Unions/Reunions

 

On the morning of July 29th an unexpected occurrence in the Village of Wilde Lake was reported in the Howard County Eats Facebook Group.

Starbucks was closed.

Here’s a close up.

I filed this away in my ‘curious things I probably should follow up on’ file. When I saw this article in the Baltimore Banner it jogged my memory.

Baristas at Columbia’s Wilde Lake Starbucks vote to unionize, Jess Nocera,  Baltimore Banner 

In a 19-to-3 vote, the Columbia location’s workers voted to join Starbucks Workers United late last month.

“Late last month.” July 29th, perhaps? Might that explain the morning closure in Wilde Lake?

As an aside, I was startled to see exactly who the Banner seems to think those baristas are. Take a closer look at the photo.

Caption reads: Baristas at the Wilde Lake Starbucks in Columbia have voted to unionize. (Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore

Banner)

Friends, those are not the baristas you are looking for, unless life in retirement for former local electeds is a lot tougher than I thought it was.

I suspect this is a recycled photo from a Banner article in 2025, which I wrote about here:

Wilde Lake Takes the (Coffee) Cup, Village Green/Town², May 12, 2025

I’m surprised that the Banner doesn’t have a stock photo of the Wilde Lake Starbucks. At any rate, after suggesting that the people pictured are hocolocal “movers and shakers” in 2025, the Banner can hardly expect us to believe that they’re unionizing baristas in 2026. 

Good grief.

Speaking of movers and shakers, let’s talk about unions. A lot of the people I know who patronize this Starbucks think of themselves as Progressives, Liberals, whatever the current term for that is. And yet I wonder if they will support workers as they unionize and engage in collective bargaining actions with management.

Since the Merriweather Lakehouse labor debacle I have seen far too much squishy - - no, downright wishy-washy - - support for unions from locals who say they support unions. This bothers me. It is not enough to support workers’ rights in theory only, and then disappear when a real live situation turns up in your community. 

I feel as though we (yes, I mean local Democrats) paint ourselves as the party of labor but it’s more talking the talk than walking the walk. We don’t follow through. We have excuses. We support labor but just not that labor. 

Why is that? 

In closing, here’s a bit from a post I wrote back in March. 

This is very basic. Am I correct in assuming that workers would not go to the effort to organize/establish a union if their relationship with management was satisfactory? In other words, that unions come about because of an unresolved problem or problems?

I reached out to a friend whose area of expertise is precisely this. They explained:

Yes. Basically any imbalance of power over time is going to create a dynamic where workers will want a say in their workplace. Generally, the fear of going after a union and up against management has to be greater than the fear that if you do nothing, things continue to be intolerable. In other words, things have to be pretty bad, because most people's default position is 'don't rock the boat'.

In other words, workers don’t unionize just for fun. It’s not a frivolous decision. 

So…who will the movers and shakers stand with? Who will we stand with?

Village Green/Town² Comments