After years of organizing and prolonged contract negotiations over better working conditions, Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) union members announced a nationwide boycott campaign in late August calling on allies to force the fast food company to the negotiating table.
Starbucks workers rallied at 40 college campuses nationwide yesterday, including the University of Washington, calling on administrators to put ties with the coffee chain over its labor abuses. Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck spoke at the UW rally in support of the boycott and urged the university to kick Starbucks off campus.
Politicians across the country are joining the boycott, including seven sitting congressmen and six new ones, as well as two US senators (none of these are local) and city councils across the country. Several state-level Democratic parties, including Washington’s, are part of the boycott, according to a recent count.
But here in Seattle, where the company was founded and remains based, the political class isn’t so quick to join.
Among local politicians, King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda and Washington House Rep. Shaun Scott have publicly joined the boycott, though it’s not exactly a big club.
But the most notable absent voice is Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson.
Among Wilson’s first acts after being elected mayor was to announce at an SBWU strike rally that she was boycotting Starbucks and that others should too. Notably there was no active nationwide boycott campaign called by SBWU when Wilson said “I am not buying Starbucks, and you should not either,” last November.
Over the next six months, Wilson was smeared by conservative media for advocating a boycott of a local corporation over its poor labor record. This included a column in the Wall Street Journal‘s notoriously right-wing editorial pages written by former Starbucks owner Howard Schultz.
“Seattle’s mayor, Katie Wilson, has chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner. Her socialist rhetoric vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue,” Schultz wrote.
The attacks on Wilson are consistent with an ongoing campaign by business leaders opposing progressive taxation of Seattle’s corporate titans, who have spun a narrative of growing capital flight to the libertarian climates of the former Confederacy.
Wilson denounced her own prior support for a Starbucks boycott to the New York Times in May of this year, calling her words “not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good,” and saying she wants “a multidimensional relationship” with local corporations.
“Multidimensional” is an accurate self-assessment, as the Mayor’s Office has, in recent months, assumed a quantum superposition of pledging to support unionization efforts at Starbucks while simultaneously walking back Wilson’s prior support for a boycott, a tactic Starbucks workers are now using to pressure the company.
In a FOX 13 interview broadcast June 3, Wilson told the interviewer “I guess I broke my boycott” by ordering a blueberry muffin latte during a visit to Starbucks’ Pike Place Market location when she went to the store “to talk to the workers there who are organizing a union.”
Since ending her spontaneous boycott this summer, SBWU announced their official nationwide boycott campaign, and the mayor’s nebulous position on the matter has only become more unclear.
At a recent press conference, Wilson refused to answer a direct question from The Stranger as to whether she was or was not boycotting Starbucks in light of the union’s new boycott campaign and her prior support.
“I absolutely support Starbucks workers’ right to organize and to join a union, and I want to see the union and the company bargaining in good faith and getting to a fair contract,” she said, declining to answer the question again when pressed.
Asked when she last went to Starbucks, Wilson said she did not remember.
Despite the hedging, giving no response when asked if she’s boycotting Starbucks effectively means the mayor is sticking with her prior decision to end her boycott, even if saying so publicly has now been made politically unfeasible by SBWU’s formal boycott campaign.
SBWU isn’t rushing to throw Wilson under the bus however, or, at least, leadership isn’t. Asked for comment on the mayor’s recent cryptic statements, SBWU told The Stranger “Mayor Katie Wilson has long stood shoulder-to-shoulder with union baristas, including on the picket line, and we’re proud to have her support in our fight for a fair contract.”
The statement continued: “Our union movement has taken the nation by storm, and the Starbucks boycott continues to grow in strength as elected officials, state parties, unions and consumers nationwide put their weight behind us and show their commitment to working people everywhere. Together, we will continue to fight for a fair contract that addresses systemic challenges like understaffing, low pay, unpredictable hours and more.”
While she is a self-proclaimed socialist, Wilson’s summertime reneging on her Starbucks boycott exemplifies that she is not a product of the labor movement, the traditional incubator of socialist politics. On October 1, the Washington State Labor Council announced the powerful state union federation was joining the boycott until baristas win a fair contract. Other major labor groups joining the boycott include the AFL-CIO and SEIU.
Until the union’s demands are met, SBWU is calling on boycotters to “run a Starbucks-free organization,” not contract with the company, encourage others to join, and “show up and show out to help union baristas win a fair contract.”
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