Almost 200 Open Petitions For Unions At Starbucks Stores — Our Generation

As of April 9th, there are currently 192 open petitions for unions at Starbucks stores covering over 5,000 total workers. At least seven stores have had their petitions granted and have voted to unionize. Each day sees more petitions filed and the number of workers who could be a part of the emerging Starbucks union grow. What started as a local effort around Buffalo, New York, has now become a nationwide effort to organize the workers of America’s biggest names in coffee. To put down the flood of union petitions, Starbucks has offered an open hand and a clenched fist. The open hand is a series of concessions that could improve wages and benefits. The fist is firing union advocates and trying to legally obstruct the unionization process. So many union petitions are being filed even the National Labor Relations Board claims it is struggling to keep up.

Starbucks Workers United explained that the mission of unionization is to “form a collaborative, creative, forward-thinking, justice-seeking, independent organization that will allow us to advocate for ourselves.” The organization emphasized that unionization is not some anti-Starbucks attack but rather an affirmation of what Starbucks meant when they called every employee partner. Starbucks employees want higher wages, changes to the scheduling system, and a transformation of how the company handles tips, among other demands. Some have expressed frustration as pandemic benefits, such as hazard pay and a daily food and drink allowances, were taken away even as Starbucks' sales rebounded early in the pandemic and profits soared. Starbucks says it has replaced some COVID-19 benefits with others, such as paid COVID-19 isolation leave, as the pandemic has evolved.

Starbucks has responded to unionization by firing union advocates at their stores. Workers at several stores say they have been terminated in retaliation for legally protected union activities. In Memphis, Tennessee seven workers were fired after they announced their union drive. The company has said that the workers were fired on the pretext of workplace conduct violations, and while Starbucks Workers United has filed unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against the company alleging retaliation, the understaffed NLRB has yet to make a judgment, and the workers remain without their jobs, reports Jacobin. Several union leaders in Buffalo have been fired or forced out. Three workers have been fired in Overland Park, Kansas, where the remaining workers are now on strike. And on Monday, Laila Dalton, the nineteen-year-old Starbucks barista in Phoenix, Arizona, whose prior claims of retaliation were substantiated by the NLRB mere weeks ago, lost her job.

A Starbucks spokesperson pointed to the company's benefits package and a $1 billion dollar investment in wage increases, which is projected to bring the average barista pay up to $17 an hour this year, as evidence of their commitment to employees. Howard Schultz, the company’s returning CEO, also promised this week to invest more in the company’s people and stores in the coming years. Starbucks corporate leaders, such as Shultz, have regularly appealed to workers’ emotions, claiming that they can trust the corporate leaders to act in their best interest and that a union is fundamentally unnecessary. Starbucks has also enlisted the help of law firms like Littler Mendelson, who has a reputation for “take-no-prisoners tactics” with unions," to put an end to the union. Veteran union lawyer in San Francisco Stewart Weinberg, said, "It's not just that they play hardball, but they'll do about anything to accomplish their ends.” Starbucks and Littler Mendelson have already run afoul with the National Labor Relations Board when they tried to gerrymander the union elections by asking the NLRB to make the elections encompass all of the Buffalo area stores rather than the stores requesting to unionize. This tactic is common as stores with little union organizing are more likely to vote no on a union as opposed to organized stores.

Unionization efforts are growing so quickly that the National Labor Relations Board has stated it is struggling to keep up. The National Labor Relations Board announced that union election petitions have increased 57% in the first half of 2022. “Right now, there is a surge in labor activity nationwide, with workers organizing and filing petitions for more union elections than they have in the last ten years. This has caused a significant increase in the NLRB’s caseload, and the Agency urgently needs more staff and resources to effectively comply with our Congressional mandate,” said NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. The National Labor Relations Board has received the same Congressional appropriation of $274.2 million for nine consecutive years despite rising costs and inflation. Adjusting for inflation, the Agency’s budget is equivalent to $205.6 million, a decrease of 25% since 2010. Overall Agency staffing levels have dropped 39% since FY2002 and field staffing has shrunk by 50%.

As of 2021, there are 8,947 company-operated and 6,497 franchised Starbucks in the United States, manned by 349,000 employees. While 192 stores with petitions covering 5,000 employees may seem small in the grand scheme, the parabolic increase in stores petitioning for unions shows that there is nothing short of a strong momentum among union organizers.