Author: admin

Unionized Starbucks workers across the US are casting their votes on whether to hold a strike amid anger over pay and conditions at the world’s largest coffee chain, and allegations it breached labor laws by engaging in bad faith bargaining.

Starbucks has faced a rapid wave of mobilization since 2021. Starbucks Workers United, a union representing baristas at the chain, has won elections at more than 650 of its locations in 45 states and the District of Columbia, representing more than 12,000 workers.

Butit has yet to obtain a contract. Starbucks Workers United claims company management started to “majorly stonewall” the union; Starbucks claims the union walked away from the bargaining table.

A strike authorization vote called by Starbucks Workers United began last Friday, 24 October, and will continue until Sunday 2 November. About 70 pickets have been planned in 60 cities across the US.

Many Starbucks baristas say they are struggling to make ends meet. Sabina Aguirre, a barista in Columbus, Ohio, said she made less than $16 an hour. “That’s not sustainable for a day-to-day life,” she said. “If I didn’t have help with my rent, I would be homeless right now. That’s the reality of my situation.

“It’s also the reality of the situation for a majority of the people I work with. Most Starbucks workers that I talk to on a day-to-day basis are one or two paychecks away from homelessness, and that shouldn’t be the reality of people who are working at a job that claims to support their workers.”

Late last year, Starbucks workers held five days of escalating strikes at stores across the US ahead of Christmas to demand finalizing a first union contract. But the action that workers are currently considering could pave the way for even larger strike actions, hitting more store locations nationwide.

“All the way back in 2021, workers organized around issues like needing better wages, better take-home pay, better hours, so they can actually make their ends meet, access the benefits they need and have better staffing so the floor can run better,” said Silvia Baldwin, a Starbucks barista in Philadelphia. “Since then, the company has also egregiously violated labor law, so workers are organizing around the company to actually making right those violations and making workers whole. Those are still the main issues that workers are fired up about.”

Baldwin, a bargaining delegate, said negotiating with Starbucks in 2024 for a period of months rendered some progress. Tentative agreements were reached covering 80-90% of the contract, she claimed, until they reached economic issues and settling unfair labor practice charges.

“The company really started to take a turn into bad faith bargaining,” added Baldwin. “The CEO regime changed. Brian Niccol was brought in. And around that same time the presidential election took place, Trump came into office, and the company began to majorly stonewall our bargaining committee and put forward proposals that were just extremely unserious.”

Unionized workers at Starbucks “are highly motivated, highly engaged, love doing their job and want it to be as good as it should be”, Baldwin said, and they can tell “the company exactly what it’s going to take to turn things around. If Brian Niccol wants to actually fix this company, you should listen to our union.”

It would take less than one average day’s sales to finalize the contract, the union has claimed. Niccol, the CEO, had a total compensation over the past year of $97.8m, whereas the median annual salary for a Starbucks employee in 2024 was $14,674.

The company has been under pressure for months, and announced earlier this year a slate of store closures around the US, including 59 union stores, as part of cost-cutting restructuring due to lagging sales.

If authorized, the strike will be closely watched throughout the US labor movement.

“It’s clear that bargaining has stalled. Thousands of Starbucks workers have voted to unionize, and they aren’t yet protected by a binding contract,” Rebecca Givan, a labor law professor at Rutgers University, said. “A strong showing in their strike-authorization vote will tell Starbucks management that these workers are serious about taking action if a contract isn’t agreed soon.

“Demonstrating that this national, dispersed campaign can lead to first contracts will send a message to workers nationwide that they can organize and win material gains, backed up with an enforceable contract.”

A spokesperson for Starbucks, Jaci Anderson, claimed the firm’s transformation campaign, known as Back to Starbucks, was working.

“Workers United, which represents around 4% of our partners, chose to walk away from the bargaining table. If they’re ready to come back, we’re ready to talk. Any agreement needs to reflect the reality that Starbucks already offers the best job in retail,” Anderson wrote in an email. “Hourly partners earn more than $30 an hour on average in pay and benefits and we’re investing over $500m to put more partners in stores during busy times.

“The facts show people like working at Starbucks. Partner engagement is up, turnover is nearly half the industry average and we get more than 1m job applications a year.”

GYEONGJU, South Korea — Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia plans to supply hundreds of thousands of its graphics processing units for projects with South Korean businesses and the government to advance the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure and technologies.

The plan was announced Friday by the government, Nvidia, and some of South Korea’s biggest companies, including chipmakers Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and auto giant Hyundai Motor, after President Lee Jae Myung met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

At a news conference, Huang said he hopes to export Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on loosening U.S. chip restrictions as the two leaders pledged to reduce trade tensions.

However, he acknowledged that it was up to Trump to decide, and said there were no current plans to sell the next generation Blackwell chips to China.

Huang has gotten rockstar treatment reminiscent of Apple’s Steve Jobs since arriving in South Korea on Thursday to attend meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Gyeongju. As APEC host, South Korea is using the gathering of world leaders to showcase its ambitions in AI.

According to Lee’s office and the companies, Nvidia will supply around 260,000 GPUs to support South Korea’s AI computing and manufacturing capabilities.

About 50,000 of the GPUs will be used to support a government project to build a national cloud computing center for AI and Nvidia will provide the same number of GPUs each to Samsung and SK to help them enhance their manufacturing processes through AI and accelerate the development of advanced semiconductors.

Hyundai and Nvidia said they plan to collaborate on developing technologies related to self-driving cars, smart factories and robotics, a process that will be powered by 50,000 of Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell GPUs.

Speaking to business leaders, Huang highlighted how AI and advanced computing are driving a profound transformation across industries, adding to the need for more infrastructure and capacity. South Korea’s strengths in software, technical expertise and manufacturing give it an edge, he said.

“When you combine software, AI technology, and manufacturing, you have the opportunity to really take advantage of robotics,” which is the future of AI, Huang said.

Santa Clara-based Nvidia, whose GPU chips power much of the global AI industry, featured in talks Thursday between Trump and Xi in the South Korean city of Busan, where the leaders agreed to take steps to ease their escalating trade war.

Following the meeting, Trump said he discussed sales of computer chips to China. Trump and former President Joe Biden have imposed restrictions on China’s access to the most advanced chips, including those used for AI. Trump said China will speak with Nvidia about purchasing their chips, but not the company’s latest Blackwell AI chips.

Nvidia has argued that U.S. export controls hinder American competitiveness in one of the world’s largest technology markets and warned that such limits could push other countries toward China’s AI technology. Talking to reporters in South Korea, Huang said he hopes to eventually sell Blackwell chips to China, “but that’s a decision for the president to make.”

“We’re always hoping to return to China,” Huang said. “It’s in the best interest of the United States, it’s in the best interests of China. And so I’m hopeful that both governments will arrive at a conclusion someday where Nvidia’s technology could be exported to China.”

Huang acknowledged U.S. security concerns about Nvidia technology being used by China’s military but argued that China already has ample AI capabilities, making the use of Nvidia chips for military purposes largely unnecessary.

In August, Trump announced a deal with Nvidia and AMD, another chipmaker, to lift export controls on sales of advanced chips to China in exchange for a 15% cut of the revenue, despite concerns among national security experts that such chips will end up in the hands of Chinese military and intelligence services.

Nvidia earlier this week confirmed that it has become the first $5 trillion company, just three months after the company broke through the $4 trillion mark. The milestone underscores the upheaval driven by the AI craze, widely seen as the biggest technological shift since Apple co-founder Jobs unveiled the first iPhone 18 years ago.

But there are also concerns over a potential AI bubble. Officials at the Bank of England warned earlier this month that tech stock prices fueled by the AI boom could collapse, and the head of the International Monetary Fund has issued a similar warning.

Hundreds of people, including reporters, gathered at a restaurant in southern Seoul on Thursday as Huang, dressed casually in a black T-shirt just hours after arriving in South Korea, shared fried chicken and beer with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Executive Chair Euisun Chung. The tech executives clinked glasses, took bomb shots, and at one point, Huang stepped outside to hand baskets of chicken and fried cheese to the crowd waiting outside.

The three later took the stage before hundreds of cheering fans at a nearby gaming festival, where Huang said Korea’s gaming scene aided Nvidia’s early success back when it mainly made graphics cards for gamers.