(Image: Cherry Street Coffee)
Former District 3 representative on the Seattle City Council and leader of the Workers Strike Back labor activism group Kshama Sawant is backing workers at Seattle’s Cherry Street Coffee in what she says is a strike over working conditions and the local chain ownership’s lobbying for changes in the city’s minimum wage.
“Socialist, former City Councilmember, and founding member of Workers Strike Back, Kshama Sawant, will stand alongside Cherry Street Coffee House workers as they walk out on strike demanding a living wage, an end to workplace sexual harassment, and an end to their bosses’ petitioning to roll back Seattle’s historic minimum wage victory,” the group said about a planned Friday morning press conference outside the Olive Way Cherry Street location.
CHS reported here on the shuttered Capitol Hill Cherry Street location as the E Pine cafe said is was “closed temporarily” due to staffing issues.
Cherry Street owner Ali Ghambari tells CHS he plans to reopen the Pine Street location this month. Ghambari did not respond to our questions about the minimum wage debate and his appearance in front of the city council advocating for changes.
Sawant and her Workers Strike Back group have lately mostly stayed focus on the 2024 presidential election and drumming up support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein while launching blistering attacks on the Democrats. But Workers Strike Back has turned its attention to Seattle and owners like Ghambari who have advocated for extending a tip credit for the city’s small businesses.
Sawant and the group say making the tip credit permanent would be an attack on “the landmark $15/hour minimum wage law” that “has lifted hundreds of thousands workers out of poverty, benefiting women and people of color in particular.”
D3 leader Joy Hollingsworth, who replaced Sawant on the council, has said she is gathering more feedback and support after backing off her proposal to extend the credit. The proposed legislation would have responded to the coming 2025 end of the small business tip credit with a new plan to create a permanent credit by lowering the amount at which inflation would increase wages for small businesses.
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Love Kshama and miss her! The Cherry Street owner sucks and all my friends have stopped going there
Go away Sawant. She told me to my face that I, as a small business owner, who has always paid my staff more that minimum wage, offered health insurance, paid for staff meals, that I should sell my house, my car and give that money back to my staff…she has harassed me simply because I don’t agree with every single thing she says…she is awful.
Riiiight…You are virtuous. Open your books.
Prove it…
Sure, just ask her…she’ll tell you…
Agreed!
I’m buying my coffee at Cherry Street from now on!
No surprise. Cheetolini is a deviant as well.
Yeah, you and all your friends lol
Note to Sawant: Now that you are off the Council, no one gives a damn about what you think.
Demonstrably false…
Really, nobody cares about what she thinks. She is awful….
What a publicity stunt. Cherry street is like no body on the radar of cafes. It’s not a Seattle fixture for this type of attack.
Go back to your hole, you have done enough damage.
Yes. 10 years of the Thing that is/was Sawant. I thought she was going to go national and finally we would be free.
40 year Capitol Hill/Downtown resident. Sawant only wants to destroy the Seattle core. Unfortunately with every small biz shuttered, she will have nothing to fight. If she really cared, she would have engaged in sonething meaningful and important like protect QFC our food source on the hill. Food like hospitals deserve protection. Go away Sawant Swine