I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been inspired by the young Starbucks baristas who are leading the charge to unionize the company. The number of unionizing stores has risen to seventy-two since the fall. The weekly spate of new Starbucks election filings represents a breakthrough for labor.

Starbucks executives are counterattacking. Last week, they fired seven Memphis baristas who had led the organizing in that city.

I urge you to watch my interview with leaders of the Starbucks baristas (just double-click below).

Starbucks baristas are part of a movement of food service workers across the nation. These workers have not only endured the pandemic (they’ve been deemed “essential” and suffered high rates of COVID) but also lousy pay and insecure work.

A brief strike in Colorado last month by Kroger workers in Colorado revealed the scope of the problem. Kroger is the biggest supermarket chain in the United States and the fourth-largest employer in the Fortune 500. It owns more than 2,700 locations (its brands include Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, Smith’s, Pick ’n Save and even Murray’s Cheese in New York City).

Kroger’s business has boomed during the pandemic. Its stock has risen about 36 percent over the past year. Its CEO, Rodney McMullen, earned $22.4 million in 2020.

But the median Kroger employee earned just $24,617 last year. That’s a CEO-to-worker ratio of 909 to 1 — one of the country’s starkest gaps between a CEO and typical employee.

About 75 percent of Kroger employees report being food insecure, meaning they lack consistent access to enough food for a healthy life. About 14 percent report being homeless, now or within the last year. Over 62 percent say they do not earn enough money to pay basic monthly expenses. And their pay keeps dropping: Kroger’s top-paid grocery clerks today earn 22 percent less than they did in 1990 (adjusted for inflation).

About two-thirds of all Kroger’s hourly employees work part-time, even though they want more hours. Yet more than half are given schedules that change at least every week, making it difficult for them to commit to another employer. As I noted last week, keeping workers part time is a strategy employers use to encourage turnover and reduce costs.

Hopefully, the Starbucks’s baristas I interviewed — and others like them — will lead the way to better pay and working conditions for all food service workers, including Krogers. Food service workers and the giant corporations that employ them reveal the shambles of labor-management relations in America today, and the hypocrisy of so-called “corporate social responsibility.”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe