“Starbucks isn’t unique; They’re only unique in their particular brand of stubbornness.” Autumn Archer, labor coach for the Boulder Denver Socialist Association and organizer for the Starbucks Workers told Yellow Scene Magazine. Archer was one of the organizers of the January 27 Unite the Unions rally at Civic Center Park, where organizations including Starbucks Workers United, Denver DSA, and other labor rights advocates gathered in solidarity with Starbucks workers and unions across Colorado on the Capitol-backed lawn.

While Autumn Archer’s five year employment as a barista and shift manager has come to an end, many of her friends as well as her partner are still working for Starbucks. 

“Starbucks makes up a majority of my home’s income,” Archer illustrated. “And many employees often have to choose between groceries and rent every month.”

SBWU called for a strike November of last year in an effort to finalize their union contract, in which employees have bargained for fairer scheduling, more accessible healthcare, and higher take-home pay. 

“We’re living in the most expensive economy many of us have ever seen in their lifetime,” Archer explained. “So we’re asking for a tangible increase in take-home pay. The company says it pays the equivalent of $30/hr, but they’re factoring in benefits like Spotify and we know these are benefits employees pay for out of their paycheck.” 

SBWU strike leaders, including KC from the Lafayette store, said the Unite the Unions rally was meant to draw attention back to the ongoing strike and build public support for their efforts.

“I hope this is a reminder to people that Starbucks is still on strike and we still need their support.”

KC had worked at Starbucks locations all over the country, and two weeks after starting at the Lafayette location, the store went on strike. KC relayed their experience from the picketline, saying, “We get a lot of people spitting in our faces, telling us to go find real jobs, telling us we don’t matter. There’s one woman who loves to throw every slur under the sun every time she crosses the picket line.”

KC reiterated that this level of dehumanization is common in the service industry and a root cause of the underpayment and unlawful work conditions they and other service industry workers experience. “We’re all wiping the sweat off our brow, and breaking our backs to go take care of the very same people who dehumanize us [….] like, ‘Are you sure you want a non-human making your Americano?’”

Crowd gathered for January 27 Rally Photo by Sprout Foster

It’s not only customers hell-bent on their daily dose of convenient coffee who are clashing with strikers. Before the formation of SBWU, Starbucks was one of the top contributors to federal labor law violations, with over 1,100 ULPs for union-busting and other unfair labor practices. NLRB Judge Michael A. Rosas found that Starbucks had violated the National Labor Relations Act hundreds of times through “egregious and widespread misconduct demonstrating a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights.”

“It’s not beneficial for either side to bring every single one of these cases before the NLRB,” Archer explained. “It’s very time consuming and very expensive. So we asked them to sit down for an arbitration [to quicken the process], but they’ve used that to stonewall on finalizing the union contract for over a year and a half.” 

The goal of the Unite the Unions rally was to not only show solidarity with the Starbucks strikes in Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder, and Fort Collins, but to show solidarity for all labor movements in Colorado.

Archer said, “These exploitative practices are not isolated to a single workplace or environment. They are widespread and symptomatic of an economy that is concentrating its wealth to a few bad actors.” 

Other labor leaders like six-year member of Denver DSA Matt Crook have seen increased need for union participation, as Crook watched his local association fluctuate greatly after pro-laborer Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. “All the energy got sucked out of the room once the old dude stopped running [… ]I watched the chapter deflate, which is understandable.” However, Crook urged, “We need to find ways to sustain through the losses.” 

Other organizations and city leaders like Denver City Councilmember Sarah Parady joined on the lawn for pizza, non-affiliated food truck coffee, and rousing speeches from organizers and Starbucks employees. Unifying the efforts of all union efforts, Attorney General Candidate David Seligman and Senate representative Julie Gonzales expressed the dire need for the Worker Protection Act. The bill was reintroduced only after Mayor Polis rejected the legislation that would remove a significant barrier in unionizing that is unique to Colorado. After the vote to unionize, unionized workers must hold a second election, which must be won with a 75% approval – as compared to a simple majority win in the first election – before being able to negotiate dues with their employer. Similar to what Archer called “stubborn” stonewalling tactics of Starbucks, barriers such as the one the WPA is attempting to remove are viewed as just another bureaucratic form of union busting. 

Autumn Archer acknowledged that Starbucks has some of the best benefits in the industry, but gives credit to union solidarity for this fact.  “Howard Schultz, former CEO and founder, loves to take credit, but those benefits pre-date his tenure,” she explained. “Starbucks had a union in its main roastery building in the mid 1980’s. Part of the expansion of the business into the cafe business was to water down union density in the company.” 

As the speeches of Unite the Unions concluded, Host Raven Caruth demonstrated a lesson their cohost Kylie Anderson admitted as “cringey.” Caruth wore the iconic green Starbucks apron and yanked on a rope in a tug-of-war with a faux-CEO on the other end.

Participants in a Labor themed Tug of War Photo from Sprout Foster

One by one, Starbucks workers and supporters rushed forward to join Caruth, grabbing the rope and sending the faux CEO skidding across the bird-poop-filled lawn as the crowd cheered. The lesson might have been “cheesy,” but things that are considered cheesy often get that way through repetition, and there are certain lessons worth repeating. At Unite the Unions, the lesson that bears repeating: the path to more just and more humanizing workplaces for all Coloradans is one in which we choose again and again to come together and look out for one another. 

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The post ‘We Still Need Support’: Starbucks Workers Rally Amid Strike appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.