Starbucks battle keeps brewing
Company offers new incentives for employees to reject unionization effort
A month ago, Jacob Evans and Alexandra Yeager might have been happy to learn they could be in for better pay and benefits from the Stuyvesant Plaza Starbucks where they mix exotic coffee and other beverages for customers, including a loyal coterie of friendly regulars.
But now they see it as unionbusting move, since the announcement of higher pay and perks only applies to Starbucks stores that are nonunion or which are not in the process of holding union votes.
Evans and Yeager are involved in a push to unionize their Starbucks. They and the fledgling union that is backing them, Starbucks Workers United, views Starbucks’ announcement as the latest salvo in a national fight over unionizing the ubiquitous gourmet coffee shops. “It’s not fair,” said Yeager, who like Evans is a senior University at Albany student.
Plans for the pay and benefit increase came Tuesday from Howard Schultz, who founded Starbucks and only recently returned as interim CEO after the company has been struggling in the wake of COVID -19.
Schultz has been credited with building Starbucks from a small Seattle-based coffeehouse opened in 1971 to a behemoth which now employs about a quarter-million full- and part-time “partners,” or employees, at more than 8,800 company locations nationwide. The company also has an international presence.
Schultz has long spoken of his desire to make Starbucks an enjoyable and rewarding place to work and for years has offered benefits such as health insurance to all employees, full- and part-time.
The company has even helped undocumented immigrants remain in the U.S. under the DACA program for those who were brought to the U.S. as children.
But despite the plaudits Schultz has received for these efforts, the unionization push represents a new challenge, and may increase the bar that Schultz and Starbucks have to clear in order to improve employee relations, at least in those stores that are unionizing.
Included in the latest round of increases are eventual raises to at least $17 per hour this summer, more training time for new shift supervisors and longevity raises. They also plan to set up a system for tips to be given via credit cards — something that many restaurants already have.
Those improvements, though, wouldn’t go to stores that have unionized or those who are nearing unionization votes.
Essentially, employees in unionized stores would have to bargain for the benefits in their union contracts.
“New pay and benefits changes will apply to stores where Starbucks has the right to unilaterally make these changes. Where Starbucks lacks the right to unilaterally make these changes (for example, stores where there is a union or union organizing) Starbucks will provide wage increases that were announced in October 2021 and will otherwise comply with all applicable legal requirements,” the company said in a prepared statement.
To workers like Davis and Yeager, that sounds like the company is threatening them with fewer benefits than their nonunion peer stores — which has prompted the Starbucks Workers United union to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging Schultz’s move had a “chilling effect” on organizing efforts.
So far, the number of union drives at Starbucks has been modest compared to the company’s size, with 250 stores filing petitions to hold union certification votes. Forty stores so far have voted to unionize.
But the growth has been steady, with Starbucks in more states joining union efforts.
The NLRB’S database for the Buffalo and Boston areas, for instance, indicates that stores in South Burlington, Vt., East Amherst, N.Y., Albany, East Gardiner, Mass., Amherst, Mass., West Hartford, Conn., Warwick, R.I., Boston, Latham, Worcester and Westford, Mass., Brookline and Waban, Mass., Cambridge and Newtonville, Mass., as well as Rochester, Ithaca and Buffalo have all filed since February to hold union certification votes.
Despite this trend, workers say it’s not so much the pay or benefits — which they say are good — that is driving the push. Instead, they describe what they view as a chronic shortage of staff, which leads to a harried and stressful workplace.
“Feeling supported by management is a huge one,” Yeager said of their concerns.
She and Evans both stressed that they are not speaking on behalf of the company.
And they said they want to keep working with the company, expressing admiration for perks such as a matching 401(k) plan, health insurance, stock options and flexible hours. They even get free Spotify accounts.
It is the pressures that they believe are hurting themselves and customers.
“They are expecting us to operate at a much lower staffing level but with higher numbers of people (customers),” Evans said.
“We’re not able to give customers the experience that we want to.”
Davis’ thoughts echoed those of another Capital Region Starbucks organizer, James Schenk, who is helping to organize a union vote at a Starbucks in Latham, just a few miles from Stuyvesant Plaza.
Like other Starbucks workers, Schenk said he has been impressed with the firm’s stated goal of making customer visits friendly and enjoyable. But that’s hard to carry out without adequate staff.
Getting more staffers could be challenging, though, given the current low unemployment numbers and fierce competition for workers after the COVID -19 pandemic.
“It’s the training and the short staffing,” Davis said of what was driving the union effort.