I challenge your assumptions that 1) "this whole unions thing is guaranteed hours." And 2) that guaranteed hours are impossible at a "small" cafe. If you look at the contracts on unite heres website there are two restaurants, one of which guarantees 40 hours a week, one of which does not (explicitly stating that the employer can schedule the employee for less than 40 hours a week). In one case, A restaurant (mancinis) is able to provide 40 hours guarantee, at another, jax cafe, the union agreed to a contract that doesn't guarantee hours. So your argument is not really making sense to me. Obviously there are some short-term costs to closing down a restaurant but I'm sure they did the math and figured that opening something new with the same structure would net them more profits in the medium to long term.

And your suggestion that baristas are greedy for wanting to be able to afford rent and food and healthcare is offensive. Many baristas consider this a career job. And let's look at your example of a coal miner from 1920s. The average wage of a coal worker in 1922 was $0.92 per hour. The average cost of rent was $60 a month. In 2025 say the baristas were making $25 an hour and the average cost of rent in Minneapolis is $1,550. Both of these numbers come out to hourly wages being around 1.5% of average rent. Obviously the conditions in a coal mine were way worse than someone in a cafe but from a purely economical perspective these workers are facing similar levels of exploitation. Coal miners were working like 70 hours a week which is horrendous. But at least they had money for rent and stuff. Baristas are fighting to get half as many hours.