Interview With An Irish Activist Involved In New Zeland Starbucks Strike

international | worker & community struggles and protests | news report Monday November 28, 2005 12:31 by eeekkkkkk

starbucks workers demand 12 dollars per hour

Briefly Describe your involvement in the Starbucks Strike in NZ.

My name's Joe Carolan and I was one of the half dozen or so full time organisers for Unite and our SupersizemyPay.com campaign. Delegates from our stores in St Lukes and Newmarket were the first Starbucks workers in the world to wildcat to support a strike in K Road, Auckland's counter-culture drag. I helped organise a Freedom Bus to pick strikers up and ferry then there on the day, and kicked off a loud carnival picket line with music and free fair trade coffee there when we got there. We drove the wildcat strikers back after two hours of strike action and ensured there was no victimisation in their stores.

How did you get involved?

The last time I had been in Aotearoa I had got involved in the Fightback! direct action wave of occupations in the Universities here for free education. Four years later, the front line had moved to the battle to organise young workers, and most of the left wing activists I had worked with then worth their salt were stepping up to help the Unite Workers Union organising drive.

Where did this initiative come from?

Two left wing activists here in Aotearoa, Matt Mc Carten and Mike Treen, had gone through the experience of a small left wing party, the Alliance, joining in coalition with a social liberal one, Labour NZ. The experience devestated the radical left, and they saw that many of the surviving left wing groups and unions were out of touch with where workers were at nowadays. So they went back to the class and decided to organise a combative, grassroots union for the working poor.

What are the aims of the campaign?

To start a Teamsters Rebellion like confrontation in Auckland between the working poor and the multinationals! And to win a living minimum wage of $12 an hour, the abolition of dicriminatory youth rates against workers under the age of 18, and for an end to precarity- secure hours and rosters that people can plan their lives around.

How were the Starbucks workers unionised?

Changes to the Employment Relations Act here last year allowed unions round the clock access to worksites to recruit and talk to workers. So we use visits as our organising model. We have hundreds of KFCs, Starbucks, Pizza Huts, Burger Kings, Wendys etc etc to visit each week. We sign members up to the union, who agree with our demands and our strategy, only taking 1% deductions from their wages. Employers have to deduct these by law, but we never charge more than $4.50 in any one week. Any member can phone us with PGs (personal grievances) or we can find out problems when we visit the store.

So over the last four months we have recruited 4500 workers to Unite, with about 3000 of them in the Fast Foods sector. Turnover is high in this industry but then so is our recruitment. As strong workplace leaders emerge, so more of the recruitment is done by the delegates within the stores. We are now building up strike committees in our stronger stores whose actions inspire the next layer of supporters to become delegates and strike leaders. Next week, for example, KFC in Balmoral goes on strike against youth rates. Three of the five strike leaders are under 18, and 60% of that store is on youth rates of NZ$7.80 an hour before tax. We're billing it as the Battle of Balmoral,and are out leafletting schools and worksites all this week building for a massive rally outside the store when it goes on strike this Saturday at 2pm!

The Starbucks chain here is one of the more compact targets and has a good level of delegate activists, which was why we decided to move first with them. Ten stores took wildcat action to support the K Road strike, and emerging activists such as Nick, the 16 year old who was the world's first Starbucks striker, is now playing a major role in inspiring young KFC and Mc Donalds workers to organise their own actions.


How has the government in NZ reacted if at all?

The NZ government is made up of a coalition of the social-liberal Labour Party and a number of small right wing parties, such as New Zealand First and United Future. They could have formed a more left wing government with the Maori Party and the Greens, who both support our $12 dollar an hour minimum wage demand. Their choice of partners showed their preference for right wing politics, and the need for us to fight for our demands independent of them. As socialists often say, real change will only come from below, from the grassroots. We want to force a victory in the workplace first, whcih will hopefully inspire other low paid activists to organise and strike to win an acheivable goal.

How have established older unions reacted?

The Congress of Trade Unions has verbally backed our campaign, as have left wing union leaders like the National Distribution Union's Laile Haire. We hope to work with her organising supermarkets soon, which is the next front in the battle against poverty wages. In a situation where 400,000 workers in this country are on a minimum wage of NZ$9.50, many of the other unions here are controlled by members of the Labour Party, and have retreated into white collar and the public service jobs. We want to bring unions back to the working poor and the young, and the thousands who have joined Unite in the last few months shows it can be done. many of the left wing activists in other unions have joined a network called the Workers Charter movement in opposition to the partnership policy of the Labour dominated ones.

Is there as big a failure to unionise precarious/temporary/low wage/service workers in NZ as there is in Ireland?

Yes. Back home in Ireland I was a precarious English Language Teacher, another sector that Unite organises here in Auckland. I used to hear horror stories from my Chinese and immigrant workers every week of their treatment by Irish employers, and despaired that there was no combative union out there willing to take a risk on the fast food sector. A lot of union work back home is still in the traditional public service or industrial sectors, but what I've learned in Auckland is that we can organise call centres, restaurants, language schools, hotels and the low paid service industry to stand up and fight.

Before I applied to work with Unite, I wrote Mike Treen an email saying that they were doing the work that Jim Larkin and James Connolly would be proud of. I hope Irish activists back home in the trade union movement can take inspiration from our fight. Prehaps the better unions such as the ATGWU could organise a similar campaign- we would be happy to share our experiences with them. The battle has only begun here, though, and we have some serious enemies to contend with. The media over here are branding us "David and Goliath", so the more international solidarity we have, the better. The Starbucks Workers Union in New York has been working closely with us. If we can unionise and beat them citywide in AUckland, then we have no doubt it will spread to other cities and countries.

Send your messages of support to www.supersizemypay.com

Also see - Union Busters leave a bitter taste
http://www.swp.ie/socialistworker/2005/sw240/SW-240-web.pdf