“Starbucks has this image of being a progressive company that takes care of its employees. But really that hasn’t been the case,” Will Westlake, a barista at a Starbucks in Buffalo, tells openDemocracy.
Will got a job at Starbucks nearly a year ago, and was one of nearly 50 people from the Buffalo New York region – as part of Starbucks Workers United – to sign a letter in August asking then-CEO Kevin Johnson to support a fair union election.
“Instead what they did was send almost 200 managers from all across the country to Buffalo for 20 stores,” added Will. “That meant watching us on the floor, scheduling us for anti-union meetings, pulling people into the back of the store to either interrogate or get information on them to use in future group meetings. Really just waging a psychological war on their own employees.”
