Jun. 30, 2022 "Do unions at Starbucks mean the labour movement is picking up steam?": Today I found this article by James Dunne on CBC news:
With seven years of experience as a barista, Sarah Broad knows how to make all kinds of coffee.
Now the Starbucks worker also knows what it feels like to be a union member and the face of a growing campaign by the United Steelworkers (USW) to unionize Starbucks stores in Canada.
"I never realized how passionate I would feel about the labour movement," said Broad in an interview from her basement apartment in Victoria, B.C.
Broad, a shift supervisor at a Victoria location, helped organize her store in August 2020, the only one in Canada at the time.
She's one of a number of service industry and retail workers in North America joining the labour movement since the start of the pandemic.
The surge in interest has some labour leaders and experts wondering if this moment could mark a turning point for unions who have seen declining numbers in the sector for years.
In addition to efforts to unionize Amazon warehouses, in the U.S there are efforts to bring unions into Apple stores and Trader Joe's. In Canada there's been a successful campaign to organize a handful of Indigo locations and a PetSmart store.
A recent poll in the U.S. showed 68 per cent of Americans approved of labour unions, the highest number since 1965.
"I think this could be a watershed movement for Canadian and U.S. unions," said Nicole Denier, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton who studies unions.
"We'll see over the next year whether or not the momentum will continue to build."
Baristas battle iconic brand
Starbucks is facing a wave of union drives.
An online tracker and map based on numbers from the U.S. National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) shows about 300 Starbucks shops in the U.S have filed to unionize in just six months, including the flagship roastery in the company's hometown of Seattle. According to the tracker, run by a non-profit media organization that focuses on labour stories, more than half have been certified.
In Surrey, B.C., a second Canadian Starbucks just unionized and a half dozen stores in Alberta are trying to do the same, including five in Lethbridge.
Broad says health and safety issues related to the pandemic, abusive customers and the high cost of living In Victoria made her and her coworkers seek union representation to make their working conditions better and improve their wages.
While the process was "a little intimidating," she said that getting workers onboard in her store didn't take long because most were "super gung-ho."
It took a little over a month to get the store's union certified under B.C. law, but took almost a year to negotiate a collective agreement with Starbucks Canada.
For USW it will be expensive to organize and support many small locations one at a time compared to organizing large factories, lumber mills or offices. But the small bargaining units are not the only challenge in organizing the service and retail sectors.
"The major issue is turnover in employees. It's a younger, transient workforce," said Mike Duhra, a USW representative for Western Canada.
Another factor, says Duhra, is that unions are so rare in the sector that some workers just aren't familiar with them or don't recognize how they can help.
Starbucks pushback
Another factor is Starbucks's opposition to unions. Acclaimed past CEO Howard Schultz recently returned to the company's helm, and he's been vocal about his opposition to unions for years.
Company executives have visited stores to discourage workers from unionizing in the U.S., and workers claim one location was shut down earlier this month because it recently unionized.
Starbucks announced company-wide enhanced benefits and wage increases in May, but they're not being offered to workers in unionized stores in the U.S. or Canada.
A spokesperson for Starbucks Canada told CBC News the company believes it is better without a union, but it continues to "respect our partners' right to organize."
In addition, wage increases are not being offered to the unionized location in Victoria because it has "its own collective agreement, including its own unique wage increase schedule."
Broad believes the unionized stores aren't getting a raise because "they're just trying to make us look bad and retaliate against us for unionizing."
Economic conditions primed for union growth
Mikal Skuterud, an economist at the University of Waterloo, says the current tight labour market and high inflation both favour union growth.
"Unionization rates are procyclical," says Skuterud, "so when the economy goes into a boom, unionization rates tend to go up."
According to the NLRB, applications to start unions in U.S. workplaces are up 57 per cent this year compared to the first six months of 2021.
Equivalent data about union organizing in Canada is not available but Bea Bruske, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress said "we are seeing growing momentum in Canada towards unionization, especially amongst young workers."
While there's movement at big companies, young workers also organized unions at a video game maker and a liquor store.
Even so, Skuterud says unions in the private sector in Canada could desperately use a boost.
"Unionization rates, particularly in the private sector, are the lowest they've ever been."
USW's Duhra says unions are indeed looking to move into new sectors for growth.
"We have to find new members ... and this is a perfect industry where people need a union," he said, adding that workers at Starbucks came to USW for help.
Will the momentum last?
Lawyer and professor Kenneth Thornicroft from the University of Victoria is skeptical that Starbucks will become a highly unionized company.
"Unless a union is able to get pretty deep penetration across the store network," he said, Starbucks "can just wait them out," and as members get tired of paying dues, stores will decertify.
Thornicroft points out that's exactly how it played out when a handful of BC stores unionized in the 1990's.
He believes unions might have a better opportunity for growth in the banking and financial services sector than in food service.
But Denier thinks the retail and food sectors are ripe for unionization because both industries have long been under-unionized.
In her view, workers aren't just committed to getting better wages "but to having a voice in the workplace."
She adds that workers are also focused on making companies that market themselves as progressive accountable for their public image.
For her part, the new union activist Sarah Broad is eagerly serving up advice and support to potential barista brothers and sisters trying to organize other stores.
"I'm so excited that they're wanting to join and it's going to be challenging," she said, "but it's so worth it."
Do unions at Starbucks mean the labour movement is picking up steam? | CBC News
Aug. 30, 2022 "Fight for unions at Starbucks at a crossroads one year after first wave of momentum": Today I found this article by Patrick Spauster and Madeline Campbell on the Financial Post:
On Aug. 30, employees at three Starbucks locations in the Buffalo, New York area will celebrate a special milestone — it’s been one year since they formally announced plans to form a union.
In the months following the announcement, a majority of workers at two of those stores voted to unionize, setting off a wave of momentum that subsequently spread to hundreds of U.S. locations.
But organizing employees allege that the company has responded with firings, store closures and other retaliatory behaviour, allegations the company denies.
Now, as the union’s focus shifts to the courts, the initial momentum is beginning to taper off. In July, petitions to organize new Starbucks stores fell 80 per cent from a March high.
A spring surge
Through July, the most recent month with complete U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) data, employees at 326 Starbucks locations have filed union election petitions. In the past 20 years, no other U.S. company has seen its employees file more than 100 petitions in a 12-month period.
While the stores represent only 3.6 per cent of Starbucks’s roughly 9,000 corporate-run U.S. locations, the volume of petitions is rare among recent labour movements. The Starbucks petitions make up roughly 20 per cent of all new filings with the NLRB this year. And when employees at petitioning stores have gone on to hold elections, the workers have voted in favour of unionizing roughly 80 per cent of the time.
Starbucks employees who spoke with Bloomberg News emphasized that they loved their jobs, their colleagues and their stores.
But the employees said a union could help
increase wages,
promote health and safety conditions at the stores
and protect employees from chronic understaffing situations.
In a statement to Bloomberg News, Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges said that unions are not a good fit for the company and Starbucks prefers to work directly with workers to make changes.
The group supporting the movement, Starbucks Workers United, has faced a challenge in organizing hundreds of shops with fewer employees than a typical workplace.
Organizers have relied on strong networks between Starbucks employees spread across the country.
When Alisha Humphrey, a barista in Oklahoma City, saw the New York stores organize, she reached out to Starbucks employees involved in the union drive. She was soon learning over Zoom how to facilitate organizing conversations. “Even before we won our election, I was kind of helping out in other stores that were interested,” Humphrey said.
The ensuing ramp up began in urban centres in the Northeast and Midwest, where Starbucks employees have been roughly twice as likely to organize as company workers elsewhere. Less than two per cent of Starbucks locations in rural areas have officially requested representation.
The push has been particularly strong in college towns, like Ann Arbor, Mich. and Eugene, Ore. Locations that have filed to unionize were typically 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometres) from the nearest college or university campus, with non-petitioning stores nearly twice as far away. Ithaca, N.Y. — home to Cornell University — is the only city where every store has voted to unionize.
“[Starbucks] cultivated this image that we know of coffee shops, college towns, they calculated that. And now it’s come back to bite them,” said Nelson Lichtenstein the, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Casey Moore, a barista in Buffalo and a member of the National Starbucks Workers United Communications Committee, said the leaders of the movement lean younger, more progressive and more LGBTQ.
For transgender workers, Starbucks is one of the only part-time jobs that offers gender affirming healthcare.
But this more liberal workforce has also shown a recent interest in labour organizing, something Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has said is unneeded at the company.
“That’s great that you’re offering these benefits,” said Moore. “But then you’re threatening to take them away. So how progressive are you really?”
Borges denied the company is threatening to take away benefits.
A bitter response
As the union push has grown, union organizers say Starbucks has increasingly turned to anti-union tactics, like closing stores and firing workers.
Employees at the company have submitted 283 unfair labour practice filings with the NLRB in the last year.
The filings contain more than 600 allegations that Starbucks has violated labour laws.
The volume of complaints is the most of any private employer in the U.S. during that period and 30 per cent more than its closest peer UPS, which has nearly twice the number of employees as Starbucks.
“This is the most retaliatory campaign I have seen in 40 plus years — by far,” said Richard Bensinger, a senior advisor for Starbucks Workers United and a former organizing director for the AFL-CIO.
Borges denied the claims of anti-union activity. In a statement to Bloomberg News he said that closures were due to safety concerns and that fired employees had violated company policies.
In May, the NLRB formally accused Starbucks of over 200 labour violations and has sought four injunctions against the company this year; no other U.S. company has more than one.
One of those injunctions was rejected in June. On Aug. 18, a federal judge ruled Starbucks must offer reinstatement to seven fired pro-union employees at a Memphis location.
“Starbucks is making these stores, especially unionized stores, really stressful places to work. So my staff comes into work every day and we’re scared,” said Sam Amato, a shift manager recently fired from a Buffalo store. “We’re scared that one small mistake is going to get us sent home or get us fired.”
When Starbucks recently closed 19 stores — largely citing safety issues — the locations were disproportionately pro-union.
According to Starbucks Workers United, 42 per cent of the closed stores had union activity, compared to 4 per cent of locations nationwide that have petitioned to unionize.
“There was no union consideration when it came to those closures,” said Borges earlier this month.
The closures and accusations come amid a growing number of strikes by Starbucks employees. According to work stoppages data tracked by Bloomberg Law, one in every five strikes this year came from Starbucks employees and many cite retaliatory action by the company as a reason for striking.
As of Aug. 29, none of the stores where employees voted to unionize had secured collective bargaining contracts with the company. Labour experts say this may curtail union momentum. “Just delay and these unions wither on the vine and the penalties seem to be not very strong — even the public relations penalty would seem not that great.” said Lichtenstein.
Slowing petitions, tighter elections
Now, in addition to the growing legal situation, the union must also deal with a recent slowdown in representation filings. In July, employees at 14 new stores petitioned to organize, the lowest volume in a given month in 2022. So far this month, only seven new petitions have been filed through Aug. 29.
The union still turns most of those petitions into successful elections but the votes are becoming tighter and losses have become more common.
As recently as April, the union typically won elections with 80 per cent of employees voting in favour of organizing.
In July, that rate fell to 63 per cent as the union lost 12 of 34 elections with certified results.
It was also the first month where multiple elections had a turnout rate below 60 per cent.
These patterns raise questions about what’s next for the union — whether it can reignite the spring wave or if the slowdown may be part of the natural pattern of union organizing. “You organize the easiest ones first and then others will come,” said Lichtenstein.
Organizers say they are determined to continue even as the attention shifts to the firings and store closures, as well as the important next step of negotiating contracts with Starbucks for the unionized stores.
“Organizing is continuing and it will continue because the workers want and deserve the right to have a voice,” said Bensinger.
“We are fighting for the right of all Starbucks workers to organize without fear, intimidation and threats.”
Fight for unions at Starbucks at a crossroads a year after first push | Financial Post
My opinion: These articles reminds me of this comment. Starbucks is closing down a lot of their stores that are unionized.
"#MeToo movement becomes #WeToo in in victim-blaming Japan"/ "Outrage as women in Japan told not wear glasses in the workplace"
Aug. 17, 2020 Saying: I found this on Facebook:
"You never look good when you are trying to make someone else look bad."- Unknown
Cham: Sometimes people need to be exposed for who they are hahah or maybe I should stop being petty
Tracy Au: There's a difference between trying to make someone look bad, and exposing them for who they are. It's like those #MeToo accusers and victims, they are plainly telling everybody about the perpetrators. They're not trying to make them look bad.
https://badcb.blogspot.com/2020/08/job-articles-wetoo-gender-gap-done.html
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