Labor organizers hope this can be the 12 months that Starbucks’ U.S. staff finally negotiate a union contract. But with bargaining at a standstill and hundreds of employees still unconvinced of the union’s value, that final result is uncertain.
Just a little greater than a 12 months after a Starbucks in Buffalo, Latest York, became the first U.S. store to unionize in many years — touching off a wave of labor actions at other big corporations like Amazon and Chipotle — the push to prepare Starbucks stores has slowed.
Since December of 2021, 358 Starbucks stores have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to carry union elections. Petition activity peaked last March, when 69 stores asked to carry elections. By November, that had fallen to 13. Eleven stores filed petitions last month.
However the union drive also faces resistance from Starbucks’ own staff. Thus far, employees have voted to unionize at 274 stores, or 3% of Starbucks’ 9,000 company-owned U.S. locations, in response to the labor board. Sixty-three stores have voted to not unionize.
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Starbucks barista Jen Langberg said nobody at her store in Henderson, Nevada, ever talks about unionizing. She appreciates Starbucks for raising her pay to $15 per hour in August.
“Overall, I’ve only ever had a really positive experience working for Starbucks,” said Langberg, a five-year worker.
Labor organizers say the long wait for Starbucks to barter store contracts with Staff United — an offshoot of the Service Employees International Union — is hurting efforts to prepare.
“I’ve talked to partners at stores that haven’t unionized they usually say, ‘I’m going to attend and see what happens,’” said Josie Serrano, a union organizer and Starbucks worker in Long Beach, California. “It’s a bummer. We do have to handle and fight that.”
Contract negotiations at three stores in Buffalo and Arizona began last spring. Since then, bargaining sessions have been held at 75 stores, but Starbucks has walked out on the meetings since it opposes having union officials join by Zoom.
Starbucks says labor organizers are violating the principles by failing to share Zoom links or name distant participants and, in at the least two cases, posting recordings from bargaining sessions on social media. The union says Starbucks is reversing itself after initially allowing Zoom negotiations last spring.
In late December, the labor board’s Seattle office filed a grievance alleging that Starbucks had didn’t bargain with 21 stores in Oregon and Washington. Starbucks blames the union for delays, saying it hasn’t responded when Starbucks proposes bargaining dates. A hearing before an administrative law judge on the NLRB is scheduled for June.
Even in less contentious cases, bargaining is a slow process, with no deadline by which a contract should be reached and little intervention by the federal government unless the parties reach an impasse. Only 35% of overall union elections lead to a primary contract inside a 12 months, in response to Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University’s ILR School. Forty-four percent of staff still don’t have a contract greater than three years after an election.
Serrano said the wait could be demoralizing, but may also energize staff. Twice within the last two months, tons of of Starbucks employees have walked off the job at greater than 100 stores across the U.S., demanding higher wages, more consistent scheduling and a return to the bargaining table.
Sarah Pappin was amongst the workers striking outside a store in Starbucks’ hometown of Seattle in December. Pappin criticized Starbucks for delaying bargaining and adding advantages like bank card tipping to non-union stores.
“They’re selecting to withhold income from individuals who live paycheck to paycheck, and it’s absolutely disgusting,” Pappin said.
For Serrano, the drive to unionize is more personal. Shortly after joining the corporate 4 years ago, Serrano, who’s transgender and uses they/them pronouns, was approached by a customer who made derogatory and threatening comments to them. A supervisor watched but didn’t intervene; later, Serrano got a verbal warning from a store manager who was upset that Serrano’s coworker reported the incident on to the corporate.
“I see unionizing as a method to get written accountability procedures and have the facility to say something if Starbucks doesn’t need to say the hard part out loud,” Serrano said.
But it is going to still be an uphill battle for organizers to persuade hundreds of other employees to back their cause.
Nancy Sowul, a Starbucks barista in Cary, North Carolina, said she is typically asked by customers on the drive-thru why her store doesn’t unionize. To her, the reply is straightforward.
“I actually have nothing bad about Starbucks to say. I like my store, I like my manager and I’m 100% supportive of the corporate,” Sowul said.
Sowul, a single parent, joined Starbucks nine years ago because she was in search of a part-time job with health advantages that will help her take care of her autistic son. Starbucks has at all times accommodated her son’s appointments, she said, and at the peak of the pandemic, it paid her salary for six months while she stayed home with him.
In October, Sowul began work toward a free degree through Starbucks’ online partnership with Arizona State University. She goals to graduate from college in eight years, when her son can be graduating from highschool.
“Each necessary a part of my life, Starbucks walked through it with me,” she said.
AP Video Journalist Manuel Valdes contributed from Seattle.
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