but shouldn’t because you don’t want them to be fired - you want them to be quietly hiring and protecting a 100% pro-union staff
Theoretically if I were in a management position at my local Starbucks, what would be the best way of both doing this and trying to sow the seed of unionization outside of just hiring and protecting them
I'm not sure if that's a good thing to be doing, as a manager. You want to be as sneaky as possible because your greatest value to unionization is being able to shield them from union busting. When your store starts to unionize, corporate will ask you to do these things:
Do one on one conversations with each employee telling them how bad unions are and sussing out who is pro-union, sending that list back to corporate.
Distributing anti-union literature.
Closely monitoring pro-union workers' mistakes to create a pretext for firing.
Giving dumb anti-union speeches.
Giving progress reports so that corporate can do things like figure out which stores to shut down.
It is valuable to have a manager that will make corporate think all of those things are happening even though you actually have workers' backs. Once the workers are gung-ho and clearly unified is when you sit down with them and say, "I'm on your side but it has to be secret so I can keep corporate off your trail". If you want to be extra cool, you could suss out anti-union workers and tell corporate they're pro-union and agitating, which is a bit risky but also hilarious. It is also, no joke, a very old union trick.
Okay, well I guess you could do one thing: completely anonymously drop Starbucks Workers United lit around the store and/or invite some competent labor groups to come by and palm card.
PS, in terms of expectations, understand that SB is going to delay indefinitely in bargaining and it's likely that it will take a much larger critical mass of stores before they do bargain. This is a long-term thing and it might result in your store getting closed and the workers either leaving, getting fired, or transferring. SB is a big evil company that makes most of its money on financialized nonsense nowadays. Winning this fight will be difficult and require widespread solidarity.
Theoretically if I were in a management position at my local Starbucks, what would be the best way of both doing this and trying to sow the seed of unionization outside of just hiring and protecting them
I'm not sure if that's a good thing to be doing, as a manager. You want to be as sneaky as possible because your greatest value to unionization is being able to shield them from union busting. When your store starts to unionize, corporate will ask you to do these things:
Do one on one conversations with each employee telling them how bad unions are and sussing out who is pro-union, sending that list back to corporate.
Distributing anti-union literature.
Closely monitoring pro-union workers' mistakes to create a pretext for firing.
Giving dumb anti-union speeches.
Giving progress reports so that corporate can do things like figure out which stores to shut down.
It is valuable to have a manager that will make corporate think all of those things are happening even though you actually have workers' backs. Once the workers are gung-ho and clearly unified is when you sit down with them and say, "I'm on your side but it has to be secret so I can keep corporate off your trail". If you want to be extra cool, you could suss out anti-union workers and tell corporate they're pro-union and agitating, which is a bit risky but also hilarious. It is also, no joke, a very old union trick.
Okay, well I guess you could do one thing: completely anonymously drop Starbucks Workers United lit around the store and/or invite some competent labor groups to come by and palm card.
PS, in terms of expectations, understand that SB is going to delay indefinitely in bargaining and it's likely that it will take a much larger critical mass of stores before they do bargain. This is a long-term thing and it might result in your store getting closed and the workers either leaving, getting fired, or transferring. SB is a big evil company that makes most of its money on financialized nonsense nowadays. Winning this fight will be difficult and require widespread solidarity.