Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 16m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Independence holiday events begin at the Cravath Lakefront at noon.
On this day in 1836, Increase Allen Lapham first arrives in Milwaukee:
On this date scientist Increase Allen Lapham arrived in Milwaukee. By 1844 he had published Wisconsin’s first book, A Geographical and Topographical, Description of Wisconsin. He was a founder of the Milwaukee Female College, which later became Milwaukee Downer College; a charter member of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, and a founder of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Toward the end of his life, he was Wisconsin State Geologist. He also was the most influential advocate of the weather bureau in the 1870s.
There’s much fuss about unions, and how their workers might be thugs, how they might wreck the economy, etc., etc. Workers should be free to form associations: where productive, workers and the business will prosper; where unproductive, rival businesses and workers will prosper. A free market isn’t advantageous as a benefit simply to any given business. It’s advantageous to an overall level of productivity and prosperity.
Starbucks baristas, as it turns out, wouldn’t qualify as union thugs under any reasonable definition. Natalie Yahr reports Downtown Madison Starbucks workers vote overwhelmingly for union:
Workers at Madison’s downtown Starbucks have voted overwhelmingly for a union, making their store the first unionized Starbucks in Dane County.
The votes, tallied Thursday afternoon at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)’s Milwaukee office, were 15 for the union and one against. A single challenged ballot was not opened or challenged, and it will not affect the outcome of the vote. Seventeen of the 22 eligible, non-managerial employees working at the store at 1 E. Main St. on the Capitol Square cast ballots.
Starbucks has until July 8 to file objections regarding the election. If it doesn’t, the election results will be certified, obligating the company to bargain in good faith with the union, Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.
“I couldn’t be happier right now,” said Lee Marfyak, 27, a shift supervisor at the store and a member of the union organizing committee. “It feels good to win, and it feels good to win by such a substantial margin.”
To date, employees at at least 299 U.S. Starbucks stores have filed union petitions, according to the NLRB. As of June 24, elections had been tallied in 208 stores, with more than 80% voting to unionize. Around 150 stores’ election results have already been certified, granting union status to more than 3,400 employees.
Starbucks did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the election results. The company has consistently said that a union is unnecessary.
Dubai Robots or: How smart machines are already the future: