03 August 22
Appreciating RSN's Role and Mission
I'm one of the choir, and enjoy both the selection and discussion which RSN offers.
So I'll not preach to the choir, or choirmaster, but instead was inspired to to drop everything and send something, after re-re-reading what you posted recently. I think this should be posted on every Congressional office door, but know pigs don't fly (unless we report it on Fox).
So here's my mantra, of late, culled from the Open letter from Malala and friends of humanity:
[18 Jan Open Letter to World Leaders]
"There are millions of voices you can't afford to ignore -- the voices of the people you represent…. "
And the voice of the people needs to be an educated voice, and have the diversity of opinion and perspective beyond our favorite single channel or blog or talking head. RSN is truly one of those small "communities" with a heart, and not averse to telling the truth, as opposed to the corporate-scripted-mainstream media.
Again Malala, same article, and echoing why I would wish some of energy and message of RSN the best of luck in sustaining. We won't change the minds of the 'extremists' (on the list or in that chamber as Borowitz depicted) but education and open, factual media are vital.
Malala: "Let's be clear: the actions we take in 2015 will decide which way the world turns for decades to come. Please take the right path."
Amen
Mind Doc, RSN Reader-Supporter
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
03 August 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
The Taiwan Relations Act set out America’s commitment to a democratic Taiwan, providing the framework for an economic and diplomatic relationship that would quickly flourish into a key partnership. It fostered a deep friendship rooted in shared interests and values: self-determination and self-government, democracy and freedom, human dignity and human rights.
And it made a solemn vow by the United States to support the defense of Taiwan: “to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means … a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”
Today, America must remember that vow. We must stand by Taiwan, which is an island of resilience. Taiwan is a leader in governance: currently, in addressing the covid-19 pandemic and championing environmental conservation and climate action. It is a leader in peace, security and economic dynamism: with an entrepreneurial spirit, culture of innovation and technological prowess that are envies of the world.
Yet, disturbingly, this vibrant, robust democracy — named one of the freest in the world by Freedom House and proudly led by a woman, President Tsai Ing-wen — is under threat.
In recent years, Beijing has dramatically intensified tensions with Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has ramped up patrols of bombers, fighter jets and surveillance aircraft near and even over Taiwan’s air defense zone, leading the U.S. Defense Department to conclude that China’s army is “likely preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force.”
The PRC has also taken the fight into cyberspace, launching scores of attacks on Taiwan government agencies each day. At the same time, Beijing is squeezing Taiwan economically, pressuring global corporations to cut ties with the island, intimidating countries that cooperate with Taiwan, and clamping down on tourism from the PRC.
In the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom.
Our visit — one of several congressional delegations to the island — in no way contradicts the long-standing one-China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the U.S.-China Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances. The United States continues to oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo.
Our visit is part of our broader trip to the Pacific — including Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan — focused on mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance. Our discussions with our Taiwanese partners will focus on reaffirming our support for the island and promoting our shared interests, including advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region. America’s solidarity with Taiwan is more important today than ever — not only to the 23 million people of the island but also to millions of others oppressed and menaced by the PRC.
Thirty years ago, I traveled in a bipartisan congressional delegation to China, where, in Tiananmen Square, we unfurled a black-and-white banner that read, “To those who died for democracy in China.” Uniformed police pursued us as we left the square. Since then, Beijing’s abysmal human rights record and disregard for the rule of law continue, as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on power.
The CCP’s brutal crackdown against Hong Kong’s political freedoms and human rights — even arresting Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen — cast the promises of “one-country, two-systems” into the dustbin. In Tibet, the CCP has long led a campaign to erase the Tibetan people’s language, culture, religion and identity. In Xinjiang, Beijing is perpetrating genocide against Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities. And throughout the mainland, the CCP continues to target and arrest activists, religious-freedom leaders and others who dare to defy the regime.
We cannot stand by as the CCP proceeds to threaten Taiwan — and democracy itself.
Indeed, we take this trip at a time when the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy. As Russia wages its premeditated, illegal war against Ukraine, killing thousands of innocents — even children — it is essential that America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats.
When I led a congressional delegation to Kyiv in April — the highest-level U.S. visit to the besieged nation — I conveyed to President Volodymyr Zelensky that we admired his people’s defense of democracy for Ukraine and for democracy worldwide.
By traveling to Taiwan, we honor our commitment to democracy: reaffirming that the freedoms of Taiwan — and all democracies — must be respected.
Calley Malloy, left, of Shawnee, Kan.; Cassie Woolworth, of Olathe, Kan.; and Dawn Rattan, right, of Shawnee, Kan., applaud during a primary watch party Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022, in Overland Park, Kan. Kansas voters rejected a ballot measure in a conservative state with deep ties to the anti-abortion movement that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban abortion outright. (photo: Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star/AP)
ALSO SEE: Republicans Should Be Terrified Over Abortion
Referendum Turnout in Kansas
It was the first test of voter sentiment after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, providing an unexpected result with potential implications for the coming midterm elections.
While it was just one state, the heavy turnout for an August primary that typically favors Republicans was a major victory for abortion rights advocates. With most of the vote counted, they were prevailing by roughly 20 percentage points, with the turnout approaching what’s typical for a fall election for governor.
The vote also provided a dash of hope for Democrats nationwide grasping for a game-changer during an election year otherwise filled with dark omens for their prospects in November.
“This vote makes clear what we know: the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care decisions,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
After calling on Congress to “restore the protections of Roe” in federal law, Biden added, “And, the American people must continue to use their voices to protect the right to women’s health care, including abortion.”
The Kansas vote also provided a warning to Republicans who had celebrated the Supreme Court ruling and were moving swiftly with abortion bans or near-bans in nearly half the states.
“Kansans bluntly rejected anti-abortion politicians’ attempts at creating a reproductive police state,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for Reproductive … Gender Equity. ”Today’s vote was a powerful rebuke and a promise of the mounting resistance.”
The proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution would have added language stating that it does not grant the right to abortion. A 2019 state Supreme Court decision declared that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the state’s Bill of Rights, preventing a ban and potentially thwarting legislative efforts to enact new restrictions.
The referendum was closely watched as a barometer of liberal and moderate voters’ anger over the Supreme Court’s ruling scrapping the nationwide right to abortion. In Kansas, abortion opponents wouldn’t say what legislation they’d pursue if the amendment were passed and bristled when opponents predicted it would lead to a ban.
Mallory Carroll, a spokesperson for the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, described the vote as “a huge disappointment” for the movement and called on anti-abortion candidates to “go on the offensive.”
She added that after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, “We must work exponentially harder to achieve and maintain protections for unborn children and their mothers.”
The measure’s failure also was significant because of Kansas’ connections to anti-abortion activists. Anti-abortion “Summer of Mercy” protests in 1991 inspired abortion opponents to take over the Kansas Republican Party and make the Legislature more conservative. They were there because Dr. George Tiller’s clinic was among the few in the U.S. known to do abortions late in pregnancy, and he was murdered in 2009 by an anti-abortion extremist.
Anti-abortion lawmakers wanted to have the vote coincide with the state’s August primary, arguing they wanted to make sure it got the focus, though others saw it as an obvious attempt to boost their chances of winning. Twice as many Republicans as Democrats have voted in the state’s August primaries in the decade leading up to Tuesday’s election.
“This outcome is a temporary setback, and our dedicated fight to value women and babies is far from over,” said Emily Massey, a spokesperson for the pro-amendment campaign.
The electorate in Tuesday’s vote wasn’t typical for a Kansas primary, particularly because tens of thousands of unaffiliated voters cast ballots.
Kristy Winter, 52, a Kansas City-area teacher and unaffiliated voter, voted against the measure and brought her 16-year-old daughter with her to her polling place.
“I want her to have the same right to do what she feels is necessary, mostly in the case of rape or incest,” she said. “I want her to have the same rights my mother has had most of her life.”
Opponents of the measure predicted that the anti-abortion groups and lawmakers behind the measure would push quickly for an abortion ban if voters approved it. Before the vote, the measure’s supporters refused to say whether they would pursue a ban as they appealed to voters who supported both some restrictions and some access to abortion.
Stephanie Kostreva, a 40-year-old school nurse from the Kansas City area and a Democrat, said she voted in favor of the measure because she is a Christian and believes life begins at conception.
“I’m not full scale that there should never be an abortion,” she said. “I know there are medical emergencies, and when the mother’s life is in danger there is no reason for two people to die.”
An anonymous group sent a misleading text Monday to Kansas voters telling them to “vote yes” to protect choice, but it was suspended late Monday from the Twilio messaging platform it was using, a spokesperson said. Twilio did not identify the sender.
The 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision protecting abortion rights blocked a law that banned the most common second-trimester procedure, and another law imposing special health regulations on abortion providers also is on hold. Abortion opponents argued that all of the state’s existing restrictions were in danger, though some legal scholars found that argument dubious. Kansas doesn’t ban most abortions until the 22nd week of pregnancy.
The Kansas vote is the start of what could be a long-running series of legal battles playing out where lawmakers are more conservative on abortion than governors or state courts. Kentucky will vote in November on whether to add language similar to Kansas’ proposed amendment to its state constitution.
Meanwhile, Vermont will decide in November whether to add an abortion rights provision to its constitution. A similar question is likely headed to the November ballot in Michigan.
In Kansas, both sides together spent more than $14 million on their campaigns. Abortion providers and abortion rights groups were key donors to the “no” side, while Catholic dioceses heavily funded the “yes” campaign.
The state has had strong anti-abortion majorities in its Legislature for 30 years, but voters have regularly elected Democratic governors, including Laura Kelly in 2018. She opposed the proposed amendment, saying changing the state constitution would “throw the state back into the Dark Ages.”
State Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican hoping to unseat Kelly, supported the proposed constitutional amendment. He told the Catholic television network EWTN before the election that “there’s still room for progress” in decreasing abortions, without spelling out what he would sign as governor.
Although abortion opponents pushed almost annually for new restrictions until the 2019 state Supreme Court ruling, they felt constrained by past court rulings and Democratic governors like Kelly.
Jon Stewart advocating for the passage of the PACT Act on Aug. 1, 2022. (photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP Images)
The PACT Act — which received prominent support from Jon Stewart — will help veterans who may have been exposed to harmful toxins
It passed a vote of 86 – 11 on Tuesday. The PACT Act cleared the House of Representatives in July and will be signed into law by Joe Biden.
The PACT Act is set to expand healthcare benefits to more than 3 million veterans and 9/11 first responders who have been exposed to toxins like those found in Agent Orange and burn pits (heaps of trash and waste that soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan often burned using jet fuel). The bill also removed requirements preventing veterans from accessing care because they had to prove their illnesses had been caused by on-duty exposure to harmful toxins.
But despite the cause and the ostensible bipartisan support for the PACT Act, its pathway to passage turned out to be surprisingly bumpy. A version of the bill actually passed the Senate in June by an overwhelming 84 – 14 vote, but “administrative issues” in the text forced both chambers of Congress to vote on it again. While it easily cleared by a vote of 342 to 88, upon its arrival in the Senate, Pennsylvania’s outgoing Republican Senator Pat Toomey raised concerns about spending increases and an array of Republicans — including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — suddenly pulled their support.
The following fight over the fate of the bill gained particular prominence thanks to comedian and veterans rights advocate, Jon Stewart. “You don’t support the troops. You support the war machine,” Stewart said at one point. “They haven’t met a war they won’t sign up for and they haven’t met a veteran they won’t screw over.”
Expanding veteran health benefits and passing the PACT Act in particular have been a major priority for Biden. In the past, the president has speculated that the cancer that caused the death of his son, Beau Biden, may have been caused by exposure to harmful burn pit toxins during Beau’s deployments in Iraq.
Oleksiy Vadatursky, right, pictured with his wife Raisa. (photo: Nebulon)
ALSO SEE: Olenivka Prisoners Could Have Been Killed With Thermobaric Weapons
Prosecutor General of Ukraine
A Russian missile killed Oleksiy Vadatursky and his wife Raisa a day before grain exports resumed from Odesa.
A Russian missile killed him and his wife Raisa in their house in the southern city of Mykolaiv on Sunday, raising suspicion among Ukrainian politicians and pundits who called their death a calculated murder aimed at stalling the resumption of exports.
Unlike other oligarchs – a group of super-rich and unpopular Ukrainians with immense political clout who gained control of key industries after privatising Soviet-era plants and factories – Vadatursky was widely respected as a self-made man.
“He worked. He didn’t exploit the Soviet industrial heritage. He built his empire in the field,” Vadim Karasev, a Kyiv-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera. “He was one of those who created the Ukrainian miracle of grain exporting.”
Employees, partners and even business rivals called Vadatursky, who was 74, “grandpa”.
His companies owned hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile “black earth” land in 10 Ukrainian regions.
He grew wheat, one of the pillars of Ukraine’s agriculture that contributes 15 percent to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) – and provides about a tenth of the global share of grain exports.
His Nibulon consortium raised cows, produced sunflower oil and owned a network of grain elevators and terminals.
Nibulon also built a fleet of ships that helped revive river navigation in post-Soviet Ukraine – and delivered grain, oil and steel to ports on the Black and Azov seas.
Dozens of vessels designed and built from scratch at Vadatursky’s shipyard carried millions of tonnes of cargo a year, saving roads and highways whose asphalt was often broken each fall by giant grain-carrying trucks. The ships also dredged riverbeds to improve navigability, carried passengers and were increasingly used in the Ukrainian navy.
Vadatursky’s decision to open a hub in the southern city of Mykolaiv – where four mammoth, Soviet-era shipyards once churned out hundreds of ships, including China’s first aircraft carrier – surprised many.
“Life made me, an agrarian, start shipbuilding, open a shipyard and build my own fleet,” he reportedly said after one of the old shipyards failed to build enough cargo vessels for him on time.
His explanation was simple.
“If there is a problem – I solve it,” he reportedly said.
A deliberate killing?
Even as a septuagenarian, Vadatursky looked youthful with a mop of flaxen hair, sun-weathered bronze skin and the gait of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, seizing some of his key assets in eastern and southern regions and blocking sea routes for grain export, Vadatursky did not give up and leave Ukraine.
He worked tirelessly on restoring grain shipments – and was killed a day before they resumed.
A Russian missile hit the bedroom of his spacious mansion.
The strike was part of the heaviest shelling of Mykolaiv since the war’s beginning, the regional capital’s Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich said.
Other politicians immediately declared that Vadatursky’s death was not just an accident.
“A precise hit not just on his house, but on a specific wing, on the bedroom, leaves no doubt the hit was targeted and corrected,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on Telegram.
Vadatursky’s killing was part of a larger campaign of “high-profile terrorist attacks to intimidate, destabilise and break Ukrainian society”, he added.
Borys Filatov, the mayor of the eastern city of the Dnipro, was also adamant that Vadatursky’s death was calculated.
“Grandpa was a billionaire, a Forbes-listed figure, someone who could because of his age leave the country and end his life on Cote d’Azur in luxury,” he wrote on Facebook.
Instead, Vadatursky remained in Mykolayiv to negotiate grain exports by sea that resumed on Monday, after a Sierra Leone-flagged cargo ship, Razoni, left the Black Sea port of Odesa.
“That’s why I don’t believe his death is accidental,” Filatov wrote.
Some political pundits were also sure that his death benefits Moscow.
“With his death, the business won’t stop, but it would take time to redirect the system of decision-making,” Igar Tyshkevich, a Kyiv-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera.
“Any delay in decision-making, in shipping, benefits Russia,” he said.
Another analyst said Russia has so far avoided deliberately targeting the assets of oligarchs as the Kremlin tried to lure them to its side.
“Vadatursky’s case is either a coincidence or a systemic change of this trend, a certain signal to Ukrainian oligarchs and big businesses,” Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.
Reshaping an industry
The son of a collective farmer, Vadatursky was born in 1947 in a village near Odesa, in the waning days of Joseph Stalin’s ruthless rule.
He worked as an engineer and managed state-run bakeries, and in the 1980s became one of the key experts on wheat imports to the Soviet Union. The inefficient Soviet planning system, with tens of thousands of collective farms, could not grow enough wheat and heavily relied on grain imports from the United States and Canada.
In post-Soviet Ukraine, Vadatursky helped reverse this trend and turn his nation into a major wheat exporter.
He founded Nebulon days after Ukraine held the August 24, 1991 referendum to gain independence from the USSR.
He built his businesses in the chaotic 1990s, when corrupt officials, police and intelligence officers, as well as nascent criminal gangs, saw entrepreneurs as cash cows.
Reflecting on this era in 2021, he said his business survived endless inspections, criminal probes, “sit-downs” with criminals, raids by masked police officers and even arson.
“In the beginning, we were going nowhere, trying to create and win,” he wrote on Facebook.
In 2018, four years after Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists in the southeastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Vadatursky became one of 322 Ukrainians blacklisted by the Kremlin.
In June 2020, the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine said he was worth $450m – and was Ukraine’s 15th richest person.
He is survived by a son, Andriy, who serves as a lawmaker in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament, and three grandchildren.
Katie McCoy was in high school when she started working at a Starbucks in Marysville, Washington, north of Seattle. She was fired after she helped lead an organizing drive. (photo: Magnus Holmes/The New Yorker)
Baristas nationwide are remarkably organized. Is the company’s C.E.O., Howard Schultz, using firings, store closures, and legal delays to thwart them?
In June, I drove up and down Interstate-5, the asphalt spine of the Pacific Northwest, where Starbucks is headquartered. I interviewed workers from more than fifteen stores, both union and non-union, and tagged along on a clean play in my home town of Tacoma, Washington. The stores were superficially distinct: some had drive-throughs and others were café-only; some were nondescript, unlike the fifteen-thousand-square-foot Reserve Roastery in Seattle, which Starbucks’s C.E.O., Howard Schultz, has hailed as “an homage to our relentless pursuit of coffee innovation.” Yet, even there, baristas have joined Starbucks Workers United, expressing concerns over chronic understaffing, race discrimination in promotions, mistreatment by managers, and low pay. (Starbucks denied these claims; it settled a race-discrimination complaint last year.) One worker I spoke with, from a store north of Seattle, was living in his van. His part-time schedule, at fifteen dollars an hour, wasn’t enough to rent an apartment, and he soon quit for a better-paying job.
On a Saturday morning, I followed Liz Duran, a barista from the Seattle roastery, and Isabelle Loverich, a barista in north Portland, as they canvassed a cluster of Tacoma stores. Their first was a to-go-only location along a busy street. At the walk-up window, Duran craned her neck toward a bearded barista and adjusted her glasses. She identified herself as a “partner,” the corporate term for a retail employee, and ordered two iced brown-sugar-oat-milk espressos. She explained that her store had voted to unionize and that she and Loverich had come to spread the word. The employee seemed receptive, if frazzled, toggling between the walk-up window on one side and the drive-through window on the other. He’d heard about Starbucks Workers United, but said, “We’ve been hush-hush about it.” The store manager had called him and his co-workers into meetings to discourage them from participating. Still, he took a flyer from Duran and gave her his name and phone number.
Duran and Loverich’s second stop, a small sit-down café in a historic section of town, was trickier. Loverich, who was wearing a union hat and T-shirt, stepped toward the counter, then hesitated. The woman at the cash register looked friendly enough, but her black apron gave Loverich pause: black, instead of the company’s usual Kelly green, is often worn by managers. The distrust appeared mutual: the woman at the register stiffened after studying Loverich’s outfit. Undeterred, Loverich gave her spiel—the union prizes transparency—and the woman nodded coolly. “We’re not interested,” she said. But, over the woman’s shoulder, a young, tattooed worker in a green apron raised her eyebrows and signalled otherwise. Loverich and Duran tried to angle a card in the worker’s direction, only to have it intercepted by the woman in the black apron. They returned to the car and had nearly given up when the worker ran up to them. “I decided to take out the garbage,” she said, smiling. She shared her contact information and stuffed a union button in her pocket.
At stores across western Washington and Oregon, I found unionizing workers to be highly disciplined. They used private group chats to mull strategy and teach one another about labor law, not only at their own stores but with others in the region. With the élan of wedding planners, they scheduled election-viewing parties (votes are counted over Zoom, by the National Labor Relations Board, or N.L.R.B.) and staged choreographed strikes. Their work as baristas made them adept at juggling tasks, making conversation, and responding to emotional cues—all essential for organizing. It was also the case that many leaders were queer or trans; Starbucks’s projection of lefty values had apparently attracted many L.G.B.T.Q. activists. The organizers of one Seattle protest used the tagline “Be Gay! Do Strikes!” Billie Adeosun, a barista in Olympia, Washington, quipped, “They fucked up when they hired a bunch of gay people. What do you expect when you hire a bunch of queers?”
One night, I met with a group of young workers at a beer garden in Eugene, Oregon, a scenic college town. Quentin Piccolo and Jake LaMourie had recently unionized their store, on Willamette Street. Jay Jones, who grew up in a working-class lumber community, had tried to do the same at their café, but was voted down. In a few days, Jones would transfer to Willamette Street. “I don’t want to sit here and watch a workers’ revolution happen and not be a part of that,” they told me. Jones’s girlfriend, Myah McDonald, who came along to the bar, was working as an aide in a nursing home. She started a union drive there after following Jones to a few meetings of Starbucks Workers United. “I would’ve left my job, but I’m staying because we’re unionizing,” she said.
Over beer and fries, the four friends talked about labor organizing as a source of meaning. They were all in their twenties, which meant that they’d come of age in an era defined by Donald Trump. Piccolo explained that his anger over the environment had led him to support Bernie Sanders and embrace the labor movement. “In 2016, I was a year short of voting. It motivated me to be involved, because I realized this shit isn’t going to fix itself,” he said. For LaMourie, 2016 was a shock, and the 2020 primary, when Biden beat Sanders, was when he “lost faith in elections.”
Starbucks Workers United filled that void. “This is the most hope I’ve had politically in such a long time,” LaMourie told me, though he understood that they faced long odds. The union has rapidly organized, or is in the process of organizing, more than three hundred stores in the U.S., but nearly nine thousand others remain. Starbucks has fired some two dozen organizers and stalled union votes by contesting the legality of individual elections. It has promised more pay and benefits to employees at non-union stores and shut down several unionized locations.
The company maintains that each and every store must negotiate its own contract, a tremendous burden on the union. And, seven months into the campaign, corporate representatives have met with only a handful of stores to begin contract talks. Schultz appears to be using delay to his advantage; Starbucks denies this and told me, “We respect our partners’ right to organize. We also respect the rights of our partners who don’t want to unionize.” In late June, the N.L.R.B. filed a federal lawsuit to compel Starbucks to bargain.
The young workers in Eugene told me that they felt determined but worn down by the grinding struggle with Schultz. Their rank-and-file model of unionism—by us, for us—demanded hours of work outside of work, and everyone at the table admitted to exhaustion. “We’re on our third layer of burnout,” LaMourie said.
It would be hard to overstate how strongly Schultz and Starbucks are identified with the Pacific Northwest. As C.E.O., Schultz has sought to brand the company as laid-back and cool, progressive and socially engaged, in line with an abiding, if now outdated, image of Seattle. When I was growing up south of the city, before the advent of artisanal coffee shops and craft breweries, I experienced Starbucks as an indulgence and a cosmopolitan portal. The drinks had Italian names, and the stores sold copies of the Times alongside my home-town newspaper. But, as Starbucks grew into a transnational corporation, with thirty-four thousand locations worldwide, it began to mirror, and simultaneously fuel, Seattle’s transition from slacker town to nerve center of Big Tech. The chill café became a harried pit stop for monied software engineers, while still cloaking itself in pro-partner, pro-fair trade, pro-Pride slogans. Being pro-partner, though, never translated into an acceptance of unions.
Starbucks is based in an industrial part of Seattle, in a handsome red-brick building that was once a Sears distribution center. From the clock tower rises the familiar head of the company's green, twin-tailed siren. I walked through the lobby, which is decorated with Native American art and showcases a timeline of the company, from a storefront of a thousand square feet, in 1971, through Schultz’s latte epiphany, on a trip to Italy; Starbucks’s launch in Japan; a tea partnership with Oprah; and a series of two-for-one stock splits. Next-door is a Starbucks Reserve (that has yet to unionize), one of the designer cafés that combine slowed-down takes on espresso with fresh pastries, a cocktail bar, and corporate merch. There’s a playground in the plaza out front and a long metal fence topper decorated with a quote from Luigi Barzini’s “The Italians.”
Schultz, who considered running for President in 2020, and was reportedly Hillary Clinton’s pick for labor secretary in 2016, has been the chief executive of Starbucks three separate times. (Seattleites also know and still resent him for selling the SuperSonics to Oklahoma City, in 2006.) He most recently returned to the position in April, several months into the rise of Starbucks Workers United. At a meeting with corporate employees, he said that businesses are “being assaulted, in many ways, by the threat of unionization.” In June, he told the Times that he would never accept a union at Starbucks. (The company declined my requests for an interview with Schultz or a representative.)
This is not Schultz’s first encounter with the labor movement. In the early nineteen-eighties, Starbucks’s roasting plant and its six cafés voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. The employees managed to win a collective-bargaining agreement, but soon faced off against Schultz, who was named C.E.O. in 1986. “Howard Schultz immediately made us go back to the bargaining table and get a new contract, even though he’d said, ‘You have a contract. I’ll respect that,’ ” Anne Belov, who worked in the roastery at the time, recalled. Pam Blauman-Schmitz, a former organizer with U.F.C.W., told me that Schultz screamed at her until he was red in the face when she went to the plant to hand out flyers. “He went ballistic,” she said. (Reggie Borges, a spokesperson for the company, declined to comment.)
During the next decade, as workers came and went and Schultz continued to oppose the union, the contract withered. U.F.C.W. eventually lost so many Starbucks members that it was forced to withdraw its representation. (Since then, only baristas at licensed Starbucks stands, such as those in unionized grocery stores, have belonged to U.F.C.W.) In the two-thousands, the Industrial Workers of the World organized some Starbucks employees at retail locations in cities including New York and Grand Rapids, Michigan, but sought to improve workplace conditions through direct action rather than pursuing a contract.
The current Starbucks campaign is the creation of Workers United, a small, idiosyncratic affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. The S.E.I.U. represents some two million members in the U.S. and Canada, mostly health and janitorial staff. It also backed the Fight for 15 campaign for higher wages in fast food. For its part, Workers United descends from the progressive International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union of the early twentieth century. Today, most members of Workers United are immigrants who wash, dry, and deliver linens for big commercial laundries.
Workers United entered the coffee industry somewhat by chance. Five years ago, it started to organize local chains in upstate New York: first, at Gimme! Coffee, in Ithaca, then at SPoT Coffee, in Buffalo. In 2020, a Workers United organizer, Jaz Brisack, and a former member of the Gimme! union, Will Westlake, got jobs at Starbucks stores in greater Buffalo. Frustrated by issues such as persistent understaffing and inadequate pay, they floated the idea of a union by their co-workers. Michelle Eisen, a longtime employee and a stage manager, signed on in earnest for what would become Starbucks Workers United. Eisen told me that, since coming to Starbucks, in 2010, she had watched the company become more cutthroat, more focussed on profits. In 2021, it made $29.1 billion in net revenue. “There’s been a dramatic shift, in my opinion, in terms of the business model itself and in terms of the value placed on employees,” she said.
To quash the nascent organizing in Buffalo, Starbucks flew in a procession of managers and executives. But Eisen, Brisack, and their co-workers voted to join Workers United anyway, forming the first union at any stand-alone Starbucks location in the U.S. since the eighties. Their success inspired employees in Mesa, Arizona, to unionize, and soon what looked to be scattered droplets turned into a wet windshield. Hundreds of baristas all over the country reached out to Workers United, whose staff struggled to keep up with the requests for help. The sheer velocity and scale of organizing at Starbucks demanded a new approach.
Baristas in Buffalo started to advise would-be unionists, establishing a pattern of rank-and-file, peer-to-peer teaching. In the Pacific Northwest, where the union has no paid staff, workers have been especially coöperative, interconnected, and willing to strike. A Workers United organizer in Philadelphia, Alex Riccio, has advised them remotely, via text message and Zoom, while a team of labor lawyers in Seattle handles their union elections and unfair-labor-practice charges before the N.L.R.B. The workers themselves have done everything else.
In Schultz’s back yard, the organizing quickly assumed a personal dimension. In March, the store at the corner of Broadway and Denny, a busy intersection of Seattle’s Capitol Hill, became the first to unionize in the Pacific Northwest—and did so just before Schultz reclaimed his seat as C.E.O. When Schultz’s beloved Reserve Roastery went union, workers held a rally and called him out by name. About a month ago, a key location in Madison Park, between Lake Washington and the lush Washington Park Arboretum, voted yes for Starbucks Workers United. It was the store closest to Schultz’s personal residence, known to many baristas in town as “Howard’s home store.”
At the end of June, more than four thousand members of unions and left-leaning political groups, like the Democratic Socialists of America, gathered in Chicago for Labor Notes, a biennial convention. It was the largest meeting in the event’s forty-year history, and some seventy Starbucks baristas—much younger and more diverse, in race and gender identity, than the rest of the crowd—were in attendance . In a hotel ballroom filled with groupie-like zeal, I watched Bernie Sanders tout the importance of unions to American democracy. Next to him on the dais were representatives of the two worker movements that everyone seemed to be talking about: Eisen, of Starbucks Workers United, and Chris Smalls, of the Amazon Labor Union, which won a surprise victory, on Staten Island, earlier this year.
If car and steel manufacturing were once the epicenters of American labor organizing, they have since given way to giants in the service sector and tech. Starbucks and Amazon, both creatures of Seattle, are now two of the country’s ten largest employers. (Amazon, with roughly 1.1 million employees, is the second-largest, after Walmart. Starbucks, with about three hundred and forty thousand, is No. 8.) Schultz and Amazon’s C.E.O., Jeff Bezos, may share a distaste for unions, but they’ve responded differently to organizing efforts. On Staten Island, Amazon brought in “union-avoidance” consultants to roam the warehouse floor and meet with workers before the union election. At Starbucks, by contrast, such efforts have been handled in-house—by managers who hire, discipline, and schedule baristas, but who also work alongside them.
Managers have penalized staff for wearing union pins and T-shirts, posted flyers explaining why unions are anathema to Starbucks culture, and fired outspoken baristas. Matthew Thornton, a pro-union employee in Portland, was fired in April for supposedly failing to lock his store at night. He denies this, and told me that his manager refused to provide evidence from the security system. Without the job, Thornton has struggled to stay in college; he no longer qualifies for Starbucks’s tuition benefit at Arizona State University. (Starbucks denied all “claims of anti-union activity” and said that Thornton’s actions had created a “serious security risk.”)
Some managers have campaigned enthusiastically against the union. Last fall, Taylor Pringle, a manager in Seattle, was sent to Buffalo after baristas began organizing. Workers say that he was there to dissuade them—and his conduct was such that the N.L.R.B. later included his name in a federal complaint alleging violations of labor law. When Pringle returned home from Buffalo, he was promoted to the post of district manager. (Neither Pringle nor his supervisor responded to calls or messages. Starbucks said that he was temporarily relocated to “help support partners in Buffalo due to understaffing.”)
Other managers, though, resent being pitted against their employees. One manager in the Pacific Northwest, who asked that I not use their name for fear of retaliation, told me that they were disciplined by a supervisor for being insufficiently hostile to the union. The manager had refused the request of a lawyer for Starbucks, from the firm Littler Mendelson, to identify which baristas were likely to vote yes for the union; polling employees about union support is generally unlawful. The manager also refused to share information with their staff that appeared to be unduly biased against the union. (Littler Mendelson did not respond to my requests for comment.) “When this all first started, I wasn’t necessarily anti-union, but I didn’t see the need for a union in Starbucks,” the manager told me. “But seeing the way Starbucks has handled it clearly shows that, behind the curtains, Starbucks is making some questionable decisions and that maybe there is a need.”
Starbucks seems to be intensifying its campaign against organizers, particularly in Seattle. In late May, it abruptly announced plans for a “Heritage Market,” comprising three locations in downtown Seattle: the original Starbucks in the tourist hub of Pike Place Market and two nearby cafés. Workers at these stores were told that they would have to immediately reapply and reinterview for their jobs. All three stores were “temporarily” shut down; only the original location has reopened.
Liz Voytas, who was a barista at one of the cafés when the announcement was made, told me that their store was in the process of unionizing. Voytas sees the creation of the Heritage Market as a way for Starbucks to weed out pro-union workers and assert control over stores that are central to the company’s identity. (Starbucks denies this.) “We were all upset and scared. A lot of people were very confused,” they said. Voytas was transferred to a unionized store a mile away, on East Olive Way, nicknamed “Gaybucks” for its literal and figurative place in historically queer Capitol Hill.
Then, on July 11th, Pringle, the manager who had been sent to Buffalo, directed Voytas’s new store and another unionized location in his district to lock up early and assemble for a meeting by Zoom. Pringle informed the workers, only some of whom received notice in time to attend, that their stores would be permanently closed on August 1st. He said that the two stores had logged too many “incidents” (a term encompassing everything from a sleeping customer or a loud argument to physical violence), and were thus too dangerous to stay open. Cat Ureta, a barista at Gaybucks, told me that she and her co-workers were dismayed but unsurprised: “Starbucks has been playing dirty ever since the beginning. It kind of fell in line with expected behavior.” Three non-union stores in Seattle received the same notice. Following the Zoom meeting with Pringle, baristas at Gaybucks and the other unionized café slated for closure went on strike for a week. The union at the Reserve Roastery joined them in a daylong solidarity strike. Starbucks subsequently promised to transfer the displaced workers to other stores.
At least seventeen locations nationwide have closed, all because of purported safety concerns. “This is just the beginning. There are going to be many more,” Schultz said at a recent company meeting. Starbucks contends that these closures were strictly a matter of security or, in the case of the Heritage Market, a reorganization. To prove this point, the company emphasized that it also shut down non-union stores. (When Starbucks shuttered stores in the past, it did so in the hundreds at a time, for economic reasons.) Workers believe that safety is only a pretext and argue that the closures were intended to punish and deter further organizing.
Attorneys for Starbucks Workers United have asked the N.L.R.B. to reverse the closures, but the board has little power in this regard, and the relevant case law is weak. Two decades ago, after meatcutters at a Walmart in Texas formed a union, the corporation eliminated the meat-cutting departments at a hundred and eighty stores, and faced no penalty for doing so. A decade ago, Boeing relocated an airplane-production line from Washington State to South Carolina to evade the machinists’ union; the board ultimately dropped its complaint. In July, Chipotle informed the employees of its only unionizing store that it would be shuttered that same day.
Thirty-two unionized Starbucks locations in Washington and Oregon have asked the company to begin negotiating a contract, but no sessions have yet been held. How to force Starbucks to the table is potentially an existential question for Workers United. It’s unclear what tactic, other than focussed large-scale strikes, could pressure the company into meaningful talks. Richard de Vries, a veteran negotiator with the Teamsters union in Chicago, told me that strikes would have to be coördinated en masse—only a few stores in a city will not do—and combined with public pressure as well as a generous strike fund to keep baristas afloat. Workers United allocated $1 million to support strikers and is asking customers to sign a “No Contract, No Coffee!” pledge to boycott Starbucks if necessary.
For now, Schultz appears to be waiting out the union—and the Biden Administration. The current N.L.R.B. has been proactive; its general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, streamlined the handling of Starbucks cases and is overseeing the investigation of more than two hundred and fifty alleged violations of labor law by the company, and two by Workers United. Yet the board is still recovering from the attrition and low morale of the Trump Administration. If a Republican wins the White House in 2024, the agency will again be weakened. “We’ve lost half our staff, and recently our work has doubled,” a lawyer for an N.L.R.B. division in the West, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, told me. “There’s this tragic irony: right at this moment when we have new relevance, we are in this totally destroyed state.”
The uncertainty that any store, let alone every store, will successfully negotiate a contract has made me wonder if the movement can survive in its current, unconventional form, especially as Starbucks shuts down so many cafés. Schultz has virtually unlimited resources to wait out the campaign, or simply bust it, as workers say he did in the eighties. But perhaps things are different now. Thousands of baristas have joined Starbucks Workers United, and many are being transformed by the process. Madison Barriga, a barista and mother in Olympia, Washington, told me that she’d planned to enlist in the military until unionizing redirected her sense of purpose. “I had high-school-dropout syndrome,” she said. “I’m really proud of myself. I never thought I’d accomplish anything like this.” Ian Meagher, a barista who organized his store in Eugene, said that he now sees his trajectory—in and out of school, housed less or more precariously—in the larger span of labor history. “Trade unionism is the thing, not electoral politics. We tried that,” Meagher told me. “Even if I get fired from Starbucks tomorrow, I’ll be involved with this for a long while.” ♦
Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS), right, shares a group hug with women at an election watch party in Overland Park on Tuesday. (photo: Dave Kaup/AFP/Getty Images)
Kansas’s abortion measure and Missouri’s GOP Senate primary were among Tuesday’s key early races.
Here are four winners and one loser based on what we know from Tuesday’s results so far.
Winner: Abortion rights
Kansas was the first state to put abortion rights on the ballot, in a referendum, since this summer’s Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade. And abortion rights won big.
Kansans rejected an amendment to the state’s constitution that would have removed protections for the right to an abortion, voting to do so by double digits. The Kansas state Supreme Court had previously ruled that the state constitution protected the right to an abortion. This amendment, backed by conservative organizers, would have removed one crucial barrier to the Republican state legislature’s ability to enact more aggressive abortion bans than the 22-week one it currently has.
Tuesday’s outcome is a pretty big statement considering the obstacles abortion rights advocates faced: Confusing wording on the measure (voting “no” meant keeping protections in place), a state where Republicans vastly outnumber Democrats, and a slate of GOP primaries that Republicans hoped would juice their voter turnout relative to Democrats’.
This calculus, however, was mistaken. Turnout was massive across the political board, far exceeding the previous two primaries. In Johnson County, which contains suburbs of Kansas City, almost four times as many early votes had been cast this year, compared to the same primary in 2018, according to the Kansas City Star.
For now, abortion rights are preserved in a state that, as Vox’s Rachel Cohen reported, expects a huge influx of women from neighboring states seeking abortion care. And, for Democrats who saw blowback over the Supreme Court decision as a way to mobilize their voters, the first bellwether is a big win.
Winner: ERIC (Schmitt, that is)
After months of lobbying from Missouri’s GOP Senate candidates, former President Donald Trump issued a trollish non-endorsement on the eve of the primary. In a statement on Monday, he said he was “proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” leaving candidates Eric Greitens, Missouri’s disgraced former governor, and Eric Schmitt, the state’s current attorney general, both empty-handed and happy to issue simultaneous tweets touting the “endorsement.”
Schmitt wound up beating both six-term Rep. Vicky Hartzler — who had the backing of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — and Greitens, by double digits. It’s a notable victory for Schmitt, who won without help from Trump, and who is the favorite going into the general election this fall given the state’s Republican tilt. The prospect of a scandal-plagued Greitens winning had many Republicans concerned — and Democrats hopeful for a pickup opportunity. Schmitt has clearly defined himself as a “Trump Republican,” and previously joined other GOP officials to back unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the 2020 election outcomes in other states. But he has a lot less baggage than Greitens, and his win will dampen the likelihood of a safe Republican seat becoming competitive.
Schmitt will face off against Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine, a nurse and scion of the famous Anheuser-Busch family, in the general election.
Loser: Progressives
Redistricting pitted two Democratic incumbents in Michigan against one another in the 11th district, and incidentally also set up a direct contest between the two wings of the party.
Progressive Rep. Andy Levin lost that contest to his moderate colleague, Rep. Haley Stevens. The contentious race involved fights over support for Israel (Stevens was backed by AIPAC), appeals to Black voters, and drew in hundreds of thousands in outside contributions.
In the Missouri Senate primary, veteran Lucas Kunce also lost to Busch Valentine after mounting a populist campaign focused on challenging corporate power, and garnering the support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
There were bright spots for progressives in Missouri and Michigan, where Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) easily held off primary challengers.
Winner, at least in the short term: Democratic meddling in GOP races
Democrats got what they wanted in Michigan’s 3rd District. But there’s a big looming question about whether landing in the winner column is worth it.
As they have in multiple races this cycle, Democrats spent significant money to boost a more extreme, and they hope, more beatable Republican candidate in Trump-backed election denier John Gibbs. And more than they have in other races this cycle, they faced harsh criticism for the tactic from inside and outside their party over their efforts to take down incumbent Rep. Peter Meijer, a rare Republican who voted to impeach Trump.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in this case spent more than $400,000 in ads linking Gibbs and Trump. Given his massive cash disadvantage to Meijer, it seems the infusion of ads by Democrats was probably decisive. Meijer conceded early Wednesday.
Meijer castigated Democrats as hypocrites for boosting extremists, and plenty of people agree with him. But other Democrats say it’s justified — it’s ultimately Republicans picking between candidates. “It’s clear that, no matter what Republican is nominated, they are going to get pushed to move to where their base is,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold told Vox’s Nicole Narea last month. “So the best path is to do what you can to set up the best environment for Democrats to win.”
Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial primary, where Democrats spent to boost election denier Kari Lake, has yet to be called. Lake currently has a narrow lead.
Gibbs will face Democrat Hillary Scholten in a seat Democrats now have a chance to flip — it’s rated a toss-up by Cook Political Report. But it’s also possible Democrats put another extreme Republican on the path to a seat in Congress.
Winner: Trump acolytes in Arizona and beyond
Lake’s race is closer than many Arizonans would have expected earlier this year given Trump’s fervent early backing of her. But his picks dominated other races in the state. His preferred candidates for secretary of state, state Rep. Mark Finchem, and Senate, venture capitalist Blake Masters successfully beat back candidates who held Trump’s election lies at least at arm’s length. Separately, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers lost a bid for state Senate after previously refusing to challenge the state election results in 2020 and testifying about pressure he faced from Trump before the January 6 committee.
These wins were a decisive victory for Trump in a state where establishment Republicans, including his former Vice President Mike Pence and current GOP governor Doug Ducey, backed more establishment picks. All of Trump’s candidates fully embraced the denial in a primary that was largely focused on relitigating the 2020 election.
Trump also saw victories in Michigan and Kansas. Businesswoman and political commentator Tudor Dixon, a Trump-backed candidate for the gubernatorial seat, won a five-person primary. Unlike the Arizona candidates, however, Dixon has more recently skirted questions about the 2020 election despite previously arguing that it was stolen. In Kansas, longtime Trump ally and former state attorney general Kris Kobach also won his primary for Secretary of State, his third attempt to return to state government after losing the governor’s race to Democrat Laura Kelly in 2018.
The North Entrance Road is washed after flooding in Yellowstone National Park on June 18, 2022 in Gardiner, Montana. (photo: Jacob W. Frank/National Park Service/Getty Images)
Many Yellowstone workers depend on their bosses for a place to live. When the flood washed away their jobs, they lost their housing, too.
Feldhousen had moved to Gardiner, Montana only two weeks earlier to take a cashier job at the local grocery store, the Gardiner Market. She paid $8 a day to rent a room in the market’s employee housing — “an old motel-type thing” next door. She liked her job and her employers and was excited to explore Yellowstone National Park, whose vast wildlands beckoned from just across the river to the south. But then, on June 12, floodwaters bit quarter-mile chunks out of Yellowstone’s northern road, indefinitely closing the park’s Gardiner entrance and cutting off the town from the tourists who annually pass through on their ways to and from the park — more than a million of them last year alone. The loss of tourists means the loss of customers for many Gardiner businesses, which means layoffs for many local workers.
“My employers asked to see me and I knew going up the stairs what was going to happen,” Feldhousen tells In These Times. “It was pretty tough on me when it was clear I wasn’t keeping my job. I keep having to throw everything I own in the back of my truck.”
“We did have to lay off two people, and it was one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make,” says Rebecca Demaree, who owns the Gardiner Market with her husband. “We were just getting on our feet, then the floods happened and turned our world upside-down.” Now, according to Demaree, the market is doing “maybe 20%” of the business it would be doing in a normal summer. The owners told their laid off workers to take the time they needed to move out. “We didn’t want anyone to become homeless because of this,” Demaree says.
Feldhousen is one of the thousands of workers, many of them seasonal, who staff tourism businesses in and around the park. As the tourism industry has boomed in recent decades in rural western towns like Gardiner — year-round population around 900 — it has helped drive a housing crisis that forces many tourism workers to live in their cars or depend on their bosses for housing. This precarious arrangement means that these workers, who help generate more than $450 million in local economic value every year, were also among those hit hardest and fastest by the fallout from the floods.
It’s unclear how many workers lost their jobs or housing, but interviews with local tourism workers indicate that layoffs and housing losses were widespread. As many businesses cut back to their bare-bones, winter-season staff, Feldhousen says, “a lot of people just left.” Low on money and needing work, she drove south to Las Vegas to crash with family while she looks for another job, hopefully near Yellowstone.
While the Gardiner Market kept many of its employees, other businesses closed completely.
Before the flood, Chris Mackin worked as a porter for the Ridgeline, a Gardiner hotel owned by Delaware North, one of the biggest hospitality companies in the world. Days after the flood, which ripped up roadways, flooded houses and contaminated the town’s drinking water, Mackin says the company called an evening all-staff meeting with dinner provided.
“I knew what it was about,” says Mackin, who has a degree in history and a dry wit. “I knew it was going to be the last supper without resurrection.”
Delaware North, a privately-owned company with annual revenues exceeding $3.7 billion in 2019, told employees the company was closing the hotel indefinitely: Workers were all laid off or offered transfers to other company locations. While Mackin rents a place of his own, he says most of the staff lived in the company’s workforce housing and had 48 hours to get out of the dormitories.
Delaware North also holds federal contracts to operate tours and general stores inside the park. A worker at the general store in Mammoth Hot Springs, just south of Gardiner, told In These Times by email that he had towed an RV out from the Southern United States to work for Delaware North for the summer. The worker, who wished to remain anonymous to protect his job prospects, said that after the floods, the company closed the store, laid off the workers and kicked them out of the RV park where they were living.
Delaware North declined to be interviewed for this story, but Derek Zwickey, chief operating officer for the company’s parks and resorts division, provided an emailed statement: “Most associates of the Mammoth and Tower general stores and our lodging in Gardiner that closed accepted our offer to temporarily relocate and be reassigned to other company locations in the park and elsewhere.” The general stores, according to the statement, were scheduled to reopen on July 11 and “some associates who had relocated have returned to operate those stores.”
Mackin was among those who could not accept a transfer. After working in the area for years and living in workforce housing, he finally got hold of an affordable rental of his own.
“I don’t want to lose what I’ve got,” he says.
But Gardiner was a hard town to live in even before the floods.
“I was struggling along like anybody,” says Mackin, who worked a second job at a restaurant to cover his rent.
Since the floods, tourism industry boosters have been vocal about how loss of access to Yellowstone will harm tourism businesses in Park County. For example, a study commissioned by the Wild Livelihoods Business Coalition points out that tourism pours more than $236 million into Park County, Montana’s economy annually and that many tourism businesses, after a rough stretch due to pandemic-related closures, were looking forward to a booming summer season in 2022.
But in truth, even before the pandemic or the floods, this economy hasn’t worked well for everyone. A booming business in tourism, vacation rentals, second homes and real estate speculation has made some people fabulously wealthy. It has also helped drive local housing prices through the roof and out of reach of many local workers. As of 2021, landlords had raised the average rent in Park County to more than $1,500 a month, according to a housing needs assessment conducted by the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC), a local nonprofit that aims to identify and fill gaps in community needs like housing, food and heating. The average renter’s wage, meanwhile, was only $12.79 an hour. HRDC Housing Director Brian Guyer says that, in the year since the assessment was conducted, rents have only gone up.
“This flood lays bare a lot of problems that were already there,” says Guyer. “And, as usual, it’s the poor people who get hit the hardest.”
HRDC opened its shelter in Livingston to people driven from their homes by either the flood waters or their landlord-bosses. Guyer says shelter guests after the floods included residents of trailer parks, some of which are built in the Yellowstone River’s floodplain, and people who lost seasonal work in the park.
Even before the floods, though, HRDC had added two staff, says Guyer, to try “to deal with the spike in housing instability,” which he blames on the rising price of housing combined with the simultaneous withdrawal of state social services. For example, since the state closed the Livingston Mental Health Center in 2018, “there’s essentially nowhere for people experiencing mental health issues to go,” he says. “They land at the shelter.”
Guyer also blames businesses that don’t pay their workers enough to live here.
“We have people who are residing in the shelter who are working jobs,” he says. “HRDC picks up the tab for companies who are not paying their employees living wages.”
In some parts of the county, like Gardiner, the housing crisis is so bad that most of the workers who staff the town’s tourism businesses cannot afford to live there. Businesses have to buy workforce housing and import a seasonal underclass to do low wage jobs most locals can’t afford to do. The way the story is often told around here, businesses and their workers are on the same team, suffering or thriving together. But this story has a flaw, made obvious by the floods: While business owners will struggle through some tough seasons, they still own an asset on the doorstep of Yellowstone. Their workers have to leave town with everything they own in the back of a pickup truck. Montana’s government response reinforces this inequality. The state offered grants of up to $25,000 to tourism-dependent businesses impacted by the floods. Workers, many of whom lost their jobs and their homes in one stroke, were directed to apply for unemployment.
Ty Wheeler learned first-hand some of the problems with this precarious arrangement. In the winter of 2019, Wheeler was working as a snow coach guide for Delaware North in West Yellowstone, the park’s western entrance and a town with housing problems like those in Gardiner. Wheeler had managed to find housing of his own but says most of the guides lived in company-owned housing where they paid around $250 a month for a bunkbed. The company paid low wages — about $12 an hour plus tips — and the tour schedule was inconsistent.
“We had folks who were going to the food bank just to eat,” he tells In These Times. “I’m a veteran and this just goes against everything I believe in.”
So Wheeler, who grew up in an anti-union household, got together with five other guides to try to unionize. When the company found out, he says, they started firing the pro-union workers — the first two on Valentine’s Day of 2020.
“It was 16 degrees outside, and they had to move out of company housing,” Wheeler remembers. He was fired on Feb. 17, 2020 and the other three, he says, were starved of tours until they had to quit and look for other work.
According to Capital … Main, which broke the story, the group filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Boards, which ruled in a settlement that Delaware North should rehire the workers. The company has not done this, according to Wheeler, and the group is appealing.
Such precarity makes it hard for workers to organize for better conditions, says Wheeler.
If you depend on your boss for housing, “you have zero leverage,” he says. And high turnover among seasonal workers means “no one really has a chance to organize.”
As communities grapple with the aftermath of the flood, Guyer of HRDC urges them to also address these underlying inequalities exposed by the floodwaters.
“As we emerge from emergency response to long-term recovery,” Guyer says, “we need to think: What are we going to do to solve these bigger structural problems?”
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.