Today I learned that Starbucks has a new public image campaign based on offering "comprehensive" trans health care.
Starbucks is also super racist and has horrific destructive/parasitic business practices*.
They lean on public image campaigns to stay popular.
SBUX also do not allow visible tattoos or more than two earrings per ear last time I checked. They perpetrate yt "professional standards of grooming" including pressuring black people to get rid of their 'locks due to their views of locks as "unsanitary" and an inherent violation of food handling safety.
If you want comprehensive trans health Care, a liveable wage, plus a PENSION that WILL give you the down payment on a house, and way less racism, go work for Trader Joe's.
Source: I was a Starbucks shift supervisor for two years (2003-2005) and I worked at trader Joe's for 6+ years. TJs isn’t flawless by any means, but, as a corporation, they paid better and were less intrusive into people’s bodies and private lives.
Please, PLEASE examine whether or not Starbucks is touting their health care because they are trying to enforce a binary "passing" paradigm and generally being truscum. Because this corporation WILL write you up for having an uncovered hand tattoo or more than two earrings per ear, so I can only imagine what they’d do to people who don’t embrace a binary gender paradigm.
If an Afrodescendant trans person who works for Starbucks can get free electrolysis, but cannot wear their natural hair because it “violates dress code as well as food handling safety regulations”, I’m gonna have additional questions.
Especially from a company known to call the cops on black customers for “loitering”, and who didn’t open any locations in historically black neighborhoods until Magic Johnson shamed them publicly and fronted millions of dollars in 1999 (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/how-magic-johnson-got-starbucks-ceo-howard-schultz-to-partner-with-him.html).
Yes there is no ethical consumption under late stage capitalism, but Starbucks has fully replaced Coca Cola as THE symbol for yt corporate American global cultural imperialism.
No I am not mad at ppl who take jobs to get healthcare. SURVIVAL FIRST. That’s actually in Leviticus, in case people need that level of weird scriptural justification to treat each other well.
My beef is first foremost and always with corporations that treat their workers like walking billboards.
Using the bodies of historically marginalized workers, such as trans workers, as human shields against accountability is wrong 💯.
Get the health care.
But don’t be fooled by corporate philanthropy or perceived benevolence.
None of us are free until all of us are free.
*Starbucks business expansion plan has always looked like this:
1. Use big corporate money to flood a city with locations, “creating jobs”
2. Use big corporate money to keep underperforming locations open until SBUX has edged out local coffee shops.
3. Close half of the locations, firing all those employees
4. “Lol, f*** all those people we hired, we actually created a net loss of jobs by forcing out independent coffee shops and creating a corporate monoculture”
** https://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-competition-independent-coffee-shops-2017-3
I dunno if y’all been paying attention to the last fifteen years, but Starbucks does this every few.
And I’m right there to remind people that Starbucks stands on its workers to avoid public accountability.
It seems like every time they are about to lose big money, they roll out another optics campaign.
They did it with veterans
They did it with working students
Now SBUX is doing it with trans workers
If you want to know why all of a sudden Starbucks is trying to “reach out” to marginalized workers, here it is:
They lost so much money during the pandemic/lockdown that they’re hurting. And they’re about to do another expansionist push (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/business/starbucks-store-openings/index.html)
They need workers. But these will probably not be permanent jobs, given SBUX record of “flood and fold” (see above).
If you’re a trans worker: Get the healthcare. Survive. Thrive. Look good doing it.
But don’t forget to whisper “f*** Starbucks” at least once per shift 😅💯
