Baristas? Do you have to go to college to be one? I’m sorry but being employed by a small coffee shop for a year doesn’t give you or the labour union the right to bully the small business who fired you. How can you be a co-operative member and have a union as well? Does it make sense to punch yourself in the face? Noooo…. The Uniun Board and the Labour Board are just abusing their power and picking on the little guy. Trying to destroy my favourite coffee shop from the inside out. These two guys that got fired (probably because they were pricks) were also trying to start a union. So they could have the big guy backing them when they wanted more money after working for a year at this establishment. This small business will go under. If these two fired “baristas” want to make a living..maybe they could …mmm.. get a real job that may be a little more challenging, anyone can make a latte. Just becuase you can make a little snowman or a leaf with steamed milk doesn’t make you an expert. The barista doesn’t make the coffee delicious, it’s the coffee bean. —Leave Us With Our Lattes and Just Get Another Job
This article appears in Apr 4-10, 2013.
So these two baristas got fired and just so happened to be organizing a union…. You do realize that’s illegal, OB, right?
*to fire them for union organizing (don’t tell me the owners didn’t).
I just find it hilarious that 2 little Hugo Chavez wannabes thought that a co-op could be made better with a union.
Sort of like the local Dippers whining that Dexie isn’t “leftie” enough.
Okay, bad analogy >: (
Ivan AKA Pilgrim – NOTHING is better with a union. Any raises and increased benefits from belonging to the union would be swallowed up in dues.
After reading some articles on this situation it seems like one of the parties is not upfront, be it the workers or the company, were they fired for the Union issue or are they just not that good at what they do, be interested how this gets sorted out.
I’d like to see them try and unionise Tim Hortons house of swill. Perhaps these fired baristas could apply at Tims, which serves the only over the counter laxative in Canada.
Preaching to choir, S.C. All a union does is add another layer of empire-building assholes making your job more difficult and another set of hands in your pocket.
Whether they got fired for trying to form a union or not, “baristas” don’t need a fucking union.
STUPIDMAN STRIKES AGAIN
“How can you be a co-operative member and have a union as well?” Leave Me With Our Lattes
Well, Stupidman, you can’t. A co-operative is just that, a group of workers – being a barrista has nothing to do with it – who form a productive business in which each member has a proprietary interest. In other words, the co-operative is owned by its members. On the other hand a union is a bargaining organization within an existing business sector that attempts to protect its members from exploitation. In the case of the coffee shop the workers were fired by the employer, not “probably because they were pricks” as the poster so eloquently puts it, but rather for having the gall to attempt to join an existing union of service workers to accept them as members. They wanted protection from exploitation but, predictably, they got fired instead.
As expected, the right-wing reactionaries on this site were out in full throat, claiming that unions are the devil incarnate. As was also expected, they were never able to demonstrate either the accuracy or even the coherence of their charges. The reason for this resides in the paradox that, while they themselves are on the unorganized margins of the workforce and would profit from union protection, they simultaneously and incoherently rail against those who would seek to better their lot. For reasons unknown to themselves, they seek to maintain their unskilled, impotent and expendable status in a society where corporate profit is primary and in which the unorganized worker is to be victimized at the whim of the employer.
The right-wing reactionaries on this site constitute a typical “petit bourgeois” reaction, the sort one found in the German lower classes of the 1930’s who howled against the socialists, those who wanted to improve the lot of the workingman. Well, they got what they asked for, didn’t they.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Ivan, a sad day indeed, she had more balls than any of todays set of wankers running their respective country. Wait until Canada has the Coronation for Pretty Boy Trudeau, perish the fucking thought.
C’mon guys, don’t you know unions need more money? They’ll get these poor “baristas” (who the fuck came up with that snobby term for a server) a 25 cent raise while taking 40 in dues.
Sodium, there is a union at Tim’s at Capital Health and we all know how well THAT worked out. The only Timmies in Canada to lose money.
I do agree nothing is better with a union. We just negotiated my raise, it came to 1.25 a pay after the government is done with it, union dues went up 3 dollars a pay….
Funny, I don’t think a union is necessary in this situation and I’m not a right winger, AND I work in a coffee shop. Go figure.
Threatening people by calling them “right wing” doesn’t strengthen your response, montrealman. It makes you look ignorant by placing people who you disagree with in a separate distant pile and by calling them something you think diminishes their opinions just shows your closed-mindedness. No one wants to discuss this with people like you.
I suspect those who make goo money and are secure in their positions are the ones who are poo-pooiing the idea of unions..
RSVP
: Pennis Playdough (04/09, 11:04AM)
Good afternoon Pennis. Unusually, I found your post not completely fatuous like the others and so I thought I’d extend the courtesy of a reply. To simplify matters, I’ll divide my rejoinder into three parts, (1) The Unions, (2) The Intellectuals, and (3) The Philosophy of Thatcherism.
(1) The Unions
You maintain that unions “are extortionate organizations parasitically attached to a legitimate business that attempts to protect its memebers (sic) from actually doing any work.”
Well, you certainly seem to have swallowed the early Thatcherite line hook, line and sinker but there is another view. Thatcher might have been right in smashing the British unions in 1979 (“Who governs Britain?”) as they had become excessively powerful and disruptive. However, my view of unions is much more limited, existing only to obtain a living wage and defend the working man from unjust dismissal. Social justice is its motivating principle and to call it an “extortionate organization” is a caricature.
(2) The Intellectuals
“The left-wing apologists on this site are much like the Western intellectuals and academics who spent most of the twenties and thirties playing sycophant lickspittles to Stalin.”
Your attempt to equate the lower-middle support for Hitler in Germany in the thirties with the “Western intellectuals and academics” is misconceived. I suspect you’re referring to the “Cambridge Circle” – Kim Philby, Donald MacLean, and Guy Burgess – who infiltrated British intelligence on behalf of the Soviet Union. But however mistakenly, they were idealists who thought Communism would remedy the radical inequality which characterized western class-ridden and plutocratic society. They were wrong, but they could not be said to have provided the groundswell support for Stalin that Hitler received from the the German petit bourgeoisie. The two cases are completely different.
(3) The Philosophy of Thatcherism
“Maggie Thatcher! Always! Goose Green!”
When Thatcher was asked about society, she famously replied that “there is no such thing. There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first.” Well yes, but it is only a truism that society consists of individual men and women and families and that no government can do anything except through people but, in addition to being a very blinkered view, it is incoherent to conclude that society does not then exist. But that claim is fundamental to the philosophy of Thatcherism which is found in the second part of the sentence, i.e., “people look to themselves first”. Contrary to the philosophy of socialism which is grounded in social justice and the brotherhood of man, Thatcherism enshrines selfishness and its natural economic outcome – greed – an outcome which has dramatically played out in the US as the triumph of the Wall Street rapists who glory in the de-regulation of the economy to benefit themselves with riches beyond avarice. Small government indeed, and let the devil take the hindmost! (The Thatcherite view of government exactly mirrors the Thatcherite view of unions.) Yes, Thatcher had her “principles” alright, but so did Hitler. It’s the content of those principles, and not their simple possession, that counts. Thatcher’s basic philosophy is that “society” – however she defined it – is completely market-driven and failure to flourish in that “society” is to be chalked up to man’s moral turpitude in contrast to those who, by class and connection, have become the new moral aristocracy.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
“Good Afternoon Pennis”
Oh GAWD -I just spent a penny – that one never gets old.
RSVP
: Pennis Playdough (04/09, 11:04AM)
Wrong, you Gibbering Baboon. Except for my dismissal of the “union mentality”, the democratic facade of “collective bargaining” and fulsome support for Margaret Thatcher’s policies, both foreign and domestic, it was completely fatuous.
As for the Western intellectuals ,academics and celebrities (a pity I forgot to include them) who chose to not merely ignore the homicidal brutality of Soviet Communism, but to to actively deny it, I confess that the Cambridge 5 were not prominent in my mind. I was thinking more of the likes of Bernard Shaw who visited Moscow and denied any suggestion of food shortages, as some 2 to 4 million Ukrainians were perishing of starvation in Stalin’s famine. Of Beatrice and Sidney Webb, those jolly Fabian cut-ups who declared Soviet Russia to be “the new civilization”. Of American Ambassador Joseph P. Davies who pronounced the show trials which inaugurated The Great Terror to be fair and balanced. After all, who but a truly guilty blackguard would admit to being guilty of such shocking charges? Or Paul Robeson, who made a career of standing up for the oppressed but who also told his son that sometimes an” innocent minority have to suffer in order that great and noble things be done” Really, Paul! Well let’s all “lif dat barge an tote dat bale” Even Pierre Trudeau who praised the Soviets for their inventiveness and initiative in building the world’s northernmost city, Norilsk while conveniently ignoring the fact that Norilsk had been constructed entirely by enforced labor.
“Oh brave new world, That has such people in’t”.
As for me, I’ll retire to Bedlam. Begone you Gibbering Baboon and devote your energies to divining what vintage of Riesling works best when attempting to seduce a middle-aged, half-wit of a blonde divorcee.
Rejoice, Rejoice.
Tumbledown Ridge!
RSVP
Penis Playdoh (04/09, 7:27PM)
“Except for my dismissal of the ‘union mentality’, the democratic facade of ‘collective bargaining’ and the fulsome support for Margaret Thatcher’s policies, both domestic and foreign, it was completely fatuous.”
Penis, you appear to have undercut your own position. Read the three parts of my post over again to yourself (try not to move your lips). What do you see? That’s right, your unsupported caricature of the “union mentality”, the “facade” of collective bargaining and your “fulsome support” of Thatcher’s domestic and foreign policies” are, in addition to the role of the intellectuals, precisely the points I addressed in my rejoinder to your reply. I agree that the rest of your post was, like your others, completely fatuous.
Thank you for endorsing my views.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Bro Tim – my feeble memory seems to recall that John Buchanans son had a Tims franchise and it went tits up, the only one ever. Not sure if it’s true, but I recall the story from years past
How dare you denigrate the skills of a Barista, it takes years of study, mostly at NSCAD, to even get accepted into their profession. The initiation is daunting, having to make not only a frothy coffee, but the correct change, multi-tasking to the max. Surgeons have it fucking easy.
I’m still waiting for the smoke to clear from the initial news articles to see which side was telling the truth. I hope the Labour Board can straighten it out.
1) Argentine Pope.
2) Maggie’s gone.
Those sneaky gauchos are gearing up for another run at the Falklands, I tell ya hwut.
And in other breaking news, North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un has announced to U.N. Arms Inspector Hans Blix, that his nation’s blockade of Naboo is now complete:
http://massassi.hobby-site.com/massassi/pi…
RSVP
: Penis Playdoh (04/10, 4:15PM)
Good afternoon Penis.
Unsuprisingly, you have clearly failed to grasp the meaning of what I said in my last post. Do you see my phrase “unsupported caricature”? Do you understand what it means? Take a moment and think it over. Now, look at your three claims, those in respect to what you term (a) “union mentality,” (b) “the facade of collective bargaining,” and your (c) “fulsome support of Thatcher’s domestic and foreign policy.” Slowly now, apply the phrase to each of your three claims. Now, Penis, do you understand what I was saying?
What has happened Penis, is that you utterly failed to “support” any of your claims, the ones which were not, by your own admission, simply fatuous. You failed to demonstrate the content of that “union mentality”, you failed to show how collective bargaining was a “facade,” and finally you failed to indicate just why you gave your “fulsome support” to Thatcher’s domestic and foreign policy. Do you get it now, Penis? There’s the lad,
To avoid empty rhetorical bluster, Penis, you must always give grounds for your assertions. There lies the way to intelligibility and coherence.
The rest of your post, of course, was little more than your usual disturbed fatuity.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Baristas think they’re in same league as Bruno Sammartino, Tiger Woods and NSLC employees. Sad day in NS.
Time for Biscuit to switch from left to right and stop being such a fucking nice (goin’) guy.