Local Starbucks workers make move to unionize
Three other Michigan locations also joining national movement
Four Starbucks locations across Michigan are joining the growing national movement to unionize.
“I’m very excited and I think most of my store is excited,” said Alyssa Coakley, 24, shift supervisor for the Starbucks in The Mall at Partridge Creek in Clinton Township regarding Friday’s announcement.
“Eleven out of 14 of us signed union cards,” she added.
Coakley’s location along with two Starbucks in Ann Arbor and one in Grand Blanc are joining the Starbucks Workers United movement that started last month in Buffalo, New York, when a store in the downtown area voted to unionize in a watershed moment for Starbucks, which operates nearly 9,000 locations in the United States. The union victory in Buffalo set off a wave of interest in unionization at other Starbucks locations. Individual stores in Massachusetts, Arizona, Oregon, Illinois, Colorado, Tennessee and Starbucks’ home city of Seattle have petitioned the labor board for union elections. Three additional stores in Buffalo are also seeking union votes.
Starbucks says its stores function better when it works directly with employees, not through a third party. But the company has said it will begin the bargaining process with the downtown Buffalo store.
“The vote outcomes will not change our shared purpose or how we will show up for each other,” Starbucks Executive Vice President Rossann Williams said in a recent letter to employees.
In Michigan, an overwhelming majority of eligible employees at the four locations signed union authorization cards, and all four groups will file petitions for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board, later today, according to Workers United.
Starbucks now has a choice to voluntarily acknowledge Coakley’s group as a union. If it doesn’t, an election will be held for all employees to decide on whether to form a union or not.
“Starbucks likes to say we’re partners but if we really were partners we would have a right to collective bargaining and a seat at the table,” said Coakley, who admits the benefits offered by Starbucks are great.
She has health insurance and its policy on tuition reimbursement helped her graduate with a film degree from Arizona State University.
But she doesn’t feel safe. “Right now we don’t have a mask rule. We don’t enforce social distancing and our lobby is completely open,” she said, noting a handful of employees have had COVID-19.
Other locations also had problems with the working environment.
“We believe that a union will make us true partners in this company,” said a group letter signed by the employees of the Starbucks in Grand Blanc sent to Kevin Johnson, who CEO of Starbucks. “Partner safety has taken a back seat at our store, exemplified by the removal of hazard pay two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of a fire escape in our building and rescinding the requirement of customers to wear masks in our building… We feel that this union is the best chance we have at improving conditions and being able to make a sustainable, meaningful career.”