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Starbucks Workers United launches national bus tour in St. Paul [1]
['Max Nesterak', 'More From Author', '- July']
Date: 2023-07
Unionized Starbucks baristas announced the start of a national bus tour in St. Paul on Monday in a new “counter offensive” in their campaign to pressure the company to negotiate with them over wages, benefits and working conditions.
“They’re completely refusing to negotiate,” said Rev Beeby, a barista in Minneapolis and union organizer with Starbucks Workers United. “Instead of facilitating our ability to serve our communities and our customers, Starbucks is undermining us and attacking us.”
The bus, emblazoned with the Starbucks siren with her fist raised, will leave the Twin Cities on Wednesday, with stops planned in Chicago, Louisville and Atlanta before reaching the epicenter of the Starbucks unionization campaign in Buffalo, N.Y. A second bus will tour the West Coast, ending in Starbucks’ hometown of Seattle.
Workers have successfully unionized more than 300 stores across the country — including six in Minnesota — since the first in Buffalo, N.Y. in 2021. But not a single store has won a collective bargaining agreement over wages and working conditions that forms the bedrock of unions’ power.
Unionized Starbucks workers have regularly gone on strike to bring corporate leaders to the bargaining table. Workers at two Minnesota stores — at 300 Snelling Ave. S. in St. Paul and 4712 Cedar Ave. in Minneapolis — launched their fifth strikes on Monday, which will last through Tuesday.
Workers have also filed charges with federal labor regulators in an effort to bring corporate leaders to the bargaining table. Federal labor board prosecutors have sided with workers, finding that the company has illegally “failed and refused” to collectively bargain at 144 sites.
Yet government regulators have limited powers to force Starbucks to bargain in good faith, which is why workers hope to increase pressure through a public campaign.
“Starbucks Corporation intends to ignore this union to death,” said Charles Poulter, a barista at a Wisconsin Starbucks. “When they bargain with us, they do not bargain in good faith. This must not continue.”
A Starbucks spokesperson denied the allegations that the company has not negotiated with workers in good faith, and noted the company has also filed charges with federal labor regulators alleging the union has not responded to requests to bargain.
“Workers United should demonstrate the same commitment to bargaining as they do to rallies and now bus tours. Despite the fact that we have attempted to schedule bargaining for hundreds of stores, Workers United has only met Starbucks at the table to progress negotiations for 11 stores,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Baristas also say the company has waged a cutthroat campaign against the union with tactics that aim to punish unionized workers and in some cases violate federal labor law. Starbucks has closed unionized stores and cut workers’ hours at union stores, while at the same time rewarding workers at non-unionized stores with pay bumps and the ability to collect tips from credit cards.
U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum lent her support to the workers at Monday’s news conference outside the AFL-CIO offices and “saluted” them for their courage.
“You are our future workforce,” McCollum said in front of the Starbucks Workers United bus. “Our rights are on the line when we don’t stand up to corporations and say, ‘walk the talk.’”
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https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/starbucks-workers-united-launches-national-bus-tour-in-st-paul/
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