The nation mourns, and vows to change its ways

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Starbucks Employees Nationwide Stop Working (Briefly) After ICE Took Two of Their Union Siblings

Twitchy:

Earlier, our own Amy Curtis reported that some café employees learned that the actual minimum wage is zero after the workers at a small chain of cafés decided they could strong-arm owners into their woke demands. Instead, the owner shut down all four locations in Minneapolis. [It’s a great story: see below - Ed]

We're not suggesting that Starbucks is going to close down because of the woke employees they seek out. People trying to pay off their gender studies degrees depend on Starbucks for a regular paycheck. But the unionized workers of Starbucks did participate in a short work stoppage to protest President Donald Trump and ICE, who recently took two of their "union siblings."

"Whether you're Starbucks or ICE, you mess with us, you mess with all 10,000 of us."

The story passed on in my own family is that my great-grandfather Gideon Fountain, who in 1838 started as a floor sweeper in his Uncle Bill’s NYC carpenter’s shop at the age of ten and slowly built his own very successful building business.* Arriving at his shop one morning, he discovered his workers outside picketing, demanding recognition as members of a then-newly-formed builders union. Fountain looked over the scene, sighed, decided that it was time to retire, and turned his carriage around and went home. He never opened the business again.

That anecdote opens the way to this current tale:

Leftist Cafe Workers In Minneapolis Learn the Hard Way the Minimum Wage Is ALWAYS Zero

In Minneapolis, the workers at a small chain of cafes decided they could strong-arm owners into their woke demands.

Instead, the owner is shutting them down:

Last summer, staff at Café Cerés successfully unionized through Unite Here Local 17, winning 88 percent of the vote across the café’s four locations. Their priorities included higher wages, improved health care and PTO, and more consistent scheduling. Workers have been in bargaining for their first contract since August 2024, according to Unite Here, and had four bargaining sessions this month. 

The DDP group says it’s working with Unite Here as the closure proceeds, and that its 'immediate priority is to ensure that our impacted Café team members are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.' In a statement, Unite Here Local 17 had this to say: 'Café Cerés charges $16 for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich but refuses to pay its baristas more than minimum wage. The restaurant industry is fundamentally broken, and workers will not stop organizing and demanding more from their employers until they have the basic respect, living wage, and healthcare they need.'

*Great-grandfather Gideon has passed on to that great sawdust pile in the sky, but the family’s residence he built at 153 E. 62nd Street survives. As a church, alas, and worse, no longer in our name.