the Breach
Rising Voices
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Sierra Club
Sunrise Movement
SuperMajority
The Democratic Coalition
The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT)
UltraViolet
United We Dream
Women’s March
Working America
Working Families Party