2022 saw a wave of new unions form. Getting to the bargaining table is the challenge for 2023
CHICAGO — As snow fell on the picket line outside a Bucktown Starbucks in November, striking unionized baristas kept warm with cups of Colectivo Coffee, which is brewed by members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a union that also represents baristas at Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee.
Two years ago, Starbucks, Colectivo and Intelligentsia weren’t unionized. But filings for new unions have swelled over the last couple of years as workers reevaluated their relationship with work during the pandemic while a tight labor market gave them more leverage in the workplace.
The Starbucks campaign in particular has spread like wildfire: The union won its first elections in December 2021 and now represents workers at nearly 270 stores nationwide, including about 10 in Chicago and its suburbs.
But it’s not just Starbucks: In Chicago, museum workers at the Art Institute, faculty and staff members at its affiliated school and employees at the Newberry Library have all unionized this year. So have workers at Howard Brown Health, budtenders at Zen Leaf cannabis dispensaries and booksellers at Half Price Books in Niles. Baristas at four La Colombe Coffee Roaster locations filed for union elections in December. Thousands of graduate students at Northwestern and the University of Chicago filed petitions within two weeks of each other in November.
For the hundreds of newly unionized workers in Chicago, the hard work has only just begun; now they must negotiate a first contract with their employers. Labor leaders see a contract as the gold standard for protecting workers’ rights and securing gains in areas like pay and benefits. But the process can take years.
Just over a third of all new unions secure a contract within a year, but another third still don’t have a contract after three years, according to research by Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
“The NLRB can force an election under our labor law, but the NLRB can’t force a contract,” Bronfenbrenner said.
WORKERS’ FRUSTRATIONS MOUNT
At Starbucks, conflicts over bargaining came to a head in Novemberwhen workers at more than 100 of the company’s stores walked off the job, taking aim at what they described as the company’s failure to bargain in good faith.
“I’m more frustrated than I would have guessed,” said Teddy Hoffman, a shift supervisor at an Edgewater Starbucks that was one of the first in Chicago to unionize. “A lot of us have been sort of surprised by how brutal and kind of cunning the union-busting has been.”
Hoffman, a member of his store’s bargaining committee, said Starbucks representatives showed up to a bargaining session but left the table almost immediately because the union planned to allow members who could not attend in person to watch negotiations via Zoom.
“Lawyers showed up, they saw that we had our laptop open, and they walked outside. And that was kind of it for eight hours,” Hoffman said.
The coffee giant says it is bargaining in good faith and claims Starbucks Workers United is engaging in “ongoing misconduct” by allegedly unlawfully recording bargaining sessions, including in Chicago during negotiations with Hoffman’s store.
“We’ve come to the table time-after-time prepared to bargain in good faith only to be met with Workers United representatives who insist on broadcasting the sessions to unknown individuals not in the room and, in some instances, post recordings of the sessions online,” said Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trull in a statement, adding that some excerpts of proceedings have been shared “broadly by individuals on social media.”
The union denies it has recorded bargaining sessions. Both the union and the company have filed unfair labor practices charges with the NLRB alleging misconduct during bargaining, including in Chicago.
On average, it takes workers 465 days to sign their first collective bargaining agreement after they unionize, a delay that is getting longer, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Law.
Bargaining can take a long time even if both a union and an employer are working in good faith as union members and managers get up to speed on what the law requires, said Robert Bruno, director of the labor studies program at the University of Illinois.
“They don’t have experience doing this before,” Bruno said. “It’s not a mature relationship.”
Another factor that can slow the process: Many employers simply don’t want to share power with workers, Bruno said.
“That is what a collective bargaining agreement is going to do. It’s going to compel the employer to give up some unilateral control over the labor force,” Bruno said.
Petitions for union representation to the National Labor Relations Board were up 53%. Chicago-area filings were up more than 17% over the prior year.
Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said public support for unions was nothing new in the city.
“We’re a working-class city that has people across the income strata that have respect for collective voice and having representation in the workplace,” he said.
In what was touted as a historic win for organized labor, voters elected in November to add an amendment to the state constitution stating that workers have a “fundamental right” to unionize and collectively bargain with their employers.
The amendment prevents the passage of “right-to-work” laws, which can weaken private sector unions by allowing workers to refuse to pay the dues used to support collective bargaining and legal action.
Labor experts said that, depending on how the amendment is interpreted by courts, it could also expand labor rights by extending the right to collectively bargain to new groups of workers, such as farmworkers or gig workers, or by expanding the kinds of issues that can be subject to bargaining.
LABOR BOARD TAKES ACTION
Beyond allegations that it is deliberately slow-walking bargaining, Starbucks has faced widespread allegations of lawbreaking by the union and in some cases by the labor board.
In Chicago, the labor board’s regional director has accused Starbucks of firing a worker in Wilmette for trying to unionize, disciplining a Hyde Park barista for testifying at a labor board hearing and illegally threatening and interrogating baristas at stores that were attempting to unionize.
Starbucks has denied those allegations; a hearing before an administrative law judge is scheduled for January.
“Starbucks informs and trains managers that no partner will be disciplined for engaging in lawful union activity and that there will be no tolerance for any unlawful anti-union behavior, if ever found to be true,” Trull said.
He declined to comment further on the Chicago-area labor board complaints.
Starbucks has also faced accusations of closing stores for union activity. The company announced it would close a store in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood shortly before it was set to begin bargaining in October, citing safety issues. Starbucks said employees at the store had reported a range of issues such as theft, vandalism, threats of violence and assault. Workers United slammed the decision as “union-busting.”