Starbucks workers racked up three more victories in their union campaign Wednesday afternoon, in a clean sweep as votes were counted at three Buffalo-area stores. The votes at those stores had been scheduled for counting on Feb. 23, but were held up by Starbucks’ legal maneuvering while its anti-union campaign continued. Though the votes had already been cast, delaying the count gave the company time to intimidate and retaliate against workers at other stores, where their votes could still be influenced. But, with active union drives at 129 stores and rising, and the new wins, momentum continues to be with the workers and the union.
Wednesday’s vote count makes six unionized, company-owned Starbucks stores, with five in the Buffalo area and one in Mesa, Arizona. All three votes were close: 8-7, 15-12, and 15-12. Workers in several other cities, including Seattle, Boston, Rochester, and Knoxville, are either already voting or will begin soon.
The first store counted on Wednesday, in Cheektowaga, is a powerful example of the lengths to which Starbucks has gone to kill off the union before it could gain a toehold. That store was closed down by the company and turned into a training center in the early days of the union drive, then reopened as a store. While it was closed, the workers were dispersed to other Starbucks locations in the area, in a significant disruption of the organizing effort. “We just didn’t see people for the entire two months we were closed,” one of the workers, Colin Cochran, told The New York Times. The training center was used to turn new hires against the union during the training process, workers explained in a video from More Perfect Union. But in some cases, the anti-union training proved counterproductive when the new hires arrived in actual working stores and found the coworkers they had been warned would be aggressive and high-pressure were actually welcoming and supportive.
When the Cheektowaga store reopened as a store, the number of workers was dramatically increased in the lead-up to the union vote. “It felt like every time we got someone on board, two new people would be hired,” Cochran said. That union-busting context underlies the one-vote margin and the large number of workers in the store who didn’t cast ballots. And to highlight the degree to which the staffing increases were part of an anti-union effort, workers at the store are now getting fewer hours per week than they previously had. In short, this:
As that tweet suggests, these tactics haven’t been confined to one store. There’s a playbook, coming from a company that is spending very large money on a 30-attorney team at a major anti-union law firm (a firm with an interesting record, and one that seems to apply its theory of how to treat workers to its own associates).
Also on Wednesday, in Memphis, the Rev. Dr. William Barber III led a march to support the Memphis 7, union activists who were fired by Starbucks. Those weren’t the only blatantly retaliatory firings Starbucks has carried out during its union-busting campaign. They were followed by the firing of union leader Cassie Fleischer in Buffalo and, most recently, Danny Rojas, also in Buffalo. Both Fleischer and Rojas were fired over scheduling issues. Rojas was fired after they were 26 minutes late to a 5:30 AM shift after experiencing car troubles. Rojas had been moved to a 5:30 AM shift despite also working a night shift at Trader Joe’s, and had been denied a transfer to a store closer to where they live.
More Perfect Union obtained a firing of Rojas’ firing. “Respectfully, this wouldn’t be happening if wasn’t part of the organizing committee,” they tell their manager in the video. “There are other partners who are late, other partners who are not in dress code, other partners who are not following standards, partners who are misgendering me at work.”
This week, workers chimed in to #WhyWeOrganize, offering a powerful set of explanations for why Starbucks workers are organizing and trying to build power on the job.