Fresh Reasons to Avoid Starbucks

Last September I wrote an essay on this platform titled “Why You Won’t Be Seeing Me at Starbucks.” Since then I’ve been getting more and more pissed at Starbucks management, as have its employees — who continue to see their union organizing efforts stonewalled.

When I wrote about this last fall, the workers at approximately 235 Starbucks had voted to unionize. Now it’s up to more than 330. We’re seeing it here in Connecticut, where a few weeks ago the staff at a Danbury Starbucks voted 18-1 to form a union. They joined two others in Connecticut who voted to do so.

But if you check out a July 23 New York Times Op-Ed piece, “This Is How the Bosses Win,” you realize how deeply the deck is stacked against American workers who dare to unionize.

“Not a single Starbucks union member has gotten a contract,” reported Megan K. Stack in her Op-Ed. She noted the corporation hasn’t provided any counterproposals in response to the union members’ demands.

Stack wrote “these passive tactics of delay and avoidance” have proven to be “remarkably effective at crushing nascent unions.”

If a corporation refuses to sign a contract, eventually workers at a business such as Starbucks get discouraged and move on to other jobs. Stack quoted Thanya Cruz Borrazasa, a union activist at a Starbucks in Nottingham, Md.: “They’re trying to get us to a point where we all just quit.”

Marlon Perchuk, who has been a barista at the Danbury Starbucks for five years, told Kaitlin Lyle of Hearst Newspapers: “Starbucks management…don’t know what it means to people to work here, they don’t know what it means to have a job they enjoy working and not being able to feed yourself or your family.”

The workers at the Nottingham Starbucks are seeking better pay ($20 an hour minimum for baristas, with annual raises), fair and consistent scheduling and easier access to benefits.

Agnes Torregoza, a single woman who works as a barista in Nottingham, told Stack there never seem to be enough workers to handle customers’ demands. “She and her colleagues could hardly attend to basic hygiene. They often found themselves too frenzied to wipe down tables, clean the bathrooms or follow orders to wash their hands every half-hour.”

They also couldn’t get enough shifts to make a decent wage. Torregoza found “she got, at most, 25 to 27 hours a week, which was considered generous for Starbucks, where baristas say they rarely get full-time hours and even struggle for the 20 they need to qualify for benefits.”

Things got even worse after she and her colleagues voted to unionize. Torregoza’s weekly hours gradually dwindled to 10 after the election, forcing her to ration gas and delay veterinary visits for her cat.

Stack reported the National Labor Relations Board has found sufficient evidence to pursue litigation against Starbucks. This includes a nationwide complaint consolidating 32 charges across 28 states, alleging Starbucks failed or refused to bargain with union representatives from 163 cafes.

But for the NLRB to verify all or some of these complaints takes a long time. Workers, needing better pay, get discouraged and leave. That’s what Starbucks executives are counting on.

As Stack reported: “The Starbucks case demonstrates that a large corporation can effectively bust a union with time, by dithering over details and exhausting legal appeals…Starbucks may yet succeed in smothering one of the most energized labor movements of our time.”

I do worry that by staying away from Starbucks outlets I’m penalizing its employees. But I can’t stomach the idea of contributing to the riches of Starbucks executives. (In the last three months of 2021, the company’s profit soared 31 percent, to $816 million). Besides, I like independent coffee shops. They’re all different — unlike you know who.