The
iconic American coffee chain, Starbucks, employs hundreds of
thousands of people in nearly 9,000 cafés nationwide. And yet,
the news that a handful of Starbucks employees at one
café
in
Buffalo, New York, recently voted to join Workers
United—an
affiliate of SEIU—made headlines nationally. The New York Times
called it a “big
symbolic win for labor,”
while the Washington Post hailed it as a “watershed
union vote.”
Social media feeds were replete with joyous
posts
celebrating
the vote. The café, located on Elmwood Avenue, was the only
one out of three union-voting Starbucks locations in Buffalo that
successfully chose to unionize.
“It
is
significant,”
says
Cedric de Leon
of
the Starbucks union vote. De Leon is the director of the Labor Center
at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is an associate
professor of sociology, and he is the author of several books about
labor organizing in the U.S. “The employer knows it and the
workers know that establishing a beachhead in one of the largest
corporations, and really an iconic brand in the U.S. hospitality
market, is a major accomplishment.”
Ahead
of ballots being cast, Starbucks tried to delay
the vote
and
even stacked the Buffalo cafés with new staff to try to dilute
“yes” votes. It flew
in external managers
to
closely watch workers in what was seen as brazen intimidation. The
company, which has long resisted
union
activity, brought its former Chief Executive Howard Schultz to
Buffalo to discourage workers from unionizing, even shutting down its
cafés during his Saturday visit so they could attend what was
essentially a captive-audience address.
Given
that Starbucks would go to such lengths to stop just a handful of
stores from joining a union, it’s no surprise that it took 50
years after its founding for a single café to unionize. And
it’s no wonder that commentators are shocked by what is a
potentially groundbreaking event.
During
his address, Schultz, who remains Starbucks’ largest
shareholder, reportedly spoke of the company’s health insurance
benefits and tuition assistance as reasons why a union was
unnecessary. Believing he knows what is best for workers, Schultz had
written
in his first memoir,
“I was convinced that under my leadership, employees would come
to realize that I would listen to their concerns. If they had faith
in me and my motives, they wouldn’t need a union.”
Yet
there is evidence that Starbucks workers could indeed use the
collective bargaining power that a union confers. A study
by
Unite Here of thousands of Starbucks employees working at airport
locations found a racial pay gap with Black workers earning $1.85
less per hour than their white counterparts. Nearly one in five of
those workers reported not having enough money to purchase food.
And
in 2020, in the midst of the national uprisings for racial justice,
Starbucks issued
a policy
prohibiting
workers from wearing pins or clothing in support of Black Lives
Matter. The company backpedaled
after
a public uproar.
Like
Amazon and Walmart, Starbucks has often retaliated against those
workers seeking to organize a union. Starbucks barista Gabriel
Ocasio Mejias
in
Orlando, Florida, was fired after attempting to convince his
colleagues to join Unite Here.
The
pandemic was particularly hard on workers as online to-go orders
sharply spiked. A shift supervisor in New York who wished to remain
anonymous told the
Guardian,
“They want us to just be these robots that move fast, we’re
just little drones to them that just need to pump out as many lattes
as we can in a half-hour.”
When
asked to respond to the shift supervisor’s complaint, a
Starbucks spokesperson responded with a statement that could only
have been written by a public relations expert. “Our 200,000
partners across the US are the best people in the business, and their
experiences are key to helping us make Starbucks a meaningful and
inspiring place to work,” said the spokesperson. “We
offer a world-class benefits program for all part- and full-time
partners and continued support for partners during Covid-19 to care
for themselves and their families, and we continue to have an
industry-leading retention rate.”
It’s
true that the company refers to its employees as “partners,”
as if using a term that sounds powerful is enough to eclipse the lack
of worker power. But the use of the term has a downside as workers
are challenging Starbucks to live up to what “partner”
implies.
One
of the Buffalo Starbucks workers who voted to unionize, Michelle
Eisen, said in a statement,
“This win is the first step in changing what it means to be a
partner at Starbucks, and what it means to work in the service
industry more broadly.” She added, “With a union, we now
have the ability to negotiate a contract that holds Starbucks
accountable to be the company we know it can be, and gives us a real
voice in our workplace.” And it’s precisely that ability
that Starbucks and Schultz are terrified of.
“When
workers get the notion that this giant boss who seemed like a
colossus a year ago can be beaten, when they see that, then they
begin to organize,” says De Leon. Already two Starbucks stores
in Boston,
upon seeing the success of the Buffalo café, signed up for
union elections. Those workers, once more challenging Starbucks to
live up to the term “partners,” issued a statement
saying, “We believe that there can be no true partnership
without power-sharing and accountability.”
Workers
at a store in Mesa, Arizona, are similarly inspired by the victory in
Buffalo and filed a petition for a union election. One worker told
the Arizona
Republic,
“Our eyes were on Buffalo.”
Increasingly,
workers appear to be seeing through the anti-union propaganda of
their corporate employers. Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges said
of
the pro-union activity in Mesa, “We shouldn’t have a
third party in between us when it comes to working together to
develop the best experience that our partners can have.” But a
Buffalo Starbucks worker serving as a union liaison for Mesa workers
countered, “our union is going to be made up of baristas and
shift supervisors who make up Starbucks. That’s not a third
party.”
The
general public also seems to be growing more supportive of union
efforts, as a worker at the Buffalo store reported
that
more people were coming to the café, excited by the news of
the union vote, and tipping more generously than usual. A Gallup
poll
in
September found the highest public support for unions since 1965,
with a whopping 68 percent of respondents supporting the right to
collective bargaining. De Leon says, “So many successful
organizing campaigns are buttressed by community support.”
The
eyes of those union supporters among us now ought to be on Starbucks
management as the question remains whether or not the company will
negotiate a contract in good faith. Terri Gerstein writing in the
American Prospect
warned
that “even in Buffalo, the battle is far from over,” and
that “there are too many ways employers can try to destroy a
union even after an election.” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,
who had declared
his solidarity
with
the Buffalo workers, demanded
after
news emerged of the vote that “The company should stop pouring
money into the fight against the union and negotiate a fair contract
now.”
This
commentary
was
produced by
Economy
for All,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.