All those fancy things Starbucks gives are what we normal people like to call BRIBES. It's not given because Starbucks management are such kind-hearted souls - it's because it's actually a neat way to turn workers into obedient little consumers and to BUY loyalty (that is the cold, hard logic of market capitalism, of which Starbucks is a part).

It would make more sense, and it would be MUCH more beneficial, for workers to NOT be on a bullshit 401(k), a shitty stock option, and instead have a REAL benefits package.

There is NOTHING that is stopping Starbucks from pushing for universal single-payer healthcare, which is actually what the MAJORITY of Americans (in poll after poll after poll) actually want.

By organizing a union together, workers take it upon themselves to do this thing called MUTUAL AID and to actually build a culture and (oh, dare i say it) COMMUNITY based on (gasp!) SOLIDARITY, where people actually matter - it's not fake like the patronizing anti-union corporate worker's utopia that Starbucks and other cookie-cuter retail outlets offer.

When you organize with your fellow workers, you're not patronizingly called a "partner", or "associate", or "team member" but then treated like an expendable piece of human capital (again, that is the bottom-line logic of businesses like Starbucks). If Starbucks really truly wanted their workers to be "partners", then that means they would have co-ownership and EQUALITY.

Do they? Hell no. Don't believe the corporate hype. Join the IWW. Keep it real.