"Starbucks claims the Middle Street location no longer meets the company's needs."

Those needs being an inability to exploit labor as much as possible... I swear these rich pricks forgot how rough our labor movement was, all of these protections they put into play were not to protect the workers, but the system and capitalists from the people they were screwing over and starving. Shit almost went off the rails here, for a long time the State had the moneys back until they realized it was likely to get all "feed the tree" up in here. They went to great lengths to get rid of civics, whitewash the civil rights movement and remove any, and I mean ANY history of our labor movement in schools. Then the decided to get all the kids in debt by saying they "needed" an advanced education and act surprised when they come back from that, can't find work they went to school for and are saddled with debt, and start using the things they learned in those universities.

Don’t talk about *or to unions. Don’t expect to be paid more when doing more. Don’t complain about the pay because you have good benefits and don’t take time off to use the benefits because we need you. But we don’t really need you because your co-worker has been doing the work of the last guy that quit and still kisses my ass. If you don’t like it you can find another job…but you’d be letting the team down so stay or go, we don’t care just don’t quiet quit either. Nobody wants to work anymore.

Edit*

The rage against "quiet quitting" was proof positive that all this "No one wants to work" coming out of the pandemic was nothing more than them trying to short-staffed to save money while making up excuses why they couldn't find help for the consumers.

It feels very akin to getting broken up with and claiming people just aren’t dating anymore.

The people who didn’t want to work were those that walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in forgiven PPP loans while maintaining or exceeding pre-pandemic revenue.

I’m just shocked that out of pure integrity businesses didn’t voluntarily pay it back. /s

Heh, I mean, who could have seen that coming? They should dropped it directly on folks that were out of work instead of trusting the owners to do it.

I'd suggest boycotting non-unionized Starbucks locations over this, but I honestly prefer local coffee shops over Starbucks anyway. Closing two days before Christmas is extra icing on this corporate asshole cake. I hope these employees receive backpay when Starbucks loses the same style of federal review that the Augusta Chipotle just lost.

I’m sure they knew this was the likely outcome when they voted to unionize.

Infrequent visitor to old town but isn’t that one always packed? Seems so to me. Retribution at its finest - whether you agree w unionization or not.

Shop local. Easy enough.

Possiblilty? Maybe, but that was a very busy store.

NLRB is going to have something to say about that

We can hope. But we are at a weird place where the fines and punishments for union busting are often so light that these big corporations can afford to write it off and continue to exploit labor.

The Fucking GREED these companies have is just disgusting. 🖕Starbucks!

Corporate scorched earth

Didn't Chipotle get in trouble just this year for doing the same at a Maine location?

Yep, in Augusta.

Yes. They claimed they were planning on closing all along but they had absolutely zero proof of it and the first mention of closing the store anyone provided was after they planned to unionized.

IIRC that was the first starbucks in Portland, and people were unhappy enough about it that someone threw a brick through their window. 1999 maybe?

Edit: I guess it happened more than I thought

>Within a month this spring, during which Starbucks opened two new stores in Portland, vandals smashed the windows of one Starbucks store on four different nights. In the first incident, on March 18, a drunken man staggered out of a bar and pitched a bottle through one of the windows. He was arrested and pleaded guilty. The four attacks, however, says Portland police chief Michael Chitwood, apparently "targeted" Starbucks and were perpetrated by more than one vandal.
Others in Portland have expressed their antipathy without violence. Also this spring, a small group of young people protested at one of the newly christened stores in the city. One sign read, "Starbucks get out of town." A scathing column in a local newspaper, Casco Bay Weekly, inveighed against Starbucks for "quietly destroying the character of downtowns" and funneling its profits "back to the greedy mother ship." In an interview with Inc., Donna Peterson, a Starbucks regional marketing manager in Boston, said that the company's investment and operations in Portland have strengthened the economy and that the company has contributed thousands of dollars in products or cash to a variety of the city's charities.

https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990701/822.html

Anybody got one of those giant inflatable rats kicking around?

Unpopular opinion- Maybe that store really wasn’t that profitable- super high rent location, tons of competition in close vicinity, serves as a public restroom for half the shoppers in the Old Port, perpetual staffing issues due to city-wide housing costs… etc

Unionization is a double edged sword that can sometimes take a small business or franchise down.

Not knocking the concept of fair treatment of workers, nor unions in general, but a business needs to make a profit or else why would anyone own one

Weren't like all of the unionized stores they closed super busy? Like surely everyone knows this is just a legal plausible deniability veil over pretty obvious union busting.

Why can franchises in other states unionize without closing down afterwards?

Coffee By Design is 100x better than Starbucks and much more deserving of your patronage.

I feel like it's awfully hard to prove that the store is retaliating.

If Starbucks moved 2 streets over and re-opened that'd be one thing but to just close a store...

Starbucks is overpriced garbage anyway. I like good coffee so I buy beans and make my own.

If I don't feel like making my own, I buy coffee at the gas station, I know the good spots near me and it's under 2 dollars.

If Starbucks doesn't want to support their employee's needs or sell a quality product at a reasonable price, why would you buy their shit. Especially when we have so many options.

From what I've heard CBD isn't exactly the most labour friendly business at the moment either.

Yeah, she was in hot water lately for saying some pretty wild stuff regarding wage hikes. https://mobile.twitter.com/DSA_Maine/status/1573290717329477632

Sort of, the courts almost always defend a employers right to close up shop. However if they close down one store out of a franchise that is or has recently unionized they can fine them. Starbucks has already gotten hit for doing this in other states, but as I said the penalties for it are fucking trivial.

Ya, it's a clear violation, they been getting in trouble for doing it in other states. Our government is just clearly toothless when it comes to correcting the bad behavior.

You mean PBD?

Should be illegal. Our antitrust/corporate power legislation has been a joke since the 80s and probably the #1 reason things are so fucked up right now.

i used to work next door and it is always packed

Companies spend inordinate amounts of money, time, and effort to prevent unions from forming. That’s all the evidence I need that they are beneficial to the worker.

The company could have put those millions towards their employees, but they’d rather just shut them down and keep them hungry.

Dang.

Companies spend an inordinate amount of time and money ridding the workplace of rats and cockroaches. According to your logic, that means that rats and cockroaches are beneficial to the worker.

That’s a cheeky response, I know, but the fact is, there are pros and cons to unionization of labor, it’s certainly not always good for the workers. Try googling the pros snd cons of labor unions for a balanced viewpoint on the subject.

Why do they vote for a union when they know they will be out of a job ?

It's a stepping stone of desperation. When labor reaches the point that they can no longer afford food and rent they have to do something. Historically Unionization was the play that was made in order to make enough to survive on. We are getting worked the fuck over by the corporations, highest profits in 70 years, 70% increase in productivity in the last 40 with a piddly 10% increase in worker pay that is not keeping up with the cost of living increase.

It is always good for the workers, whoever told you it was not was just playing on your ignorance to take advantage of you. I mean you did look at who was bankrolling all those "cons of unionization" articles right?

I think you are pretty rigid in your beliefs so I won’t waste my time arguing, have a great day

You too.

All locations should unionize.

They’d rather shut the place down and make no money than give it to the people that actually make the place function 😂

Much better, hit up speckled axe, bard or any of the other numerous, amazing coffee shops around Portland. And if you hit speckled axe and get a handsome mustachioed barista tip him well, he’s my brother haha

Kind of, but the store was closed for months because they couldn’t staff it. They just decided to not reopening.

Apparently it’s ‘open’ but my daughter said she was there last week and it wasn’t open during normal hours.

All workers should unionize.

How do you know that a given coffee shop is labor positive though? I've enjoyed CBD coffee for years while know knowing anything about their politics or labor relations.

In the end if everybody decided to boycott all Starbucks the employees at the individual stores end up getting hurt the worst because they'll all lose their jobs. The people at the top making the decisions are rarely in any serious trouble if a company closes down.

It's a thorny issue...

I mean the cbd owner is very outspoken about how shitty she is, employees are too

Ok then what about Arabica?