In December, workers at two Starbucks coffee stores in Buffalo, New York voted to form a union, the company’s first in the nation. Starbucks, the largest coffeehouse chain in the world had fought the union drive and lost. In February, workers at a third Starbucks store in Mesa, Arizona also voted to join the Starbucks Workers United union, affiliated with the SEIU, bringing the number of company-owned stores with a union to three, out of roughly 9,000 across the U.S.
Although the union drive does not yet have the number of victories needed to make major changes at the coffee giant, these early wins have inspired Starbucks workers nationwide to begin organizing in their own local stores. Thus far, more than 100 Starbucks locations in some 26 states have filed the paperwork necessary to hold their own union election.
The company, however, has been fighting back. Seven Starbucks workers in Memphis, Tennessee, were fired from their jobs in early February for alleged violation of safety and security policy. But according to union activists, these baristas were terminated for their work organizing a union. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Alex Press, a staff writer at Jacobin Magazine, who talks about the momentum in Starbucks workers’ national union drive, and the importance of the drive for the U.S. labor movement.
ALEX N. PRESS: Even though these stores that have won are really small so far, right? There are three stores now that have officially unionized through the National Labor Relations Board. For the labor movement, the union movement writ large, it’s significant because these kind of workplaces are very hard to organize. They’re really small. Service workers are almost entirely nonunion in the United States and the labor movement has had a lot of trouble getting a foot in the door into union campaigns like this.
And so the fact that this campaign is spreading like wildfire, you know, in just a couple of months, this has spread across the majority of states. There are now union campaigns happening at stores in, I think, 28 states in the U.S. It’s exciting. And it also inspires other workers who work in restaurants or coffee shops to start thinking about whether they could organize their workplaces, too.
And of course, the fast food or low-wage food service model in the United States is, you know, high turnover, making sure people leave before anyone starts changing anything. So something like this really has the potential to actually change that model itself and and win bigger standards for the whole industry.
SCOTT HARRIS: Alex, what are the major issues for these Starbucks workers? Is it wages? Is it working conditions? Is it benefits? Is it scheduling? I’m sure it’s probably a piece of all that. But from talking with those Starbucks baristas and other workers, what are their main concerns that got them to pitch in with the union?
ALEX N. PRESS: Yeah, so you mentioned scheduling and hours, and those are definitely two really big ones, especially the fast food sector and the low-wage food service economy. The fact that hours can change on an almost daily basis, sometimes. There’s very few laws in place to stop a manager from changing your shift every week to something new or to giving you a full 40 hours or 35 hours a week. Right? And Starbucks workers do complain about that, about unreliable scheduling, about having things changed, not making enough money to get on to health insurance benefits or other sort of stabilizing benefits that would come with full-time work.
So their issues are very similar to what you hear from any other like restaurant or coffee shop employee, which is just this feeling that you’re at the whim of the boss and you can’t plan a life around that, especially if you have children. For example, scheduling childcare becomes almost impossible. And I go into lengths at about that because just today, Starbucks workers through the union they’ve built, as well as sort of just at a national level, have said that Starbucks is implementing a new policy to cut their hours. Some of the union supporters are actually winding up either being pushed out or fired because of this policy.
And so it’s sort of in certain ways, kind of backfiring in that this is precisely why workers are organizing at Starbucks. And it’s how Starbucks is trying to shake things up, right? By making their schedules even less sustainable. But of course, wages, other things like that are a big issue at Starbucks as well.
SCOTT HARRIS: I did want to ask you about the role of community support, solidarity. A lot of people encounter these staff people at Starbucks, you know, every day as they go to work or they come back from work or, you know, grabbing their coffee, having their names written out on their cups and such. How important is that in this union drive, in your view?
ALEX N. PRESS: I think it’s really important in a way. I mean, Starbucks has always been a very progressive brand. Howard Schultz, the founder of CEO, the founder of the company, you know, is a very political guy. And, you know, it’s understood that Starbucks, that you can be queer, you can be nonbinary, you can wear a BLM pin.
You know, Starbucks is this quote unquote progressive place. Right? And so they sort of backed themselves into a corner with that and that the customers expect this to be a place that treats people well. And so if the workers can make a credible case that what they want is a reasonable thing and that they’re being prevented from having it by the company, Starbucks is very vulnerable to having, you know, reputational damage from the customers.
And what we’ve seen at the stores that are unionizing or filing for union election is pretty remarkable community support. You know, the customers are often liberals or progressives. They’re in cities. This is where these Starbucks are. They’re often by campuses, universities. And so when a Starbucks union drive goes public, they hold rallies at the store.
You know, the thing you mentioned about a customer is putting their name on the order so they can get it called out. Now, customers, of course, are all putting all sorts of “Union Yes” and “Union Supporter” names instead of the real names to sort of show workers that the community is with them.
And, you know, I’ve seen all sorts of stories and heard them from friends where you know, when Starbucks is holding what’s called a captive audience meeting, where the management sits all the workers down and tells them why a union is bad, you know, customers will stand outside and hold the pro-union signs and they will remind the workers that, you know, at the end of the day, the community is with them, right? And no one is going to let Starbucks get away with, say, firing a union supporter. Not only is it illegal, but also the Starbucks at that store is going to have to deal with very unhappy customers. I would say that’s important.
And also the support of the broader labor movement is huge, right? This takes resources, it takes organizers and it takes labor leaders speaking up and saying that they recognize these workers and when a union is good for them as well — whether or not they’re going to have members there. And so far, they’ve been getting that. And I think that’s really important because, you know, unions, unfortunately, sometimes snipe at each other. They don’t cooperate that well. But I think there’s pretty unanimous consensus here that getting some of these workplaces organized in a largely nonunion sector is very important or everyone.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Alex N. Press (27:17) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
For more information from Jacobin magazine, visit jacobinmag.com.
