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Three months ago, baristas at a Starbucks in Beverly narrowly voted to unionize, hoping for better wages, working conditions, and benefits.
Now only four of the 14 employees who cast votes in that election remain at the cafe, said barista Rob Stevens — a high turnover rate that threatens the union’s momentum as Starbucks pushes back. Many baristas left, after what Stevens said were petty retaliations by managers, such as dinging them over dress clothes prohibitions, or scheduling them for either too few or too many hours. (Starbucks denies those allegations.)
He intends to hang on, but it’s getting lonely.
“I’ll be a thorn in their side until I die,” he said. “But I’m just scared that it’ll be left to me.”
His is a fairly common sentiment among veteran baristas at newly unionized Starbucks locations across the region, as the fight to organize the Seattle coffee giant enters its third year.
Starbucks remains one of the biggest-name battlegrounds in the wave of union activity that has swept the country since the COVID pandemic, with an estimated 9,000 workers at nearly 380 stores nationwide, and around 20 in New England, voting to join Starbucks Workers United.
But only a few of these locals have sat down with the company to even begin negotiations. (Starbucks has around 15,000 retail locations in the United States.)
In a high-turnover industry, such delays can quickly sap enthusiasm, threatening to bring the union campaign that came to define the resurgence of American labor to a standstill.
At the same time, the dispute dented Starbucks, too. The National Labor Relations Board has issued over 100 complaints against the company, alleging retaliation against union workers and a failure to bargain in good faith. And company shareholders voted earlier this year for an independent assessment of its behavior toward workers.
It found no evidence of an “anti-union playbook,” but suggested increasing training for managers, evaluating disciplinary actions, and strengthening its Global Human Rights statement. Days later, on Dec. 8, Starbucks sent an open letter asking the union to resume contract negotiations.
And on Dec. 13, federal regulators also accused Starbucks of illegally closing 23 stores to suppress union activity and moved to force the company to reopen them.
In a statement, Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trull said company policies “strictly prohibit any retaliatory or threatening behavior directed toward partners who are interested in a union.” He added there are no documented allegations of antiunion activities in Beverly.
“As a company, we respect our partners’ right to organize, freely associate, engage in lawful union activities and bargain collectively without fear of reprisal or retaliation,” Trull said.
What is playing out now is a familiar standoff between a corporation with near-unlimited resources and thousands of retail employees unwilling to stand down, said Clare Hammonds, a professor from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Labor Center.
On one hand, Hammonds said, the union has been successful in undermining the public perception of Starbucks as a progressive company that values its workers’ best interests. The company’s stock also swooned by 10 percent in early December, losing an estimated $11 billion in market value, at a time when the broader stock market was into its current rally. Analysts cited concerns ranging from sales volume to labor strife to customer boycotts related to the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, for Starbucks, Hammonds said the company is benefiting from a period of stagnation that can follow a unionizing vote to weaken morale and push workers out. Its insistence, too, that each of the stores negotiate its contract separately, rather than bargain together, is sure to prolong the process, she added.
“There’s no obligation [for them] to reach an agreement,” Hammonds said. “Nothing happens if they don’t reach an agreement, as long as Starbucks can prove they bargained in good faith.”
In interviews, local baristas said Starbucks’ public proclamations of cooperation with the union have yet to bring change behind the counter.
At the One Financial Center cafe in Providence, for example, barista Hannah Gentley said several employees at the store were forced to leave work — without pay — after wearing union shirts, shortly after Starbucks released its letter suggesting that negotiations begin again. The action also took place a few days after workers at the cafe unanimously voted to organize.
(Gentley said managers had previously not strictly enforced the company’s dress code, which bars graphic T-shirts.)
“Filing for our [union] election and then seeing that Starbucks is finally willing to come to the table for bargaining was really promising,” Gentley added. “But we can’t pretend there aren’t still issues.”
Trull, the company spokesperson, said Starbucks dress code always prohibits all graphic T-shirts and those employees in Providence clocked out to change, but did not return to work.
Two stores in Somerville and Newton Corner serve as another example of the back and forth between the company and union organizers. The cafes first voted to unionize in June, but Starbucks disputed the results due to questions about whether shift supervisors would be in the union. Workers voted again in early December, and announced the union won, only to face a second challenge from Starbucks for the same reason.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Somerville barista Alyssa Milliken said in a statement. “The company is seeking to run out the clock, drag things out. If Starbucks is sincere that it wants a kinder, gentler relationship with partners and our union, let us organize.”
Trull said the company issues challenges to ensure the process is fair, and “the final outcome is true and accurate.” Starbucks challenged the results of the Somerville and Newton Corner elections due to “inappropriate shift manager involvement and support” for the union which tainted the results, Trull said. Those challenges are under review by the NLRB.
Even without pushback from the company, unionization has proved difficult for an industry where workers often leave, and new ones come in.
Longtime barista Julia Berkman served as the de facto union leader at the Waban location in Newton when it voted to unionize in May 2022. When she left the role for medical reasons, the fight fizzled. Another union leader ran into problems with the manager, said Julie Langevin, a regional organizer from Workers United. “It became so bad that the worker felt their only recourse was to quit,” she wrote in an email. “And when others in the store saw a prounion leader bullied out, it chilled vocal and open support for the union.”
“It is so hard to keep the energy alive,” Berkman said.
Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com.Follow her @ditikohli_.
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Starbucks union saga: Fight grinds down employees and company - The Boston Globe
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