How Gen Z Baristas Are Spreading the Starbucks Unionization Effort

[ad_1]

Joseph Nappi is a 20-year-old Starbucks barista and Cleveland State University political science major. He’s also learning how to be a union organizer.

“My family is a union family,” Nappi says. His late grandfather was the president of the United Steelworkers of America union in Ashtabula, Ohio. “They gave my grandfather a fantastic pension that allowed him to send my dad and his brothers to school,” Nappi says. “We still get benefits from his pension now to help afford my grandmother’s memory care. If it wasn’t for United Steelworkers, I don’t know where we would be with supporting my grandma.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Nappi has been with Starbucks since June of 2021 but moved to his current location in downtown Cleveland in September of last year. Last month, Nappi and a coworker started talking about unionizing. “One of the main motivating factors for the partners at this store to try and unionize was our partners in Buffalo,” he says. “What they’ve done out there, I think it really lit a fire under us to start the process of filing for an election and trying to become a unionized Starbucks.” Seventeen of the store’s 20 partners (Starbucks’ term for employees) signed union cards. In the age of COVID, the signatures were digital.

In December, workers at three company-owned Starbucks stores in Buffalo, N.Y., held votes and hearings in front of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and formally organized with Workers United, a Service Employees International Union affiliate. Two of the three locations voted for the union and are now unionized. Since then, more than 60 (the numbers keep changing daily) company-owned stores across the country, from Massachusetts to California, have filed for union elections, including three in New York City, according to the NLRB. Two of the companies’ three U.S.-based flagship stores/roasteries have filed; one is in Seattle, the other in New York City. Starbucks opposes the unionizing efforts and has set up a website…

[ad_2]

Source : time