WORKERS UNITED

FOR BREWING CHANGE

IN JUST ONE YEAR—FROM

December 9, 2021, when baristas in Buffalo cast their first votes, through the end of 2022—Starbucks workers managed to unionize 271 cafés in 36 states, a feat that turned a largely grassroots organizing campaign into the most prominent face of America’s renewed labor movement. The drive converted a new Starbucks store every 1.5 days, added 7,200 workers to organized labor’s ranks, and accounted for one-fifth of all the union victories recorded in America last year. The effort was led by Starbucks employees and shepherded by Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. Workers United quietly advised the growing national network of baristas while assembling a team of lawyers and letting workers speak for themselves.

In May, Starbucks announced that workers at nonunion stores would get an additional pay raise, better sick leave, and other enhanced benefits, ostensibly to halt the campaign’s momentum. The number of new union elections has started to slow, owing to either improved work conditions or a fear that Starbucks will retaliate, and bargaining talks at unionized cafés have stalled as the company slowwalks negotiations. But Workers United is flexing its muscle more prominently, filing hundreds of unfair labor practice charges and organizing multiday strikes (it has contributed $1 million toward offsetting lost wages). “If Starbucks thinks they can just play out the clock,” says Workers United president Lynne Fox, “I would suggest very strongly that the opposite is true.”