Case Study: Union Baristas at Starbucks?
After I read the case study what I had gained from reading it is that Starbucks does not want their employees under any circumstances to become unionized. The IWW believes that Starbucks does not treat their employee fair and equally because of the 42 percent of employees have company provided health insurance which is a lower percentage than Wal-Mart's 47 percent. In any case the IWW is trying to build a strong lawsuit against Starbucks because they believe that the New York Starbucks fired three employees that supported the IWW and gave the rest bad performance appraisals and stopped anyone from wearing the IWW's supporter pins. It is true that …show more content…
The reason I believe that they would do that is because unions are known for helping employees gain larger and better wages than what they were getting at first. The next thing they would change, which is why they made a big fuss about Starbucks in the first place, is the employees receiving company provided health insurance. Apparently Starbucks was not offering all their employees company provided health insurance even though Starbucks was "ranked near the top of Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in 2008" (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gert & Wright, 2009) however many of their employees were lacking the care that was needed for them on a medical level. The only employees that seem to be getting the health insurance were the employees that work 20 hours a week or more. IWW saw that as unfair and unequal so they would defiantly change that about Starbucks employee's rights. The last thing they would change is better work conditions at Starbucks stores. If they believe that the work conditions at Starbucks is less than reasonable they will come in and rectify the situation to make sure all employees regardless of sex, age, race and ethnicity will get nothing less than equal treatment because that is what a union is all about.
Reference
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P.M. (2009) Fundamentals of human resource