A national wave of organizing has hit Starbucks’ company-run stores in the last three months. The author is one of hundreds. Starbucks workers Since early December, when workers in Buffalo won their first union at a company-run facility in the United States in decades, they have filed for elections with National Labor Relations Boards in nearly 100 locations.
Let me set the scene for you: A single cheese-pizza cut into 16ths, a small circle of chairs, corporate managers trying to talk baristas up as if we were best friends.
Our store had closed at noon that Tuesday, so that the company could hold four consecutive “store meetings,” each with a group of around six employees. A few weeks before, five workers had to go into isolation due to Covid and the store had barely modified operating hours—but for these meetings we could shut down for almost the entire day.
These were Starbucks’ “listening sessions,” or corporate union-busting meetings workers hoping to unionize their store are forced to participate in. We at the Hopewell store were ready.
We were prepared
Starbucks has spent millions upon millions of dollars to pay a large law firm to train its managers in union-busting. You’d think they’d be better at it. Every store that files goes though the same basic steps to union-busting. The upside of this is that Starbucks workers can see what’s coming, and get creative.
Our store prepared for the meeting not only by communicating with each other, but also by holding a Zoom meeting with baristas from other cities who’d already gone through the same experience. They gave us a guideline on what to expect, and what they had found to be the most effective in getting rid of union-busters.
We sat down in solidarity when we met with our Store Manager, District manager, and Regional Manager.
The meeting began with our manager. This woman had spent much of the last election cycle discussing her left-leaning politics. She leads the Starbucks “Womens’ Alliance Network,” a group designed to empower female Starbucks employees. She started our meeting by looking us all in the eyes and saying, “I don’t think you need a union.”
Leaving the script
They tried many tactics over the next few days to sow doubt amongst us. They tried one of the arguments they’ve used frequently, which is that with a union we won’t be able to have baristas from other stores cover shifts at our store. Two people responded by pointing to a New Jersey law which allows non-union workers to work in union settings.
Our Regional Manager kindly thought of those workers and wondered, “How would that affect their experience? How would they feel working in an environment where their salary is different?” One worker responded, “Well, I’d think that would just spark interest in them unionizing their store too.”
Evidently, these managers operated from a simple script. We veered off it and they tried to return to it in a sloppy manner.
In the middle of our discussion which had turned into all the positive things our union could help us achieve, our Regional Manager tried to redirect by telling us she was “worried about all the pros and cons she was hearing.” I asked, “I think I missed the cons, what were those again?” She looked annoyed, half-heartedly tried to bring up a previously addressed point, then got quiet.
There are many questions.
The one-hour session ended with a great note. One worker who doesn’t often feel comfortable enough to speak up in front of managers said, “Since we all decided to do this, we all have more confidence and there’s a lot of hope in the store. We don’t even feel like a team, we feel like a family. I come in and now I’m happy to be here.” All of us agreed with her, and we were all in tears—while the three managers looked on and truly had no idea what to do or say.
We found that almost all of our meetings had been similar when we discussed them later that day. Each group of workers had its own strategies, but the union-busting bosses were repeatedly tossed out.
Two workers from the final group decided to create lists of questions that would span multiple sheets of paper. They doubled the meeting to two hours and frustrated managers tried to end their long, unsuccessful day.
I’m certain the goal of the day for these managers was to have us all questioning everything we’ve been working for. Instead, I’m confident they ended their day confused and unsure of where to go next. Maybe they should have prepared more like we did.
