that got me wondering whether there were any retail chains that do treat the employees well enough. Are there any positive role model retail chains in Canada with decent employment practices?

[ 04 August 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]

Apparently the Whole Foods thing is a bit of a debate in the vegan community. Lots of vegans like Whole Foods because they can get a huge variety of vegan products there that they can't get in ordinary grocery stores, and they argue that if you can stand buying vegan stuff from other stores that sell animal products as well (or restaurants that serve meat), then why not Whole Foods? On the other hand, others get annoyed at the greenwashing (for lack of a better term) of Whole Foods, and they don't like that it's marketed to vegans as this wonderfully ethical place when they have lobster tanks and sell meat. (Apparently the owner is a vegan.)

You can move up to shift supervisor or manager - which is $38K in less than 3 years.

Starbucks - thanks to much outside pressure - now also retails fair trade coffee. Although I would prefer to buy it from a local store, it's nice to know when you are in a community without a fair trade cafe that you can buy fair trade coffee at Starbucks.

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) is a pretty great chain. They pay their employees quite well, there products are usually good for the price, and they use organic cotton and fair-trade practices.

There is some complaints about their posturing though, in that they position themselves as a holier-than-thou cooperative, but aren't exactly up to par all the time. They often, for example, use out of country fabrics and then claim their products are "Made in Canada."

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We also have unionized KFC's, for those who eat meat.

Demanding Fair Trade Coffee at SECOND CUP

This article in the CBC is dated 2000, and it's from Second Cup:

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Originally posted by Michelle:
. . . it's more of a personal opting-out-of-cruelty thing for me . . .

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However, the employers that have adopted progressive policy and procedures are in the minority. Liberal views, the white-male standard, and systemic discrimination continue to be the core values in this industry.

I was looking for summer work in Ontario (May 2006) when I came across the different employment contracts that Canadian Tire offered. At their distribution hub in Brampton, they offered $11.00 to start, 17.5% discount, 50-cent wage increase for each year as a student upwards to a $13.00 maximum, 3-month schedule, and a weekend schedule during the school year. I came across the job posting asking for ‘no students’ in the Hamilton area. This exclusion of students may have been the result of a disgruntle store manager or a real need to hire a worker that is flexible enough to match the demands of the store. The interesting part is there is a unionized grocery store attached to the same building. Why UFCW has not aligned its interests with the Canadian Tire location is beyond me.

Does Canadian Tire have any unionized locations? From my Google search there are some stores that are unionize throughout Canada. These locations a organized by UFCW and CAW.

I do not have any information on the employment contract for workers at Canadian Tire retail location. However, every time I go into a Canadian Tire location it is hard to find a happy employee. For a student looking for work and is willing to give up some weekends working at a distribution hub sounds like an acceptable job arrangement when compared to a local retail outlet.

For my summer job, I decided to work in a factory 20 minutes away for $10.50. Nevertheless, that is a different story.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
[qb]Interesting criticisms of Starbucks. Why the need for a union if they already treat their employees well?

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They couldn't have been treating the employees that well. Someone (in fact a few people most likely) took the trouble to call the union up. The union then decided that there was enough people unhappy there to try a drive. Trust me, unions don't make that choice lightly.

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Personally if I ran a company like that I'd consider it a humane and business priority to treat employees respectfully, but would prefer not to see unionization. If you're a teltned businessman (which I'm not), you'll know how to make your business grow and can probably do so humanely without a backseat driver.

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Just because you consider it humane doesn't mean it is. And why wouldn't you want to see it unionized? I thought the business priority was to treat employees respectfully? Don't you think removing their right to a union a touch disrespectful?

And who's the backseat driver? Like the bank, stockholders, investors, the government? It's funny how business are okay with all these "backseat drivers" but once the workers decide to talk with one voice they get up in arms.

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Of course, I support unions where they are needed.

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Wouldn't you say that's up to the workers? If the workers want a union, then the union is needed.

[ 07 August 2006: Message edited by: ouroboros ]

They want to turn everything into a black or white issue.

And stockholders are not backseat drivers, they own the company.

Btw, to the person who criticized me for mentioning Loblaws, I was mentioning Loblaws for its detriments.

Lard Thunderin' Jeezus wrote:

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The "most ethical supermarkets in Canada" are the ones selling us fresh local regional products, not large Yanqui vertically-integrated corporations selling us overpriced goods trucked thousands of miles from California.

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Yes, and those of who can't afford to spend 100 dollars a week on groceries actually appreciate large $2.49 packages of california strawberries.

[ 08 August 2006: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
Interesting criticisms of Starbucks. Why the need for a union if they already treat their employees well?
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Of course, I support unions where they are needed.

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I don't know if Starbucks has differing standards with their workers across Canada - but everyone seems fairly happy to work there. Co-workers often turn into close friends, which means they can count on each other, which means they can fight together for living wages - the company is probably one of the ripest in the retail sector for unionisation. After all, the company propaganda leads the workers to believe they can have a life-long career with the company - why not ask for more than after-school wages?

Regarding Costco, I too have heard good things about them - I don't know of any union shops, but a complaint from an infuriated financial analyst always sticks with me:
"It seems like it's better to be an employee of Costco than a shareholder!"

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Originally posted by Anarchonostic:
...the company is probably one of the ripest in the retail sector for unionisation. After all, the company propaganda leads the workers to believe they can have a life-long career with the company - why not ask for more than after-school wages?

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When I worked there back in 1999-2001, I remember our manager telling us offhand that the average length of employment for a Starbucks "partner" (that is the barista that makes your coffee and other drinks) is 6 months. So some people make close friends, but that is not a lot of time to work somewhere. People would usually rather quit Starbucks and find another job than try to unionize.

I don't think the management is quite up to Walmart's standards, but I also found them to be ready to fire anyone who talked about unions. They didn't fire a friend of mine who actually got caught stealing cakes, umbrellas, and other random products like shot glasses and coffee filters, but they fired a woman for "not fitting in" during her probation period the day after she was talking about unions and multinational corporations, etc.

The starbucks union isn't really a very conventional union at all though. After some pretty rediculous labour relations board rulings in the USA they've opted to try out the 'solidarity unionism' model the IWW has been experimenting with in retail. More or less the idea is to try and organise a small minority of very tenacious and public workers and then to go after the corporation through direct actions.

This includes everything from slow downs to civil disobediance to quicky 1 hour strikes. In a lot of ways you could call it a sprt of guerilla unionism, though everything they have done is legal. They have also been very good at tarnishing Starbucks bogus 'ethical business' image.

With this strategy they have won about a 1$ an hour raise for all Starbucks emplyees in the New York area, a minimum working week of 30 hours (one of their main demands) as well as better ergonomic standards in their stores.

I really think this is the way forward for workers outside of traditional union industries. The turnover can too easily kill a drive if you wait the years it takes to follow certification. And evern if you get the union in contract negotiations can be dragged out forever as can grievances.

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Originally posted by pencil-skirt:
When I worked there back in 1999-2001, I remember our manager telling us offhand that the average length of employment for a Starbucks "partner" (that is the barista that makes your coffee and other drinks) is 6 months. So some people make close friends, but that is not a lot of time to work somewhere. People would usually rather quit Starbucks and find another job than try to unionize.

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I think The Body Shop SHOULD be that retail chain. They're not struggling for money, and they could set the standard for how retail workers should be treated.

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The Body Shop and similar outfits, like Capers and Choices, are much in the vein of the so-called "Green" Party and other groups: eco-frauds.

It's the whole wave of co-optation of ecological initiatives by many so-called "eco-capitalists" that practice what has become known as "greenwashing"--as in putting on an eco-friendly facade to basically profit from people and advance the same old destructive profit-maximizing/exponential "growth" (read accumulation of wealth)/market-monopolizing economics that damage the environment so much to begin with.

This is why these supposedly eco-friendly companies have no problem busting unions, using child labour, discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, spying on employees and gouging consumers at every opportunity.

It's also why we so often see "organic" products that are still using various chemicals and irradiation, why "free range" animals are still locked in cages and why "all natural" is usually not.

For example, I have read that the Body Shop sells cosmetic goods that are not tested on animals. That's good.

Yet it also relies heavily on selling products that are made by contracted and sub-contracted and re-sub-contracted sweatshops in countries with ruthless corporate-backed dictatorships where monitoring of how products are made and tested is sketchy and minimal at best.

That tends to defeat any ethical treatment of animals policy, especially since there's no way to reliably tell if many of these products are not tested on animals.

One thing unionization does, or has the potential of doing, is giving workers more opportunity to challenge corporate policies and practices, including, as we have seen in countless cases across the globe, putting management practices and claims under public scrutiny.

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Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):

I suspect that the high turnover at Starbucks is largely due to the fact that they hire a lot of students, rather than to bad working conditions. I once worked at a café (not Starbucks) which I found to be fun, and which paid enough (even at minimum wage plus occasional tips) for my lo-fi student living. All the workers were students, and nobody lasted more than a few months, for a variety of reasons: but the connecting thread is that we were all students, and students' lives are not always conducive to job stability.

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