Ep 102 – Unionized Coffee Shrines

We start this week’s episode following up with Verizon workers, where the company seems to be taking a page from Starbucks’ union busting as they have illegally fired a worker at a store in Washington for organizing.  Then we catch up with the striking Finnish healthcare workers, who have ended their strike and are threatening mass resignations in response to threats from the government to make healthcare worker strikes illegal.  Also in healthcare, workers staged 24 hour strikes at a nursing home in Saugus, Massachusetts and at healthcare facilities across Northern California last week decrying low wages and unsafe staffing levels.  The ALU held a major rally this weekend to bring out support for the workers at the LDJ5 sorting facility who will vote on whether to unionize this week.  Teachers in Richmond, Virginia have voted overwhelmingly to unionize for the first time in over 40 years, after a change in law allowing collective bargaining for public workers.  University of Chicago Illinois grad students went on strike for the past week to protest poverty wages and lack of protections against discrimination and sexual misconduct.  Finally, another week, another huge slate of wins for the Starbucks Workers United movement.  This week saw 8 more locations unionized, including the Seattle Roastery, a huge hub just 2.5 miles from Starbucks corporate HQ.

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