Featuring:

• 400 Truckers in Stockton, California strike the industry
• Spain: 'What's going on in Starbucks?' CNT member fired
• Forum on industrial organizing with the IWW in Chile
• Barrick Gold in Pascua Lama, Chile

Headlines:

• IWW shop scores 3-year contract, raises, healthcare
• Restaurant joins Wild Edibles boycott
• Bermuda public servants, police fight government

Featured Articles:

• Japan IWW delegation at the G8 protests
• Mexican teachers struggle for union democracy
• Utah Phillips interview

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July 1, 2008

Statement of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union on the Announcement of 600 Starbucks Store Closures

"The IWW Starbucks Workers Union is deeply troubled that management's numerous missteps are resulting in more serious hardships for baristas, bussers, and shift supervisors.

To ensure transparency, Starbucks should immediately disclose the locations it intends to close and outline its severance plan. Starbucks and its CEO Howard Schultz must minimize the number of layoffs, assure adequate notice to affected families, and offer severance pay which is fair. Employees and their families deserve to be able to safeguard their futures.

If Starbucks is serious about distinguishing itself from competitors like McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, Schultz should stop prohibiting full-time status for retail hourly employees and improve a health care plan which insures a lower percentage of workers than Wal-Mart's. And the company should stop wasting millions of dollars on its union-busting lawyers and PR professionals at Akin Gump and Edelman."

Related Stories:

• Starbucks axes stores to get out of hot water
• Starbucks May Rise on Plans to Cut Staff, Stores

The Union of Comerical and Hotel workers CNT-AIT in Sevilla, Spain along with the Grand Rapids Starbucks Workers Union (IWW) have announced a Global Day of Action scheduled for July 5th. The two groups are asking social organizations, unions, and individuals from around the world to promote and participate in this day of action.

On April 24th, 2008 a barista named Monica was fired for her union activity from a Starbucks in Sevilla, Spain. She was a member of the Union of Commercial and Hotel Workers of the Confederacion Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT). Now with the support of all CNT affiliates, the International Workers Association, and the Starbucks Workers Union (IWW) they are demanding justice for Monica.

Headlines:

• Transport workers take action
• Zimbabwe arrests unionists, opposition
• E-Z Supply ordered to pay IWWs $1 million

Featured Articles:

• Haiti IWW delegation travel diary
• Militant, independent, all-Cambodian union
• Staughton Lynd: Another world is possible

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By David Rovics - May 25th, 2008

I wouldn't want to elevate anybody to inappropriately high heights, but for me, Utah Phillips was a legend.

I first became familiar with the Utah Phillips phenomenon in the late 80's, when I was in my early twenties, working part-time as a prep cook at Morningtown in Seattle. I had recently read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and had been particularly enthralled by the early 20th Century section, the stories of the Industrial Workers of the World. So it was with great interest that I first discovered a greasy cassette there in the kitchen by the stereo, Utah Phillips Sings the Songs and Tells the Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World.

As a young radical, I had heard lots about the 1960's. There were (and are) plenty of veterans of the struggles of the 60's alive and well today. But the wildly tumultuous era of the first two decades of the 20th century is now (and pretty well was then) a thing entirely of history, with no one living anymore to tell the stories. And while long after the 60's there will be millions of hours of audio and video recorded for posterity, of the massive turn-of-the-century movement of the industrial working class there will be virtually none of that.