Ever been in a packed Starbucks in that hour before commuters arrive at their office desks dual-wielding lattes?
Take a look around, Starbucks Shift Supervisor Niah Baker said. Sometimes, you can see the reason these workers are so intent on unionizing.
There’s usually two baristas, someone running the register, another manning the drive-thru and another employee tasked with the ovens.
“But, when you’re seeing baristas running around, filling multiple of those roles, it can be really taxing,” Baker said. “It kind of feels like you need more arms.”
Looking to achieve more consistent scheduling of staff levels, as well as living wages in a high-priced area of the state, last year, Baker and fellow baristas at Montclair’s Starbucks became the fourth location of the multinational coffee chain to unionize. Two more have done the same this year.
The New Jersey locations are the latest coffeehouses swayed by a national unionization movement led largely by labor organization Workers United. According to Baker, who has become an organizer for the Starbucks-focused arm of Workers United to help other locations unionize, you can expect to see more news of that in the future.
The New Jersey State AFL-CIO also has gotten involved in organizing locations and expects more activity in years to come, according to a source within the organization. The organization is supportive of Workers United’s movement.
Initially fueled by successful union votes in 2021 at locations in Buffalo, New York, the campaign that’s targeting some of the 9,000 Starbucks-owned stores nationally has involved accusations by Workers United of illegal union-busting tactics — as well as strikes at nearly 200 store locations.
A representative from Starbucks did not immediately respond for comment on the union drive.
The crew at Montclair’s Starbucks were inspired by what was going on in nearby New York at a time when their own stores were being slowed down or closed by initial waves of COVID-19.
“We saw a need for scheduling improvements (at our location), higher wages in Essex County, where the cost of living and affording apartments can be difficult, and more of a focus on health and safety, given high amounts of incidents at our store involving homeless people and whatnot,” Baker said.
Baker added that a lot of trust shared between the location’s coworkers won them their union vote, in spite of some pushback from management.
Baker, at 30, is one of the location’s oldest baristas. A majority are in their early- to mid-20s. The job isn’t one they wanted to walk away from.
“I work at the Starbucks in the community I live in, which I started doing just because of the convenience of that and because I heard of their health care benefits,” Baker said. “I had never gotten to know so many of my neighbors until I started working at Starbucks. I see people on the street who recognize me. It has really connected me to my community, and made me feel like I want to work there as long as I can.”
Although the momentum behind the unionization of Starbucks locations is nationwide in scope, Baker believes workers in New Jersey enjoy certain advantages. There’s a network of community advocates and worker groups spurring on conversations.
And it doesn’t hurt their cause that state leaders, including Gov. Phil Murphy, who visited a Hamilton Starbucks last year to celebrate it becoming one of the first to unionize in the state, have expressed support for the organization of Starbucks workers.
The next step for these workers is to enter into negotiations with Starbucks, a process the company has reported it has begun in each store where a union has been appropriately certified.
Local baristas are excited about being steeped in those conversations … and being at the ground-floor of a movement that’s still gaining steam nationwide.
“We have a lot of momentum we’re seeing right now,” Baker said. “We’ve gone from about 250 locations (that have voted to unionize nationally) to almost 500 from last year to this one. It has been exponential growth. Once we finalize this contract, we’re only going to see more of that.”
Campos-Medina focuses on union success
Nothing happens in a vacuum in the world of labor organizing.
Not only does one Starbucks location joining a union lead to others pushing for it, it also sets the pace for the larger worker movement that individuals such as Patricia Campos-Medina have spent many years rooting for.
Campos-Medina, a Rutgers University alumna who is also a visiting fellow at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, is also now studying that larger movement as executive director of the Cornell University-based Worker Institute.
Through her work of conducting labor market research at the Worker Institute — insights used to advise unions and their leaders on solutions for public- and private-sector workers — she said some of the biggest questions come out of the so-called gig economy.
“How do unions go about creating more collective bargaining power for workers in the gig economy?” she said. “What does it mean when Amazon, one of the country’s biggest employers, and Google, and other large corporations rely on gig employment? And what are the long-term implications of not having collective bargaining in that economy at all?”
Another area of focus: How do unions that have made gains, such as Starbucks workers who voted to unionize under Workers United, translate that into tangible wins for workers? None of the Starbucks locations that have unionized nationally has thus far ratified a collective bargaining agreement.
Campos-Medina, who ran this year in New Jersey for a U.S. Senate seat against U.S. Rep. Andrew Kim in the Democratic primary, would like to see federal labor reform that looks something like the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act.
“Because that would give us the ability to hold companies accountable to get to the collective bargaining table within 30 days of winning (a union) vote,” she said. “There’s also no consequence for employers firing union activists or leaders as a result of retaliation for union activity. The PRO Act would give more teeth to the law in that regard, too.”
