Starbucks Threatens to Sue Union Over Palestinian Solidarity – U.E. Opposes Military Aid for Israel – Gaza Hospital Staff Drinking Out of IV Bags

European trade unionists rally for Palestine in Brussels (ECCB)

By: October 16, 2023

Folks, 

Greetings from the Burgh today; it’s been a hectic fundraising day for our legal defense fund. (ICYMI: Read Semafor’s Ben Smith’s story on how NewsGuild is subpoenaing us to obtain the names of sexual assault survivors). 

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Starbucks Threatens to Sue Union over Palestinian Solidarity

Last week, Starbucks Workers United shared a social media post that expressed ‘Solidarity with Palestine”. (The post has since been deleted).

Now, Starbucks is threatening to sue the union because of their support of Palestinian rights. The company says that the company has received boycott threats and over 1,000 complaints about the workers since Florida Senator Rick Scott denounced the union for supporting Palestinian rights. 

“Anger against Starbucks persists because your organization’s actions have fueled the inaccurate perception that Starbucks supports violence against civilians,” wrote Starbucks counsel Rocky Tsai in a letter to the union. 

For more, check out Newsweek. 

U.E. Opposes Military Aid for Israelis 

One group that isn’t running from their support for Palestinian rights is the United Electrical Workers (UE). The union is the only union in the U.S. that has consistently supported targeted boycotts of warmakers in Israel and is denouncing the attack by Israel on Gaza. 

“We certainly don’t support any killing, whether it’s in the form of bombs, guns, starving people through blockades, or through apartheid, from any side,” UE Secretary-Treasurer Andrew Dinkelaker told In These Times. ​”U.S. military aid going in is pouring gasoline onto a fire. It encourages that there be military solutions, and military solutions will get more people killed.”

For more, check out In These Times. 

Gaza Hospital Staff Drinking Water Out of IV 

Meanwhile, water is in such short supply in Gaza that hospital staff are drinking water out of IV bags. From the Washington Post: 

To keep the lights on in Gaza City’s largest hospital, Wissam AbuJarad, an anesthetist, said staff were collecting gas from dwindling stocks in the area to maintain a steady supply to their generators.

“If we run out of fuel, then we will lose all of the patients in the ICU, the babies in the incubators, and the patients who need surgery,” AbuJarad said.

He said that some staff had been reduced to drinking from IV solution bags because Israel had cut off water supplies to the enclave.

For more, check out the Washington Post. 

Alright folks, that’s all for today. Keep sending tips, story ideas, comments, and suggestions to [email protected] 

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See yinz tomorrow, 

Melk 

About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter and alumni of the Guardian. In addition to filing nearly 2,000 stories from 46 states, Elk traveled with Lula from Sáo Bernando do Campos all the way to the Oval Office in the White House. Credited by the Washington Post for being the first reporter to track the strike wave systematically, Elk started Payday Report using his NLRB settlement from being illegally fired for union organizing in 2015. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and works frequently in Rio de Janeiro, where he attended college at PUC-Rio. He speaks both Portuguese and Pittsburghese fluently. His email is [email protected]