Sacramento is now home to a Starbucks Workers United milestone.
In a 11-2 vote last Thursday, the staff at the 7th & K store — located in Downtown Commons — was the 300th to win its union election and the first in the region to successfully unionize.This location joins over 20 stores that have won their union votes in the country this year. In California, that includes one Pleasanton location, which had its votes tallied this past week.
“I feel partially in utter shock, awe, disbelief,” Maizie Jensen, a barista and lead organizer at the newly unionized store, told CapRadio. “The other part is … relief and celebration and excitement for what’s next … We’ve all just also been celebrating at work, little comments here and there, like ‘Oh, you look like you have rights.’”
Key rallying points for the store’s union effort included low wages, overwork and safety. Jensen said baristas and customers at the 7th & K store have experienced verbal harassment, death threats and more.
“We want to be able to serve our customers and make coffee, the way that we all deserve to be able to go to work and be safe, or be a customer at a coffee shop and be safe,” she said. “For our store, [we’re looking at] the new options that we have of being able to bargain in good faith.”
While the downtown Sacramento Starbucks also filed to unionize with the 19th & J Starbucks location — which held its union vote the same day— that vote was a tie. Seven workers voted in favor of unionizing, with 7 voting against.
There have been other unsuccessful efforts to unionize stores in the region, like in Roseville — which withdrew its election petition — and El Dorado Hills, which also lost its election, albeit by a much larger margin of 7-19.
In response to the unionization effort in the greater Sacramento region, Andrew Trull, a spokesperson for Starbucks, said via email the company continues to “invest, monitor and track efforts to improve the experience offered in our Sacramento stores.”
“We believe that a direct relationship with our partners — where we have the flexibility to share success, as we always have — is the right path forward for our company, our partners and our stakeholders,” he said. “We recognize that a subset of partners feel differently — and we respect their right to organize and to engage in lawful union activities without fear of reprisal or retaliation.”
Baristas say union movement meets corporate pushback
Compared to the initial speed at which Starbucks stores across the country were unionizing— 100 stores jumped to 200 stores in two months — the time it took to reach 300 unionized stores has been slower, comparatively.
But that’s because the continued organizing push for greater worker protections and safety has taken place against the backdrop of fierce union-busting from the company, Starbucks baristas say.
Despite CEO Howard Schultz’s insistence that the company “unequivocally has not broken the law” during a U.S. Senate hearing on Mar. 29, the National Labor Relations Board has affirmed otherwise. Last month, it found the company violated federal labor law in 21 Buffalo, NY stores between 2021 and 2022.
The NLRB also ruled last month that the company was violating labor law by refusing to participate in bargaining sessions via teleconference.
Starbucks’ Trull said the company feels the NLRB’s General Counsel’s attempts to disregard the precedent of in-person bargaining is “inappropriate.”
“Workers United is asking for a seat at the table, we’re simply encouraging them [to] take their seat in-person at the negotiating table,” he said.
Starbucks denies any wrongdoing. Trull said the company has filed over 110 Unfair Labor Practice charges of its own against the union, which has filed over 500 such charges against the company.
Starbucks shareholders have also shown interest in further investigation of the company’s practices. In a March 23 shareholder meeting, they approved a proposal that would place the company under review to assess its adherence to the International Labor Organization’s Core Labor Standards.
Still, amid ongoing labor disputes, Starbucks Workers United said Starbucks employees have formed more new unions than at any other company this century.
In a press release from the union sent out Monday morning, Michelle Eisen, a barista and organizer at the first Starbucks to unionize, said baristas are “writing labor history.”
“I’m so proud we were able to show other partners what we could win if we stood together,” Eisen said.
Sacramento store reflects, prepares for negotiation as next steps
Jensen and her coworkers from the 7th & K Street store are taking a moment to learn about the rights they’ve gained from voting to unionize before discussing what they’re hoping to solidify in their contract. She said they haven’t decided yet whether they’re planning to request hybrid or virtual bargaining sessions, but added that many other unionized stores have asked for those options in addition to — or instead of — in-person bargaining.
“I know that people have gotten COVID and not been able to make sit-down conversations, or it's hard for partners to be able to go places, and I know that that has become an issue after stores started bargaining in person,” she said. “The accessibility of being able to make sure that everyone does have the ability to be at the conversation, I think, is really important.”
Because each union election is won on a store-by-store basis, each individual location conducts its own bargaining sessions with Starbucks. The inaugural Starbucks Workers United store, in Buffalo, NY, has remained in negotiations since it won its union vote in Dec. 2021 and doesn’t yet have a contract.
Right now, Trull, the Starbucks spokesperson, says the company “has — or is planning to meet — union representatives in-person for more than five sets of single-store bargaining sessions in markets across the U.S.”
To buttress individual store demands, a spokesperson from Starbucks Workers United told CapRadio that workers have created a national bargaining committee to coordinate demands across the country and will continue to fight for workers to join contract negotiations through “inclusive, hybrid negotiations.”
“Starbucks has an identical menu across the country,” the Starbucks Workers United spokesperson said. “It’s no surprise that workers across our campaign have similar issues and want to support each other in bargaining with the company to resolve them.”
Moving forward, Jensen said she also wants to participate in that support through sharing what she’s learned through the unionizing process.
“Unionizing doesn't really change who we are, or what we do on a regular day-to-day basis,” she said. “It's just that we have the ability to speak up for ourselves. And we've earned a seat at the table through voting, because a lot of times things change without acknowledgement towards us or us being able to speak on our own behalf.”
After the NLRB certifies the election, the Sacramento location can begin negotiations with the company after the store chooses a bargaining representative and sends an initial bargaining demand to Starbucks, to which the company must respond.
