“Workers across the country at Starbucks are facing the same conditions. And this isn’t an anomaly.” An Interview with Brian Murray of SB WorkersUnited.
by Sean Collins
Photo Credit: Associated Press
Just last month, workers at a Starbucks location in Buffalo voted to join the Rochester Regional Joint Board/Workers United, becoming the first of nearly 9,000 Starbucks stores to unionize. Since then, workers at a second store in the Buffalo area won their union after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certified their election. Late last week, the NLRB ordered elections at three more stores in the Buffalo area. But just as significantly, Starbucks workers at over a dozen stores in eight states have since gone public and filed for their own union elections, with the organizing committees all calling on Starbucks to adhere to its fair election principles. Along the way, Starbucks has launched an aggressive anti-union campaign, hiring notorious management-side law firm Littler Mendelson to represent the company before the NLRB.
We caught up with Brian Murray, a Starbucks worker and an SBWorkersUnited organizing committee member in the Buffalo area, to talk about these historic victories in Buffalo, the recent strike at the Elmwood Ave store over COVID safety, the quickly expanding scope of this organizing drive, and preparing for contract negotiations with Starbucks.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Strikewave (SW): Thank you for taking the time to talk with us again. We talked in September of last year, just around the time you had filed for the first couple of stores, but obviously so much has happened since then! Let’s start in Western New York though. What's happening now at the first two unionized Starbucks locations in Western New York?
Brian Murray (BM): Well, we won just yesterday. We officially had our results certified for the Genesee Street store, which we knew that result was coming. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) refused to open any of the seven ballots that Starbucks had packed the store with. So that was a really good result to see and finally have it certified. The Elmwood store has been certified for about a month now and this past week they just had a COVID safety walk out. They went on strike for five days over almost half the store[‘s workers] were out due to COVID prior to the walk out. Prior to the walk out, the committee met with management to negotiate and bargain over COVID safety and they just stonewalled the committee there. We had an employee at that store who had gone to the hospital the night before for health-related issues and they called him in regardless, having just been released that night and tried to force him to come in. That led to the walkout of the store and the store being on strike. The committees at both stores are both being proactive. Based off of everything we've seen from Starbucks, negotiations aren't going to be easy. Coming to the table, especially over just the brief bargaining session we had over COVID health and safety and they were unwilling to concede anything, even like providing N95 masks to workers, let alone keeping in place the ten day isolation period to stop the spread in that store, really shows how difficult the bargaining is probably going to be.
SW: With your union being so recently certified but given the urgency for clear safety protocols brought on by this massive COVID surge, how did you approach these negotiations and how did Starbucks approach these negotiations?
BM: From what I heard from the committee at Elmwood, Starbucks essentially said that, “we are the leader in the service industry in regards to COVID safety. There's nothing more we can do.” I don't know exactly how they responded to the specific concerns. I wasn't in that meeting, but what I heard from the committee members there was that Starbucks refused to engage on any of the points that were brought up. So I think they're definitely setting the stage for what negotiations will look like, and I think they're trying to make an example out of the first unionized stores. That’s their one condition, right? They want to prove that even if you get a union, nothing's going to change and the contract is going to actually make things worse or at least freeze you out of getting further benefit increases that potentially could happen like we saw happen at the Starbucks in Victoria, B.C. with their contract. So we're prepared for that and obviously aren't going to sign a contract that puts us in that position, but it's kind of what Starbucks is trying to set us up for.
SW: Why did workers decide to ultimately end their strike at the Elmwood location?
BM: One of the concerns that was brought up was for a five day closure of the store to have a reset on cases spreading in the store. The walkout did at least partially achieve that. A lot of workers who were sick and were going to get called in regardless, they got to stay home and stay healthy. We achieved at least that goal with the walkout. I think also part of our goal with that was to show Starbucks that we are willing to take action if they're not willing to come to the negotiating table. The main concern was the five day isolation and getting that but also showing Starbucks that we are willing and able to walk off the job and act proactively if they're not willing to negotiate.
SW: While workers at these two stores are switching gears and preparing for contract negotiations and flexing their muscles in the lead up to that fight, more stores will be voting in the Buffalo area pretty soon. What's the status of those three stores?
BM: The Depew, Sheridan/Bailey and Walden/Anderson stores, we're still waiting at this moment for the NLRB to give us a decision on the election date. Walden/Anderson was turned into a training center last year but due to our pressure was reopened and now functions fully. But the election should be coming any time. This past week, the Starbucks location in Mesa, Arizona, which had filed after those three stores, got their decision from the NLRB so we are hoping for that as soon as possible.
SW: Are there more petitions coming down the pike in the western New York area or even expanding out across Upstate New York?
BM: If workers reach out, we're definitely going to continue to try to organize those stores and not say no to any workers that want to organize. In Buffalo, we are pivoting towards contract negotiations with the four or five stores that are going to be unionized coming out of this next round of elections. I think that's the focus. We might see some more stores go in the near future after we get the election date. But regardless if it’s three stores or 20 stores in the area that go union, the fight will still be just as tough for the contract.
SW: Workers at a third store in the first round of these elections narrowly voted not to unionize. In our previous conversation, you highlighted and it has been covered extensively in the mainstream press how Starbucks has mounted a very aggressive anti-union campaign. Has Workers United filed objections regarding the conduct in that election? Are you pushing for a re-run election?
BM: Potentially. We filed a lot of unfair labor practice charges against how they acted at the Camp Road location. Those are still ongoing, still taking testimony right now from workers about the nature of those unfair labor practices. I think down the road, we'll hopefully see some remedy for that. There were some issues with three ballots of ours that we tried to turn into the NLRB and got lost. We had a ballot that wasn't signed by a worker or wasn't properly filled out. Ultimately, based on the vote, I think it would have been a tie even if those ballots had gone through. But it was a very close election. We believe with Starbucks acting potentially illegally, potentially violating federal labor law and acting very aggressively, that election was neck and neck with that going on.
SW: Pulling the camera back, since the first round of elections, workers at over dozen Starbucks stores across the country have gone public with their organizing drives.
BM: I don't actually know the exact number because I'm not in touch with all the stores that are organizing but it feels like every day or at least a couple of times a week, we see more stores filing for union elections. So it's pretty exciting!
SW: You were talking before about gearing up for bargaining and using the strike at Elmwood to show Starbucks what's coming and what you all are prepared to do to get a contract. Obviously the scope of a contract campaign changes with all these new stores that hopefully will win across the country. How does that figure into are you still thinking about bargaining in a local sense, some sort of master agreement, or is that still to be determined?
BM: It definitely will be determined based on the outcome of these elections nationwide we have coming up. Ultimately, we do want all Starbucks partners, even stores that are voting and not voting, to be a part of the bargaining process. We at least want to have them as observers and get input from Starbucks workers across the country on what improvements they would like to see in a contract if their stores unionized. We talked about the unionized Victoria, B.C., store – all the improvements that were made in that contract were given to the rest of the country in Canada. We're expecting if we do get concessions from Starbucks, those concessions will be rolled out nationwide. We're not going to allow ourselves to be locked into a contract that would set higher standards for us and leave other Starbucks workers behind. But we also are expecting that whatever we do secure, Starbucks will attempt to implement in some form or fashion nationwide. For example, we saw with our demands for seniority pay, Starbucks implemented a billion dollars in wage increases at the end of October and promised to roll out seniority pay. So we're already gearing up for Starbucks to try to roll out similar tactics like that to try and freeze organizing efforts and cool shops down.
SW: From your perspective, do you think the sudden expansion of organizing in stores across the country - from Boston to Seattle to Mesa, Arizona - caught Starbucks off guard and pulled their attention away from Buffalo?
BM: Interestingly enough, they're still heavily focusing on Buffalo. We still have [Starbucks North America President] Rossann Williams in Buffalo visiting stores. She was just at my store Sunday when I was off. So they're still keeping a heavy corporate presence in Buffalo. I don't know exactly to what end, given that now this has spread nationally. As far as I know, they haven't rolled out the support managers, the intense amount of resources in the other areas that filed. I know they are doing proactive things like district wide listening sessions in places like Boston and trying to put out anti-union messaging and have higher corporate higher ups be more involved in the stores. We're still interested to see what Starbucks' response nationwide is going to be because I think they were caught off guard. From the beginning of their message regarding Buffalo, it was always that, “Buffalo is an anomaly, this isn’t the Starbucks experience. That's why workers essentially are trying to unionize there because we let you down. We didn't meet whatever standards we have.” Obviously, with the nationwide organizing campaign, that's kicked off, we've shown that's definitely not the case. Workers across the country at Starbucks are facing the same conditions. And this isn’t an anomaly.
SW: To still have the CEO of Starbucks North America on the ground, you know, you know, sweeping or shoveling a sidewalk or whatever. Why is such attention still on Buffalo?
BM: Buffalo's the symbolic center of the organizing effort. As much as you can keep a lid on Buffalo, I think they're hoping it'll cool down like nationwide efforts. I would guess that if they just totally pulled out of Buffalo, we'd probably have a much easier time getting some more stores to go. So maybe they're trying to avoid that. Maybe they've already sunk so many resources into Buffalo. They still have a ton of support managers here. One of the big things I've seen now that I'm back in my store is that they're significantly upping hiring in all the stores across the district. We think we have another like five or six new people, and I've been out three weeks from my store that they've hired which is unheard of. I never saw that prior to the organizing campaign. We would rarely get a new partner. Maybe once a month there'd be a new worker hired. But now every time you know, if I'm out for even a week or two, I'll see three or four new people hired. So they're really making an effort to use their recruiters that they put in place and taking the power out of the hands of managers to hire and fire or to hire. The recruiters are just simply trying to put as many bodies in place to try to dilute any other stores that could go union.
SW: As a result of hiring all these new hires, are they causalizing the workforce and cutting full time workers’ hours? Where do all these new hires work?
BM: I think it has cut into hours for partners at some stores. Stores like Sheridan/Bailey, which is one of the stores that's voting, I think now has maybe 40 workers when it started at like 25 or 26 before they filed. So they're really stacking the deck. It's obviously cutting into people's hours. Maybe that's a tactic, to cut hours to try to get away with cutting hours. I don't know the schedules in these stores that well, but I can only imagine that when Starbucks hires like 10 or 15 more people, it's going to cut hours.
SW: Now that SBWorkersUnited has unionized two stores in Buffalo and anticipates winning at more stores, when do you plan to head to the bargaining table?
BM: We're hoping as soon as possible. Starbucks still hasn't told us when they want to sit down and bargain a first contract with us. So we're doing bargaining surveys, having communication with workers at the stores that have won their elections. We're gearing up, but we're ready. Whenever Starbucks gives us a date, we're ready to sit down at these stores and negotiate a contract with them. So it's really up to Starbucks and we still haven't heard back from them. Even though there was initially a story right after we won our election, Starbucks said that they would sit down with us. A lot was made of that but ultimately, I think it was only for Starbucks to try to save face in the media because we haven't seen them actually come forward and meaningfully engage with when to set a date for bargaining.
SW: And finally with elections looming at three more Buffalo stores, how are those organizing committees feeling in the lead-up to the vote?
BM: It's going to be another round of mail-in ballots obviously with Omicron surging so heavily. There will be a month-long period again where ballots can be sent in. Hopefully this week we get the election date set, but we're feeling really good. I think we're definitely going to see more victories coming out of this next round of elections. One thing to highlight though is Starbucks definitely has been much more aggressive, especially at the Depew location. There's been a ton of workers there on the organizing committee who have been written up - we believe unjustly. There was a worker the other day who was written up for an incident that happened a month ago where they allegedly had cursed on the floor and then a month later, they came back with a write up. They have a lot of support managers who are acting very aggressively towards the pro-union workers trying to isolate them. So we've definitely seen the second round of elections, Starbucks, when if they're able to, coming down even harder and really going after pro-union people through write ups and trying to marginalize them as much as possible in the stores.
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.