The tally of unionized Starbucks locations is continuing to grow.  The Starbucks Workers United union campaign continues to produce astounding election wins week after week.  260 stores have petitioned for National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections: The union has won 77 NLRB elections, (87%) most by overwhelming margins, including in places where union victories are rare, including in Mesa, Arizona; Boone, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Knoxville, Tennessee; Augusta, Georgia; and Overland Park, Kansas.and has lost only nine elections. 

By the union’s count, there are now 100 stores across the nation that have unionized, that milestone being achieved after successful votes at two stores in Seattle, the birthplace of Starbucks.

Starbuck workers in Greenville, South Carolina, once known as being “among the most relentlessly anti-union cities in the nation,” by The New York Times, voted eight to one to become the first unionized store in the state. For the past two years, South Carolina has been the least unionized state in the country, and  union density in 2021 was just 1.7 percent. Greenville is even more anti-union than the rest of South Carolina. The metropolitan area has only seven employers with any union workers. Local employers brag about it. “In 2021, the private sector unionization rate for the Greenville area was only 0.3%. The Greenville Metropolitan Statistical Area is the least unionized Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States…There have been no reported work stoppages reported in the past ten years.”

SOURCES

Starbucks Workers United Wins in US’s Most Anti-Union City (truthout.org)

Organizers Herald 100th Win as Starbucks Unionization Wave Continues (commondreams.org)

 A Short Story from the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

 From the May 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

 A Home Office commissioned paper that officials have repeatedly tried to suppress over the past year reveals the origins of the Windrush scandal lay in 30 years of racist immigration legislation designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population,

The 52-page analysis by an unnamed historian describes how “the British Empire depended on racist ideology in order to function”.  It concludes that the origins of the “deep-rooted racism of the Windrush scandal” lie in the fact that “during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK”.

The report states, “Major immigration legislation in 1962, 1968 and 1971 was designed to reduce the proportion of people living in the United Kingdom who did not have white skin.”

The unnamed Home Office historian writes: “The British Empire depended on racist ideology in order to function, which in turn produced legislation aimed at keeping racial and ethnic groups apart … From the beginning, concern about Commonwealth immigration was about skin colour.” In the 1950s, British officials shared a “basic assumption that ‘coloured immigrants’, as they were referred to, were not good for British society,” the report states.

The document summarises decades of “dysfunctional relationships between Britain’s institutions and Black and minority ethnic people”, and concludes: “The politics of Britain’s borders, which have been administered for more than a century by the Home Office, are now inextricably connected with race and with Britain’s colonial history.”

The report also cites a letter from the prime minister of the Federation of the West Indies, Sir Grantley Adams, to the Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan. Sir Grantley protested that “Britain has begun to take steps which are no different in kind to the basis on which the system of apartheid in South Africa is based” by introducing the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act.

Windrush scandal caused by ‘30 years of racist immigration laws’ – report | Windrush scandal | The Guardian

Rejecting the idea that Congress should legislate to restrict easy access to guns, Republicans echo the words of Trump that it is necessary to militarized schools with armed security, andarmed teachers. Schools are to be turned into fortresses.

Politicians bought and paid for by NRA campaign funding, actively obstruct any introduction of gun safety laws. They do not question why an 18-year-old cannot buy alcohol yet legally can buy an assault rifle. It has been over 20 years since the Columbine mass shooting and very little has changed. In recent days we have had gun massacres at Buffalo and Uvalde as evidence that lessons are not being learned and deliberately are ignored

The problem in the United States is not Trump. It is the total acquiescence to the capitalist brainwashing of American individualism and American exceptionalism. As long as capitalism exists, we, the working people, will have no say in our society is run. 

 A Short Story from the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new study published by researchers from the University of Wisconsin (UW) in the journal GeoHealth on Monday, notes that, by eliminating air pollution resulting from energy-related activities in the U.S., more than 53,000 premature deaths could be avoided on an annual basis. 

Researchers found that reducing the amount of air-based pollutants would have a profound impact on public health in the immediate term — and that it would also have long-term positive effects when it comes to transitioning away from unsustainable energy sources and addressing the climate crisis as a whole.

A reduction in pollutants would also likely benefit groups of people who are more susceptible than others to these types of pollutants, an EPA report stated.

“These groups include children, pregnant women, older adults, and individuals with pre-existing heart and lung disease,” the EPA said, as well as people “in low socioeconomic neighborhoods and communities [that] may be more vulnerable to air pollution.”

A study from last year, for example, found that 74 million lives could be saved by the end of this century if energy-based air pollution was eliminated by the year 2050.

Eliminating Air Pollution Could Save More Than 53,000 Lives Per Year, Study Says (truthout.org)

The rewards for chief executives who run S&P 500 companies soared 17.1% last year, to a median $14.5 million.  

It is in stark contrast with the 4.4% increase in wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers through 2021. The raises for many rank-and-file workers also failed to keep up with inflation, which reached 7% at the end of last year.

 At half the companies in this year’s pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale at least 186 years to make what their CEO did last year.

Expedia Group’s, valued at $296.2 million and JPMorgan Chase’s $84.4 million, boards gave particularly big grants of stock or stock options to recently appointed CEOs . JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, whose compensation package valued at $84.4 million was the fifth-highest in the AP survey. That was up 166.7% from a year earlier, and most of it came from an award of stock options valued at $52.6 million. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, who ranks No. 4 in the AP’s pay survey this year with a package valued at $98.7 million. Just $3 million of that is salary. The vast majority came from a grant of restricted stock, valued at $82.3 million.

Consider Marry Barra, CEO of General Motors. Her industry was particularly hard hit by the shortage of computer chips, which snarled auto production. Even so, GM’s board highlighted how the company still delivered record earnings before interest, taxes and some other items. The automaker also accelerated development of its electric vehicles. Those are two of the factors that influence Barra’s pay, and her compensation climbed 25.4% to $29.1 million.

“I would hope that the corporation making record profits would recognize that the workers doing the work are the ones generating the revenue,” said Dave Green, a hot metal driver at a GM facility in Bedford, Indiana. “We’re just trying to get by.”

CEO pay rose 17% in 2021 as profits soared; workers trailed | AP News

 When the Western governments deserted Afghanistan, they left behind many problems for the Taliban to cope with. Hit by one of its worst droughts in decades and torn by years of war, Afghanistan was already facing a hunger emergency; but the Taliban takeover in August threw the country into crisis. Many development agencies pulled out and international sanctions cut off billions in finances for the government, collapsing the economy.

In Afghanistan, 1.1 million children under the age of 5 will likely face the most severe form of malnutrition this year, according to the UN, as increasing numbers of hungry, wasting-away children are brought into hospital wards. That is nearly double the number in 2018 and up from just under 1 million last year. Severe wasting is the most lethal type of malnutrition, in which food is so lacking that a child’s immune system is compromised, according to Unicef. They become vulnerable to multiple bouts of disease and eventually they become so weak they can’t absorb nutrients.

Poverty is spiralling and making more Afghans in need of aid. Millions are struggling to afford food for their families. By the end of last year, half the population of around 38 million lived under the poverty line, according to UN figures. As the economy continues to crumble and prices mount, that could rise this year to as high as 97 per cent of the population by mid-2022, according to the UN Development Program.

The proportion of the population receiving food aid could plummet to only 8% over the next six months because so far only $601 million of the $4.4 billion needed has been received from the world community.

1.1 million Afghan children could face severe malnutrition, UN says | The Independent

 Inflation

The world, it seems, is a hot air balloon

With burners turned on full blast. There’s soaring

Temperatures, prices, and no ignoring

That all the while capital fuels the boon

Energising profits. Quantitative

Easing further feathered a nest or two,

Making fantasy money with the true

Recklessness of counterfeiters. Now give

A glance towards a prime minister here,

Or president there, whose vainglorious

Egos, puffed up with self-conceit, don’t fuss

Over being strangers to truth. It is clear,

Surely, unless we all want to be tricked,

For a better world, this balloon must be pricked.

D. A.