You have to realize that the raises in the article you linked were only offered BECAUSE of the unions, right?

Starbucks could easily have given the same raise to union workers. Would have been a simple contract amendment that any union rep would instantly sign.

But STARBUCKS chose not to do that, because they want unionizing to look like a bad idea.

This isn't starbucks saying "we want to give EVERYONE raises" and the unions saying "not without our approval you dont!"

This is starbucks intentionally giving raises they otherwise wouldnt have to non union employees, in order to make them want to stay non union.

If the unions give up, starbucks no longer has any reason to try and play nice like this, and can go back to a "you'll take what we give you or we'll replace you" model.

Any problems employees experience from being in a union are problems that starbucks intentionally creates for union employees, because they want to kill the union.

And it saddens me that your response to that, as a presumably intelligent, adult human being, is "well, we should just give in to the corporate overlords, remove any potential checks and balances against their ability to exploit their workers, and just trust that they care more about being good people to their workers than they do about profits"

"You don't need a dedicated organization whos goal is to stop your employer from fucking you. Yes, they've been fucking you for multiple years with no sign of slowing down. But what if one day they decide they don't want to fuck you any more? Thered be an extra signature needed on a piece of paper for them to stop fucking you, which would never happen anyway without the leverage provided by the union. The horror."

Multinational megacorps don't just randomly wake up and go "let's double employee wages and give them chairs behind the register and fair amounts of PTO because we feel like it", they have to be forced to do so or they will operate in the way that generates max profits at the expense of the employees.

The "but if you have a union, it prevents your employer from doing nice things for you!" argument is nonsense.

No union would ever say "oh, you want to give our guys better bennies? No, we won't sign that"

But the employer isn't going to just give them better pay or benefits spontaneously out of the goodness of their hearts

You're coming off goofy af rn bro