Seven Oaks Magazine.

Daniel Gross is a Starbucks worker and organizer with the International Workers of the World (IWW) Retail Workers Union in New York City. On August 28, on the eve of that city’s Republican National Convention, Gross and co-worker Anthony Polanco were arrested during a rally outside the 36 th Street and Midtown Starbucks location. Fighting this “targeted” arrested and pending charges, Gross spoke to Seven Oaks about the struggle to organize low-wage service workers.

I was charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. First, I should say I am completely innocent, and I pleaded not guilty. But the District Attorney is throwing the book at me. My lawyer was gasping for air after hearing the so-called plea bargain offer. The plea bargain was that I would plead guilty to resisting arrest and the disorderly conduct charge would be dropped, and I would be facing a week in jail.

My case commences on October 18. And I should say that I’m confident that a jury of my peers will see through the Bush administration hype.

This was a lawful union rally to condemn the Bush administration’s intervention as part of an anti-union campaign. Starbucks sicked attack dog lawyers and tried to deny us our right to vote for a union outright. They dragged us to a Labour Relations Board (LRB) hearing, contesting our right to have an election at a single chain location. This regional LRB agreed with us, we won our right to a vote. But Starbucks appealed to the National LRB in Washington, D.C., made up of Bush administration appointees, and they accepted Starbucks’ complaint for review. The result of that acceptance is to tie up our vote for two or three years. In response, we were compelled to withdraw our petition for election because it had become a farcical process. At that point, we escalated our direct action tactics to win our demands.

Number one is the wage. Starbucks workers, here in New York City, start at $7.75/hr. After 6 months, you get a raise. I got an 11 cent/hr. raise. On top of how low that wage is, every barista in the United States works part-time hours. We’re not guaranteed any number of hours for the week. One week, we could get 25 hours, the next week 20, and the next 15. Clearly it’s difficult to pay for necessities – rent, food, etc. – with these limited hours. So that was another one of the reasons.

Then there is Starbucks’ dirty little secret. The dirty little secret is the repetitive strain injuries. Management refuses to schedule enough workers on the shop floor to meet the extreme demands faced each and every day by employees. The result is that workers are forced to do work at unsafe speeds. Couple that with the absolute lack of any ergonomic standards, and you get an epidemic of repetitive strain injuries.

5. Do you think your arrest was related to the overall climate in NYC surrounding the Republican National Convention (RNC)?

Absolutely, dissent is being criminalized. The hype surround the RNC, by the Bush administration, the Bloomberg administration, and by the media, was just outlandish. The only purpose of this completely unfounded arrest was to chill free speech, to try and keep people at home and ‘shut up’. But it failed.

My coworkers and I wanted a union we could control, because we feel that we are in the best position to make strategic decisions on how to achieve our demands, and the IWW provides that. Also, we looked at the retail sector. There’s no union density to speak of at all. It will take the challenging of existing paradigms of organizing. Specifically, it will take a social movement to support Starbucks and retail workers in general, and the Wobblies possess that dynamic.

7. Do you hope that your efforts will spur more union organizing in the service sector?

Yes, this is the first Starbucks workers union effort in the United States, but there is widespread discontent. This has been based on a solidarity campaign model. Any worker can become a member, and we’ve escalated our international campaign to let Starbucks workers know they have a right to live above poverty. We don’t see this as being a couple of paid professional going in and trying to organize workers; we’re asking people to take this into their communities and to organize themselves. We want people to imagine a fighting union for retail workers and what a constructive force that would be.