Earlier than marching in help of unionization with a bunch of Memphis Starbucks staff Wednesday, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II huddled within the car parking zone of Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library with them.
“I’m starstruck,” one employee admitted, as she stood beside the co-chair of the Poor Folks’s Marketing campaign.
“I’m starstruck,” Barber replied and inquired extra concerning the staff. “How outdated are y’all?” One mentioned she was 27.
“Good Lord,” Barber mentioned with a joyful wince. “Within the motion, 27 is outdated.”
The Starbucks staff, together with some from Knoxville and Buffalo, New York, shared their experiences of the corporate’s efforts to disrupt unionization. He supplied encouragement.
“You measure your energy by the methods they’ve to make use of,” Barber mentioned. “In case you weren’t highly effective, they’d ignore you.”
After a brief TV interview, music and chant, Barber requested a fellow protester, “Can I borrow your arm?” He picked up his cane, locked arms they usually moved towards the espresso store the place some used to work.
Final month, Starbucks fired seven staff concerned in unionizing efforts from that store close to Poplar Avenue and Highland Avenue for alleged coverage violations; the employees imagine it was retaliation.
With their march, the Starbucks staff, new to justice work, locked in each actually and symbolically with activists who got here earlier than them. Their struggle is the newest, however it’s a part of the identical legacy of the wrestle for employee’s rights that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the 1968 Memphis sanitation strikers started, and that Dr. Barber and others work to hold on.
“All of that is new,” mentioned Nabretta Hardin, 23, one of many Memphis staff fired. “I by no means even knew what a union was actually till we began this. So we’re simply studying as we go.”
Throughout the nation, Starbucks staff are looking for to unionize to barter with firm management for higher working circumstances, pay and advantages. Though the multi-billion greenback firm has sought to undermine staff’ efforts to arrange, a Buffalo retailer turned the primary location to unionize earlier this yr.
“We noticed them win and thought ‘That is obtainable,’” Hardin mentioned. “Although it’s within the South, we’re robust sufficient of a retailer. They will’t separate us. They will’t knock us down.”
Though union membership declined in 2021 — it fell 13.5% within the South — public approval of unions is at its highest level in additional than 50 years. Staff on the Memphis location deliberately selected Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day to announce their plan to unionize so they might spotlight the distinctive historical past of the labor motion in Memphis.
“It’s symbolic as a result of that is the place MLK died serving to to unionize sanitation staff,” Hardin mentioned. “We’re a particular place for unions although the South isn’t seen as a spot to unionize. We do imagine Memphis is an effective place to get that finished.”
At Wednesday’s march, a racially various crowd of not less than 50 trickled in and circled round Barber on the sidewalk.
Allies within the crowd included former Kellogg’s strikers, members of Restaurant Staff United, environmental justice activist Justin J. Pearson, and the Rev. Andre E. Johnson, who led rallies for Pervis Payne, who was not too long ago moved off of loss of life row.
“All these points are interconnected,” mentioned Pearson, 27, who helped manage marches from the Nationwide Civil Rights Museum final yr in opposition to a proposed crude oil pipeline via Black Memphis communities. The programs that create financial injustice are linked to the programs that create environmental injustice, he mentioned. “(These) identical programs are the very same ones that say they will’t unionize, that their livelihoods are much less precious and that the communities the place they arrive from don’t deserve funding.”
Hardin sees her union organizing as persevering with the work of her grandfather, who participated in Mississippi marches and sit-ins throughout the civil rights motion, she mentioned.
“I embody him in that side, as a result of I’m marching for my rights that I deserve and respect. In a way, his (work) was for civil rights, however rights all the identical, and we’re standing up,“ Hardin mentioned. “It’s in my blood to do that.”
Whereas staff in Buffalo had been in a position to unionize, incomes the identical success in Memphis comes with completely different challenges, Barber mentioned.
“It’s virtually as if individuals need Memphis to be the town of the crucifixion — the loss of life of the Dr. King. What we’d like is to not be the place of crucifixion. We want a resurrection,” he mentioned.
To Pearson, the Starbucks struggle and others prefer it are an indication of life within the metropolis.
“Dr. King mentioned the motion lives or dies in Memphis,” Pearson mentioned. “A (residing) motion is one the place you begin to see of us preventing for a lot of completely different points concurrently, recognizing that interconnectedness.”
Carrington J. Tatum is a corps member with Report for America, a nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms. Electronic mail him at carrington.tatum@mlk50.com
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