Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

WORKERS at a Starbucks store in South Carolina have filed charges demanding their immediate reinstatement after they were sacked as they demanded better terms and conditions.

Staff at the Clemson Boulevard branch in the town of Anderson were accused of assault and kidnapping by the manager, who called the police.

Starbucks Workers United branded the charges “false and absurd,” insisting that “in no way, shape or form did they attempt or prevent the manager from leaving the store.”

The workers said that they had merely collectively presented a letter of demands to the branch manager, actions which are protected by federal labour law.

In footage shared on social media platform TikTok viewed more than 7.6 million times, the manager asks whether the workers can leave the building and they reply Yes.

The global coffee chain responded by shutting down the branch, suspending the entire workforce indefinitely and banning them from visiting any Starbucks location.

In March, the coffee chain recruited former CIA operative Amanda Stanfill as its manager of global intelligence for retail operations.

She had also previously worked for the US State Department and the notorious anti-union Pinkerton intelligence agency.

The manager’s charges are a pretty blatant attempt to illegally retaliate at workers for attempting to unionize, but I think there’s another layer at stake here. Effectively, this manager, and Starbucks as a corporation, know their workers aren’t paid enough to handle a legal battle. Court fees and a years-long legal battle are just not something the average American worker can realistically afford. Even with something like this where the manager is clearly in the wrong, enough money and legal obstruction means a verdict likely wouldn’t ever be reached within a reasonable time span, and for a company that can’t see past its next quarterly report that’s enough.

Imagine this goes forward in court and takes (optimistically) about two years to reach a verdict. In two years, these workers could be homeless. If they couldn’t find another job nearby, many would have moved or left to live with relatives elsewhere. If they do find another job, they may still need to move. They might sell their cars, or get caught trying to steal food. They might die without access to healthcare they may have had through their workplace. Even if they don’t have to pay any of the legal fees, the idea that they can just wait it out and collect when a court reaches a verdict is just not possible for most Americans who don’t have the privilege of a middle or upper class safety net. There’s also the dynamic of courts (unconsciously or consciously) effectively deciding that poor people simply deserve less, so any penalties Starbucks might have to pay (if the court decides against them after 2+ years of beurocracy and legal deliberation) would be pennies compared to what they could make by running the store with a new crew of people ready to be exploited. Even in the worst case scenario, Starbucks may decide that it makes business sense to make an example out of these workers to intimidate incoming workers.

This is why the only real solutions to capitalist exploitations necessitate the removal of the rich. Our suffering is part of the process. They profit off of it. If we want to stop the real harm caused by capitalist exploitation, we have to remove the economic incentive to cause it, which will mean removing the corporate power structures and the people who benefit from them.