Rise up ☕

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Tonight: Labor is on the rise and cream cheese is on the decline. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

RISE UP ☕

Props to the union organizers' graphic design team ✊

For the first time ever, Starbucks workers in America will be represented by a union after staff at a store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize.

The effort won by a 19-8 margin. (Another Buffalo store voted against joining the union, while a third vote was inconclusive Thursday afternoon.)

Although the Buffalo vote represents only a handful of Starbucks' 235,000 employees nationally, the company pulled out all the stops to try to sway the vote, deploying high-profile executives to the area and even tapping founder Howard Schultz to give the staff a pep talk (which, as we discussed here at the time, included a Holocaust anecdote that really, really did not land.)

The company was keen to quash the Buffalo effort for fear of opening the door to broader union efforts. If enough workers unionize, the company's labor costs will go up, it said. Starbucks argued it already offers many benefits that others in the industry do not, including health care coverage for part-time workers and college tuition reimbursement. Starbucks has implemented two wage increases in that past 18 months. Clearly, it wasn't enough for some workers.

The implications for Starbucks and for restaurant workers are hard to overstate. Restaurants are among the least unionized businesses in the United States, and also offer notoriously low-paying, high-stress jobs. (Two decades later and I'm still haunted by my stint as a server at a greasy bar in my hometown.)

BIG PICTURE

Right now, it's a bit of a best-of-times-worst-of-times moment for the American worker (and there it is, my second Dickens reference of the week, huzzah!)

In the spring of 2020, millions of workers were swiftly let go — the cold, transactional nature of their place in the global economy more apparent than ever.

And since then, the pandemic has made going to work a life-and-death proposition for some. The pay gap between executives and their employees is staggering. The average S&P 500 CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 299-to-1 last year, according to the AFL-CIO.

But now, as the dust of the pandemic's upheaval begins to settle, the power dynamic is shifting. Businesses are desperate to hire and retain workers, and workers are demanding better pay and benefits. This fall alone, some 25,000 workers went on strike, cementing October of 2021 as #striketober.

The past several months have seen union efforts under way at Starbucks, Kellogg, Amazon, John Deere, virtually all of Hollywood, museum workers, and even Major League Baseball. Nearly 70% of Americans support unions, according to a recent gallup poll — the highest rate since 1965. And for at least another two years, organizers can expect support from the pro-union Biden administration.

#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY

184,000

Claims for unemployment benefits dropped to a 52-year low last week, coming in at 184,000 — well below the pandemic-era norm and lower than most economists predicted. It's the lowest level of initial claims since September 1969, when the figure stood at 182,000.

Why it matters: initial claims are a proxy for layoffs, and the steady decline in recent months further underscores how managers are reluctant to let workers go. They're paying more and offering more benefits to those they can retain. Even more good news for workers!

🥯 SCHMEAR CAMPAIGN

Every New Yorker hearing the words "cream cheese shortage."

Start spreading the news… New York, New York, has a cream cheese shortage.

This is a level 5 emergency, folks. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that bagel shops are scrambling to secure the quintessential schmear. What even is a bagel without a layer of cream cheese as thick as the bagel itself? What am I going to use instead, butter? Fuhgettaboutit.

The city's bagel purveyors aren't the only bakers left scrambling.

It's almost Christmas, and that means it's cheesecake season (…and I'm reserving my own personal cheesecake opinions till the end).

Here in NYC, if you know one cheesecake brand, it's Junior's. If you ask a friend to bring cheesecake to a dinner party and she doesn't bring Junior's, do you really know her?

Anyway, naturally, Junior's has had to pause production in the middle of its busiest season because it didn't have enough of the key ingredient – the cake is literally 85% cream cheese.

Every year, Junior's goes through about 4 million pounds of cream cheese to make its signature desserts, owner Alan Rosen told my colleague Danielle Wiener-Bronner. In December, the factory typically runs more often to meet higher demand. But they've been scraping by for weeks, "getting cream cheese in sporadic supply and praying."

While bagel shops have been picking up alternatives and promoting their tofu spreads, that's not really an option for Junior's. "The recipe has not changed one ounce" since its first restaurant opened in Brooklyn in 1950.

MY TWO CENTS

You gotta respect tradition, but if any bakers out there are reading this, hear me out: Try ricotta instead. Regular cheesecake is actually kinda gross and will make you feel like you ate a block of cream cheese on a graham cracker because, well, that is quite literally what it is. Ricotta cheesecake, on the other hand, is heavenly, light, chef's kiss, 10/10 would recommend.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

🛍️ The CEOs of Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Home Depot, CVS and others sent a letter to Congress expressing their concern over a recent wave of store robberies in major US cities and urged lawmakers to take action.

📦 Amazon is potentially misleading consumers by not being clear enough in indicating which of its search results are paid advertisements, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission.

🏠 Wall Street firm Jefferies is returning to remote work and canceling social events after dozens of Covid-19 cases were reported among its staff.

💸 Someone just paid $7,753 for school papers graded by Elon Musk 25 years ago when he was in grad school. There's a sucker born every minute, folks.