More than 3,500 employees to take part in nationwide strike, led by company’s Seattle Roastery
Originally I understood they’d strike because of the stores adding Pride decorations, but nope, the store admins are banning Pride decorations
like Target, corporate simple doesn’t want to deal with the possible lost business of nutbags boycotting starbucks over a few pride flags in the store.
or maybe the drama of said nutbags coming into store and assaulting employees over it.
I 100% consider myself an ally of the lgbtq+ community.
Its just not worth putting a target on your employees back these days. Lunatics coming in, harassing and assaulting minimum age workers because of colors on the wall.
Employees think they want it… but they aren’t prepared for the backlash that would ensue (nor should they, they’re baristas for fuck sake).
Acquiescing makes the queer community more vulnerable and many of these employees are themselves queer.
Standing up to hate is the correct thing. Rubbing your position in bigot’s faces is the correct thing. Pulling a Gary Bettman and pretending anti-queer hate is something which can be ignored away is taking the side of and emboldening oppression.
How can you ask our baristas and target employees to do the right thing when our police, politicians, etc. can not?
Security guards were shot in the head at convenient stores for asking customers to mask up during the pandemic. I don’t expect the 16 year old kid making my coffee to stand up to a right wing lunatic. Our children and minimum wage workers should not be on the front lines of human rights issues in my opinion.
This is why you don’t give in to boycotts - they’ll just keep pushing if you do.
If Walmart and Target and Starbucks and Budweiser and every other targeted brand just shrugged their shoulders and carried on Pride’ing, eventually conservatives would be left with nowhere left to shop at and would lose their enthusiasm for continued boycotting.
Give an inch, they’ll take a mile. These crazies will just find a new thing to demand. Probably selling contraceptives, or crayons with all the colors of the rainbow.
For real! They’re coming for our kids!! Trying to teach them sexual health, and idk about you but nothing with the word “sex” in it is appropriate for my child! Oh the humanity, why can’t we go back to the good ole days when Catholic priests were given free reign to abuse children
You really think a majority of Americans are on board with this pride stuff?
According to the representative sample size divided roughly equally between Republicans, Democrats and independents, only 13% said a brand or store offering LGBTQ Pride-themed collections or merchandise would make them more likely to buy from that same vendor.
Another 61% said it would make no difference at all, while a full quarter of respondents said it would actually negatively impact their purchasing decision. sourceYes, the majority of Americans are in fact on board with it, or at very least ambivalent.
I support pride but That actually shows it is in stores best interest not too support.it 61% don’t care you will get them any way.
So then you have a choice between 13% who support pride or 25% who don’t, if store is just beholden to profit then they will chase the 25
One might then conclude that business explicity Pride is actually done out of some level of general desire show genuine support, even at a slight business cost.
As a gay guy myself, I rather appreciate it.
This is a bit cynical but I don’t think companies care at all about pride. There may be individuals pushing for it within the company, but buy and large any time a company pushes for a social issue it is to make themselves look better and strategically pivot to appeal to different age brackets.
In this way I think corporate “pride-washing” is very much akin to green washing, acting like the company is carbon neutral or reducing emissions or whatever, when they just want people to feel better about buying their product that everyone knows is harmful. Plastic recycling, green ETFs and “clean” natural gas all fall under this category.
Profit decline due to these efforts is probably exaggerated, too, because people always conveniently ignore their moral values when buying products. We always hear about how horrid Nestle is, or how unethical the mining process is for our phone batteries, but look around and everyone still buys these things.
I agree with you, companies only care as far as their bottom line goes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that doing pride displays and showing support, even in superficial support, is a bad thing. And there is no such thing as moral consumption under capitalism, and the only solution is to move towards a more worker centric society and eliminate exploitation from these industries. It starts with how you use your vote and your voice, we should advocate for more people to get involved and active.
