The labor groups backing the unionization of Starbucks have enlisted scores of progressive organizations to ramp up public pressure on the coffee chain to collaborate with what are now 7,500organized baristas seeking new employment contracts.
Negotiations between the workers and management have been at an impasse because of a disagreement over how negotiations should proceed. Starbucks wants face-to-face meetings with union representatives, while the employees press for conference calls that can be broadcast to rank-and-file members and recorded.
Starbucks officials say using a platform like Zoom or Team to beam out the negotiations poses risks to managers or other company representatives. In an appearance before a Senate committee in late March, Starbucks' former CEO Howard Schultz said that employees have congregated outside the homes of the corporate delegates, exposing them and their families to potential harassment and physical harm. The chain fears workers will target company participants who stand up to SWU representatives.
The group representing baristas in the stalled negotiations, Starbucks Workers United, or SWU, said it has enlisted 40 progressive groups as allies in its quest to wrest cooperation from Starbucks in the union’s organizing and contract-negotiating efforts. The list of supporting organizations includes such well-known advocacy forces as the Sierra Club, Women’s March, Greenpeace and MoveOn.
The SWU says the advocacy groups have a collective membership of 62 million people.
The supporting organizations added their names to a letter the SWU sent Tuesday to Starbucks’ new CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, urging him to change the tenor of relations with the nearly 300 unit-level teams that are now represented by SWU.
The union also revealed that members of the newly formed alliance were sending 1 million emails to Starbucks to demand management deal in good faith with the organized workers. The SWU have repeatedly accused corporate officials of union-busting, a crime Schultz insisted the company has not committed even once.
During Schultz’s Senate appearance, Democratic senators repeatedly accused Schultz and Starbucks of purposely delaying contract negotiations, which are being conducted staff by staff at the direction of federal regulators.
Schultz countered that it had shown up for meetings with union representatives 85 times, only to watch them leave the table when Starbucks balked at the sessions being broadcast.
He also noted that Starbucks had asked that groups of stores participate in union votes instead of deciding their status one by one, but was turned down by the National Labor Relations Board. As a result, Schultz said, a new contract has to be hammered out with the staff of each store. He added that Starbucks had tried in vain to schedule a start to the unit-level negotiations about 360 times.
The employees appear united in their demands. The asks include a starting wage of $20 an hour, a guarantee of being scheduled to work at least 37 hours per week, the finalization of schedules months in advance, and health insurance with no employee contribution.
The SWU insisted when it was founded that the group was home-grown by baristas, without any leadership from outside labor groups. But a larger organization called Workers United has emerged as the group’s benefactor.
Workers United, in turn, is an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, the nation’s second-largest labor union.
The SEIU and Workers United said in announcing the SWU’s new alliance that their members in the fields of education and healthcare—two strongholds of the groups—will lend their support to the Starbucks campaign.
They also indicated that they will rely on affiliated labor groups outside of the U.S. to put pressure on Starbucks globally.
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