"It’s about having a democratic voice in Starbucks." Interview with Brian Murray of SBWorkersUnited.
by Sean Collins
Photo Credit: SBWorkersUnited
A little over three weeks ago, Starbucks workers at stores across Buffalo and Western New York sent a letter to CEO Kevin Johnson, announcing that they formed a union, Starbucks Workers United, and urged him to agree to fair election principles. The principles are modeled off a neutrality agreement the Rochester Regional Joint Board/Workers United reached with SPoT Coffee, a small regional coffee chain in Western New York. After that agreement, 70 workers voted overwhelmingly to organize. Not waiting for Starbucks to live up to its stated progressive ideals, SBWorkersUnited filed for elections at three stores. Two more stores followed. Democratic nominee for Buffalo mayor India Walton threw her support behind their effort. (Late last week, Workers United endorsed Walton, joining the Buffalo Teachers Federation as the only unions to endorsed her run.) Even Chuck Schumer tweeted his support, posting a picture of himself holding a Starbucks cup with “Union!!!” handwritten on the side.
Since going public, instead of agreeing to SBWorkersUnited’s fair election principles, the company has responded with daily captive audience meetings. The president of Starbucks North America is on the ground in Buffalo, questioning workers about their union support. And rather than allowing for votes to occur store-to-store as the National Labor Relations Board allows, Starbucks retained Littler Mendelson and is demanding all 20 stores in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls region vote in one election.
Strikewave spoke with Starbucks worker and organizing committee member Brian Murray about their organizing drive and the union-busting tactics that Starbucks is deploying.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Strikewave: Tell us about yourself, what Starbucks location you work at, and how you got involved with the Starbucks Workers United organizing committee.
Brian Murray: I work at the Lancaster Regal store, one of the many Starbucks along Transit Rd, a major thoroughfare in the Buffalo suburbs - lots of car dealerships and restaurant chains. I’ve been involved with organizing at Starbucks since June of this year. I found out through local activists involved with Buffalo DSA and the Black Lives Matter movement. I connected with union organizers through India Walton’s campaign when [campaign organizers] asked me where I worked.
SW: So SBWorkersUnited recently filed for an election at a couple of stores across the Buffalo area. Talk about the organizing that’s taken place in the lead to submitting those petitions to NLRB and what are the issues motivating workers to unionize?
BM: People with years of experience at Starbucks really want a voice in their stores. While there are certainly a lot of individual grievances, what our campaign is focused on is the signing of the Fair Election Principles and demanding a democratic voice in each of our workplaces. Management has been extremely unresponsive until we filed our first petitions. We clearly see that they don’t care about our voices as partners - that’s what Starbucks employees are referred to as. They are only concerned with keeping the union out and maximizing profits. We don’t even have the worst conditions out of Starbucks across the country. We’re probably on the better end based on what workers elsewhere we’ve talked to who have shown interest in our campaign [have told us]. Our wages are higher, but that’s not the specific issue: it’s about having a democratic voice in Starbucks and having a say collectively in how our stores are run.
SW: The main issue is having a democratic workplace and yet how ironic it is that you and your coworkers are dubbed partners as if that’s already the case.
BM: Exactly! It isn’t, especially when they’ve held captive audience meetings in the stores that have filed and they’re preparing to roll them out to the whole district. I’ve heard from workers directly that management is telling them explicitly, “No, don’t vote union.” They’re employing a lot of classic anti-union tropes, from third partying to dues to saying the union can’t guarantee anything. For all their branding as this special “Third Place” where everyone can come together as a community, there’s nothing special about the union-busting they are doing. It’s standard tactics.
SW: You said before you filed that management hasn’t been responsive to you and your coworkers' demands and that you’re hearing from workers at other stores with worse complaints. What in the Buffalo area have they not been responsive to?
BM: This dates back before even COVID-19. People have been interested in organizing for years. We actually had a worker who we believe was fired for talking about unionizing over a year ago just before COVID-19 hit. The successful SPoT Coffee organizing drive also sparked more interest in organizing with the Rochester Regional Joint Board and trying to organize the whole coffee industry in the region. Starbucks is not this very progressive company with forward-leaning values. They’ve had explicitly anti-union policies for years. This really encouraged us to reach out to other Starbucks workers. There’s been a lot of interest. I never thought the whole district would respond like this. I’ve been at Starbucks for about six months now. I started after the SPoT campaign but from what I’ve heard, workers started reaching out after SPoT workers won their contract. This has been in the making for a couple years and then in the past few months, the efforts to form an organizing committee really intensified. As secretly as possible, we started getting workers to form committees in their stores before we went public. We were very successful: management didn’t find out until a couple days before we sent our letter to Kevin Johnson.
SW: What is the composition of this district within Starbucks? How many stores and how many workers are a part of this organizing effort?
BM: There are two districts for the Buffalo area. One is the suburbs surrounding Buffalo into Niagara Falls and the other is the city of Buffalo proper. Right now, we’re going store by store. Initially we were looking at a district of about 20 stores because of a commonality of interests. Workers would switch shifts between these 20 stores pretty frequently. There’s about 750 to 800 workers. It tends to average out to about 20 workers per store, 30 for the busier stores. Our goal is to organize all of them, but right now we’re going store by store. Even winning one would be historic for Starbucks.
SW: Wow, that’s way more substantial than I would have thought.
BM: And they’re gearing up for a hiring spree, so that number of workers is only going to increase. All of the sudden the President of Starbucks North America Rossann Williams who rules over 9,000 stores in Canada and the US has been spending the last three weeks in Buffalo for some reason. She’s trying to say it’s because our city is a mess but we think that’s totally false. People have been reaching out to her for years with issues and she never responded. We’re hearing from workers in other cities that their conditions are even worse than what we’re facing so this isn’t just a visit to fix specific issues. This is about workplace democracy.
SW: What has management's anti-union campaign looked like?
BM: A lot of surveillance of workers by management. Even the President of Starbucks has been going store to store, sitting in stores, and watching workers on the floor while they work, trying to identify supporters and which workers are wearing union pins. They’ve been calling out union workers on the floor. They’re doing this especially at stores where we’re weak, like mine. I’m one of three people openly wearing pins on the floor. When I was working one day, she ignored six other people who were working and called me out from across the store by name, saying, “Hi Brian, it’s nice to meet you,” and started up a five minute conversation. Obviously she played it politely, I think it was a ploy to intimidate other workers to show them that, “we are watching, we are aware who is pro-union and active in organizing.” Basic intimidation like that along with captive audience meetings at the stores weekly. They started breaking those up from two meetings a day to three, which we believe is a tactic to separate pro-union workers from everyone else. They’re making a lot of changes across stores, bringing in new managers, firing store managers and district managers, all things we believe are an attempt to stop our union and make it about specific grievances and not about workplace democracy. They want to cast Buffalo as the most mismanaged district in the country, an abnormality. Clearly, we don’t believe that, we think other districts are worse, but what we do have is the first efforts to organize which will hopefully be a call to other districts to form unions too.
SW: Talk about the differences between this push by the Rochester Regional Joint Board/Workers United SEIU to unionize Starbucks and the Industrial Workers of the World’s past attempt. What led to this particular strategy of organizing Starbucks?
BM: Our strategy has been speed above all else. The longer these elections drag on, the more workers get afraid or disillusioned. While the IWW strategy was a lot of agitation and direct action, which is fine, but for us, we believe the quicker we can file for and get these elections and start negotiating our contracts, the better we’ll be able to build and keep worker power. We’re not anti-Starbucks. We are Starbucks. We aren’t looking to tear the company down, we’re looking to really be partners and have a seat at the table. So far, unfortunately Starbucks doesn’t really want that. They’ve clearly shown through their actions that they don’t think we’re partners.
SW: With such high turnover in these stores, they typically aren’t organized. But RRJB has organized SPoT Coffee, Gimme Coffee, and now Starbucks. What is it about cafes and coffee shops in Buffalo and Western New York that is sparking this organizing?
BM: Recent polls show that like 70-75% of people under 30 support unions. That’s us. And from SPoT to Gimme, there’s a clear example of what could be. When I come to my coworkers and talk about the potential benefits, they’re blown away: from $4 tip credits to other quality of life improvements that in any other fast food job you wouldn’t imagine having. The turnover rate is our biggest obstacle, people burn out so quickly. While there are a lot of partners and workers who have been at Starbucks for years, some stores have seen huge turnover. And that’s why we’re trying to move as quickly as possible, so workers don’t feel left in the lurch.
SW: Earlier you mentioned India Walton as a conduit for you to get involved in this campaign. Chuck Schumer bought Starbucks. Countless local elected officials have called on Starbucks to agree to your fair election principles. Where did the idea for these principles come from?
BM: After management initially fired three workers, Workers United did eventually get SPoT Coffee to agree to neutrality and fair election principles, which is why they were able to organize so quickly. We’re looking for the same thing from Starbucks. They signed onto the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which acknowledges the right to free association. We’re hoping this public pressure and when we eventually file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, we’ll make the case for Starbucks: you’ll have to choose between union-busting or your image as a progressive company. They’re facing that choice right now and clearly they’re choosing union-busting but hopefully they’ll live up to their stated values. We’ll see. I don’t know if they’re going to sign it, it was always a long shot.
SW: What’s next?
BM: More stores. We’re going to refile for two stores and we’re going to file for even more. We don’t have an exact number right now but it will definitely be more than two. We’re going to keep pushing Starbucks to sign the fair election principles and for a timely election. We were hoping that by this point, we would have already had an election but because of Starbucks’ stalling tactics - now they’re trying to force a vote for the entire district. This process could be more dragged on than we had hoped. But we’re going to keep pushing for them to allow elections store-by-store and as quickly as possible.
Sean Collins is Secretary-Treasurer of the Strikewave Board. He is a staffer with SEIU Local 200United in Upstate New York and also serves as the Treasurer for the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO.