‘We Have to Push Back’: Baristas Call out Starbucks for Stonewalling Contract Talks

Members of Starbucks Workers United confront corporate execs at their New York City offices on May Day. Photos by Steve Wishnia

By Steve Wishnia

“Why do you waste so much money on union-busting?” Laura Rosario, a barista at a Starbucks in Montclair, N.J., demanded May 1, as a group of 15 to 20 Starbucks Workers United members filled the entrance room at the company’s New York regional office near Penn Station.

“What’s the point of it? Just come and negotiate!” Rosario continued. The back of her T-shirt read “Partners? Prove it. WE are Starbucks.”

Four company officials stood impassively in the entrance to a corridor in the back of the room, as the workers read a list of eight contract demands. They didn’t react until Queens barista Maria Florence tried to hand the list to partner-relations manager Rhesa Welch. She refused to take it, saying “no, thank you,” so Florence left it on a counter.

Florence, who has worked at the Astoria Boulevard Starbucks for three years, told Work-Bites earlier that she wanted to call out “the bosses that I don’t see every day” on their union-busting and refusal to negotiate a contract.

“We have the same issues — them coming to negotiations and immediately walking out,” said Niah Baker, another Montclair barista. The union, he says, wants workers unable to attend in person to be able to participate on Zoom. The company refuses to do that, calling it “hybrid bargaining.”

“It was very disheartening they wouldn’t accept the proposals in hand,” Montclair barista Celeste Cruz said afterwards. “It just shows they’re bargaining in bad faith.”

As of April 26, the National Labor Relations Board had certified that workers at 295 Starbucks coffeeshops had voted for union representation. Not one has been able to negotiate a first contract. On April 25, the board issued a complaint against the company, roughly equivalent to an indictment, alleging that it had refused to bargain in good faith at 144 coffeeshops.

Starbucks representatives refused to accept a copy of workers’ contract demands.

“There’s a lot of blatant union-busting going on,” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who accompanied the workers to the office, told Work-Bites. “We have to push back.”

“Inaccurate information shared by Workers United ignores their own delay tactics and distracts from our consistent efforts to move the good-faith bargaining process forward,” a Starbucks spokesperson responded. They accused Workers United of frustrating the bargaining process “by insisting on national bargaining” and refusing “to bargain for any store in New York City metro area without unilateral preconditions, including hybrid bargaining — demands that are inconsistent with decades of NLRB precedent.”

On March 27, NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo’s office accused Starbucks of violating federal labor law by refusing to participate in bargaining sessions where workers had joined by videoconferencing. Earlier that month, the board dismissed 73 charges alleging that Workers United refused to bargain.

Niah Baker found it “very empowering to see the person in charge of HR for my region and catch her lying.” When someone called out “Why aren’t we seeing you at the bargaining table?” Rhesa Welch said that she had been there.

“She was not there — unless she was on a Zoom call,” Baker told Work-Bites.

“It was nice that a few of upper management came out of the woodwork,” said Astoria Boulevard barista James Carr. “We know they heard us.”

Actions aimed at upper management might be more effective than those at retail locations, he added.

Union-busting by attrition?

According to Workers United, new Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan is continuing a “ruthless union-busting campaign” that has included firing more than 230 union supporters and shuttering union stores, as well as “refusing to bargain over flimsy complaints such as the size of the bargaining committee.”

Workers say Starbucks’ union-busting strategy in New York seems to be trying to erode union support by a mix of stalling on contract talks and low-intensity harassment. The company recently gave customers paying by credit card the ability to tip baristas, “but it’s not even on the app” in union stores, says Elizabeth Kurchak, who works in the Caesar’s Bay Starbucks in outer Brooklyn. It’s also become hard for union members to pick up extra shifts at other stores, she adds.

Members of Starbucks Workers United pose with New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams [r] after confronting Starbucks executives.

“What they put us through daily is draining—constantly being under the microscope with discipline” says Megan DiMotta, who also works at Caesar’s Bay.

In Montclair, management has been telling new workers to watch out for union supporters, and that union dues would take $300 out of their biweekly paychecks—“blatantly lying,” says Celeste Cruz. Union supporters don’t get promotions, Laura Rosario chimes in.

“We’re seeing a lot of hours cut for the more verbally pro-union partners,” says Baker. One was reduced to nine hours a week, below the 20-hour minimum needed to keep benefits such as health insurance, he adds. Cruz says her hours have been lowered from 35 to 25.

The reduced hours are particularly bad, Cruz says, because “they want you to have open availability,” to be able to take shifts any time, with schedules changing from week to week. That makes it difficult for workers to have another part-time job or go to school.

“You can’t even live in the county,” says Baker. In New Jersey’s Essex County, which includes Montclair and Newark, he says, studio apartments typically cost $1,200 a month, but Starbucks pays $15.75 an hour. The state’s minimum wage is $14.13.

“My pay raise was 60 cents after four years,” says Rosario.

Starbucks denies allegations of union-busting. “Our policies exist to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for our partners and customers—and strictly prohibit any retaliatory behavior directed toward partners who are interested in a union,” the company spokesperson said. They added that its changes to wages and benefits are legal under federal labor law, because different rules apply in union stores, nonunion stores, and while union organizing is taking place in a store.

“I’ve been working here 12 years. It’s not going to scare me off. Now I have the support of my coworkers. We’re not alone,” said Megan DiMotta. “When we give up, we give up on each other. I don’t think we’re going to do that now.”