Starbucks Union Busting

Welcome to the show. Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I'm really really happy to have you here. Um, Okay, So I guess I guess we should start with the whole you were denied you were you were, you were denied your legal rights and then fired presumably for union organizing thing. Yes, absolutely, so starting from the beginning. And there was like I was so a month ago my store manager set me down and I like, he asked

me to come downstairs for a conversation. So I brought a witness with me and we went downstairs, and I found out that I was being investigated because there was one day that I had written down my weekday start time instead of my weekend to start time. They just recently changed things at my store so that we opened at we start opening shifts at five thirty on the weekends and five on the weekdays. And this is a recent change up. I had been there for three years,

so I out of habit. One day I had written five in the book instead of five thirty. Um. A couple of months later, it seems like everything has blown over. They accepted the fact that it was just an innocent mistake. I really wasn't trying to steal thirty minutes of time, which comes out to like what six dollars after Like, yeah, I was really desperate for that six dollars. So I figured they just they knew it was an innocent mistake and it wasn't going to be a further issue until

I saw two managers in my store. One of them was my store manager, the other one was Her name is Brittany. And what Starbucks has done recently is that they've created this new position in the company. From my understanding, it's called support manager, and they're basically like an assistant district manager, and they go around two stores where there's any sort of union activity, and they try to talk

about strategies to squash it. So it's like, basically the store manager that did the most harsh union busting if their own store gets promoted to this position. So in my district, the person's name is Brittany, and I saw her in my store, which is always a bad sign. And um, at one point they asked me to have a seat for a conversation. So I sit down, and uh, well, before I sit down, I say, is this a disciplinary conversation? And the manager said the one manager said to me, yes,

this is solely a disciplinary conversation. And I said, I would like to invoke my wine button rights. I'm going to go out to the floor and bring somebody back as a witness. And they said, you can't do that today. And basically what they did is they like held up a piece of paper like with a wall of text on it like this are from my face, and they're like it says right here that we can't. We don't

have to do that for you. And I was like that's really illegal and I'm not comfortable having this conversation right now at all. And they said, well, we're going to hand this to you anyway, and handed me a notice of termination. Um. Yeah, so I walked out and walk back to the front of house, and I said a little bit loudly, definitely not like shouting, but kind of loudly. I said, I just got fired, and is it okay if I swear to quote my friend? Okay? Cool.

So my best friend Kim was working at the time, and she loudly said, right in front of our new store manager, what the fuck? And I just kept walking because I was so upset and I didn't want the managers to see me cry. So I walked to the front of house, or walk outside, and Kim follows me, and she was like, we're gonna fix this. I'm gonna go ask Pulieve Early and I'll drive you home and we'll talk about this. Kim goes back inside, looks at my assistant manager and says, I'm a question mission to

be leieve Early. And the assistant manager literally couldn't even look her in the eye and told her Kim go have a seat in the back, and they fired Kim as well. Jesus, yeah, yeah. And I think when everything about the story that I think is worth talking about is that like when when it comes to union busting, it literally does not matter how good of an employee, you are unblessed, like you not being there will literally

cause everything to collapse. But yeah, I don't talk about like you were really good at this, and they were still just like no, fuck you. Yeah. So I was voted by everybody at my store. I was voted Partner of the Quarter in spring of I was also promoted a shift supervisor within that same week. And later that year, I participated in a Barista competition for my store and I won Barista Champion for my store level, and I also tied at the district level for Barisa Champion for

the district. So um. And then in addition to that, I had dealt with a situation where somebody like leaning against the front of my store had overdosed on heroin and I gave him an arcan and basically saved the guy's life. And then like a month or two later they fired me. So yeah, which I like, I'm trying to think of if like any other way you can possibly go like above and beyond what anyone could reasonably require you, that is more than I saved a dude's life.

It's like, okay, like you're welcome, guys, someone would have died inside your store if I wasn't there, but um, okay, by I guess yeah, And I wanted to talk a little bit about about that, specifically, in about sort of the conditions at the store, because one of the things that seems really clear from from listening to you talk about it and from reading stuff about it is that it's not just I mean, even if you were just like you know, doing kind of regular issue like service

workers stuff, this would be unccessible. But it's also like there's there's this way in which you and your co workers have sort of been turned into social workers and are being sort of are being forced to like deal with just all of the people who sort of capitalism to say, I just like spat out absolutely yeah, and sort of like fill in the gaps of just the

collapse of American social services. And yeah, I wanted, Yeah, I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the stuff that you've been having to do and what that's like. Yeah. Absolutely, So. Something I've noticed in Market Square is that it feels like there were some sort of resources for the unhoused community that existed before the pandemic that's straight up just don't exist anymore. So A lot of that that work to be done, like falls

on the Starbucks employees. Most of us are completely unqualified for that, Like I have a degree in psychology, but

sometimes that's just not really enough. Most of us are film students at Point Park, so none of us are at all equipped to deal with any situations where somebody is under the influence of something and maybe becoming aggressive, or somebody is having a mental health crisis, or there are people that are sleeping in the cafe and we're asked to pick them out if they're sleeping, but that feels really really bad because there's not a ton of

other resources, especially during the day, I know, the shelters closed, so when it's like winter or it's like ninety degrees outside and someone is just trying to get like a tiny little bit of sleep, it feels really bad to kick them out. Um, So we dealt with a lot of situations that we are just completely on equipped to handle.

And Starbucks would send us de escalation training, but most of the de escalation training revolved around if a customer isn't happy with their drink and they're shouting at you, So it doesn't even begin to cover like any of the stuff that we deal with that Market Square we had like we've we've seen a lot of customers having mental health crises in the cafe, Like what do you do? Like I don't want to call the police. That's definitely

not going to help. UM. In the situation where I had to narcan somebody the we had called for an ambulance and twenty minutes later, the ambulance still wasn't there, And there were even managers at the surrounding businesses calling and calling and calling trying to get an ambulance to Market Square and it ended up like being me that had to give them a narcan. UM overall, like something

that we were pushing for with Union. The main thing that we were pushing for was better training, Like we want Narcan to keep in the stores and we want all the ships to be trained on how to use that. And that doesn't have to be through Starbucks. There are I know of a lot of organizations throughout Picksburg that would be happy to train our staff on that. UM

we need like better resources. I know at one point we were falsely promised a social worker that would sit in our cafe for at least one day every two weeks. UM never got that, And yeah, I feel like my staff just deserves better, the community deserves better, and it shouldn't be Starbucks's job. But until we have something better, I think that we should be a little bit more equipped to handle situation that, frankly, we do have to deal with at some point, just by the nature of

our work and our location. I also think something really funny to mention here is that we got a new store manager at the UM. I want to say, at the beginning, or like mid June, we got this new store manager. Her name was Sarah, and she has already transferred to a different store because she felt so unsafe working up Market Square. She got her first Market Square a death threat and was like, I'm out. So even the store manager can't deny that our working positions are bad.

So the fact that they're still fighting against the union even though management is well aware of how terrible our conditions are. Just like baffles. Yeah, okay, I want to I want to take a second and go back to something that you said, which is your first Market Square death threat? How common is this? UM? I think I received a total of four to five and UM, then

I received my very last one. The day that my store went on strike and I was standing at the picket line and I was like, wow, it's just like the good old days before. But yeah, market squares a lotless land. Yeah, And I like, I don't know, like I feel like this is like every time I do

this is like a recurring thing. Every time I do a labor story, it's like, oh, this is a labor storce, Like no, but it's also the story of a bunch of like a bunch of people whose job this like isn't who just wind up having to deal with all of the ship that the state doesn't want to do, that corporations don't want to do. And it's like the the fact that Starbucks employees have to be the like the Starbucks union has to be the group in like in this place that is trying to get people to

get in dark hand training is nuts. Like just just like just any like sort of just Macro taking a step back level, like what on earth is going on in the society. CAN have been thinking a lot about lately, Like I think a lot of journalists and reporters have asked me, like, why do you think that the younger generation is the one like leading this like why are unions making it back now? And why is his younger

generations like so ready to lead this? And I think it's because we've spent our entire lives watching politicians on TV make all these promises and continuing to do absolutely nothing, and we're all sick and tired of it. We are all ready to take it into our own hands and fix it in any way that we see that we had. Yeah, yeah,

it makes a lot of sense. I mean, like I my you know, my my first ball Okay, so my first political member was the Rock War, but like I was like a little baby child, but like like you know, like I remember, like the thing I grew up on was like yeah it was Obama, it was it was Hope. It was changed, and then it was like you look at the world now and it's like it's like, oh it's it's even bleaker than it was in two tho eight, which is like, yeah, absolutely crazy. Yeah. I think that

makes a lot of sense. And I think also just like the last two years have been so prudal. Yeah, absolutely, And I was wondering, Yeah, I wonder thing did you can talk about like what affects the um, what effect the pandemic had on Yellows workers and what effect that had on union organizing. Yeah, absolutely so. Um, I think that it really pulled the mask off the company, which ironically,

well everyone was putting the mask on. The mask off was coming on for Starbucks because they always really pretended to be this really awesome progressive company, and it really revealed how performative the company is because they gave us all these COVID benefits for like two three months and then took them right away from us like before. Obviously the pandemic isn't even over now, it definitely wasn't over back and I think it was October they took away

like our chees spikes too, exactly. And right around that time, we were also watching our CEO are now former CEO Kevin Johnson, get like a forty million dollar raised, while they had just taken away our hazard pay and there are free food benefits even though we were all still struggling.

So then I think that us seeing those benefits being taken away and realizing that the company doesn't care about us in that sense made us start looking harder at everything, Like the company doesn't want to increase our pay, they don't want to give us credit card tipping, they don't want to make our stores safer, um, and every other

reason that any store could see to unionize. Like it really highlighted all of those reasons and all the ways the company doesn't care about us as much as they should, and how they really do just see us as a number. So I think that's what really really pushed us all towards unionizing. It's like, if the company doesn't care about us and the people in our stores, then we're going to rely on each other to care about us, and UM push for reunions so that we can take matters

into our own hands. And yeah, and I think there's there's a lot of the stuff that you've been talking about that highlights how important that is, which is that, like, you know, you have this combination of management either like do the management immediately above you understanding what's happening and being like we'll just throw you guys at it, will just literally bail and run away from how bad it is.

And then you have them the layer management like above you, which is it's a bunch of bureaucrats who like couldn't find their ask if you drew the map and you know, or like oh, hey, here, here's your d escalation training. It's about person mad about drink and it's like I am getting multiple death threats. It's like it's I don't know.

We literally had a like someone from I think you're either regional management or maybe a level higher than that, like area management hume into our store the other day, like as a customer and there was something going on. I'm not sure if it was like somebody shouting in the cafe or like two customers were fighting, but this like upper level manager who should know about our store said one of my briefs, does um, so is this like a high incident store? And we were like, I

don't know, isn't it your job? Like really like wow, yikes, Yeah, that's something that like, you know, it's not like I learned, Like it's something like you learned intellectually, and then you just see like and then yeah, so it's not you learn intellectually, and then you just sort of viscerally begin to understand when you know you're doing work and you're watching what your managers do, it is it's that like, yeah, like the people who actually knows how the production process

works and how the stuff actually goes and what's happening on the shop floor, Like are the people? Are the workers there? And it's like every one above them is just doing some other ship to just making everyone's lives worse and it's just literally curating. It starts that nobody the reason we need a union. And I tell people this all the time whenever I'm going into new stores.

Nobody knows your store better than you. Nobody knows like the inner workings of it, how busy you are with the needs of the store, are better than the people that are there forty hours a week. And another thing we talked about a lot in like our our citywide meetings, is like what do the managers even do on it? Like what is their job? What are they working on? Like what your manager do all day and her bushy

little corporate up. But I guess you just union busting now, even that they're delicated to another manager below them, So yeah, apparently yeah. Did you ever see the fake tweets the fake Workers United tweets that Starbucks published? Emil you a copy of them, but they literally made this hand out with a list of fake tweets from Workers United, and like the company's responses, to them. But if you look up the company's Twitter account, um, it just doesn't exist.

And the tweets from Workers United that they printed out on these hand outs also don't exist. And I think maybe three copies of that got handed out to my store where we all made so much fun of my boss that keep so, um, I guess that's my boss's job. I will I can show these to you and keep them on hand. This is this is like it's the biggest energy of Like, oh, I thought of the perfect argument seven hours later but didn't even the argument is not even real, like they're they're just making up a

guy to argue with. Yeah, and he didn't even try that hard because these were handed to me back in April. It says that these all of these tweets were posted on June one, so the data they claimed that this was tweeted hadn't even happen. Whenever I received the end out, I mean, hey, if you if you'll have access to a time machine, I I have some work I need to do. Yeah. Yeah. They say things like, in collective bargaining, you start with everything you have and negotiate for more

from there. From Starbucks Workers United right there and then the company's responses literally um and then though we are one Starbucks account said in collective bargaining, everything is up for negotiations if you have more, the same or less, and once you negotiate a contract, you locked in, which which is also funny because it's like like, Okay, you are looking at that like you think that that is actually like a thing that makes you look good and

not like a super villain. It's like, no, no, no, if you try to negotiate with us, we will make everything worse for you. It's like, really, it looks good. You know. They try so hard union busts and they just kind of stuck at it. Yeah, it's been it's

been comical to watch. It's very funny, which is really funny because like I remember, like I didn't know it's super boll but like I remember, I knew some people who were doing Starbic union organizing like way about like like two thousand, like six or something, and they were like, you know, and it was like they were kind of better at it, like they were willing to just like throw resources at it in a way that like they

don't seem to be able to know. I think maybe just because like the there's so many organizations, so many organizing efforts happen happening at once, that it's harder to sort of just like throw all of their stuff at one store. But yeah, it's just it's like incredibly funny watching them just sort of like flail and like you know what I mean, I guess like like all all corporations that you need bust eventually resort to break the

law because you know the law. And yeah, had my my district manager um came into my store screwdriver in hand to personally make repairs at my store, it would the funniest thing I have ever seen. It's probably my favorite union busting story. But she was like, yeah, I'm here to cover up the electrical outlets in your bathroom. And we were like cool, why and she was like, so that the homeless people can't like plug in their

electric shavers and shaven there. We were like, wow, we've seen we've seen people do a lot of weird things in the bathroom, and that's like not even one of them.

You are so out of touch. Oh my gosh, it's been hilarious to watch, Like, wow, that was really some effort, but really, you know, absolutely not immediately now, there's nothing I wanted to talk about that Starbucks is you talked a bit about earlier about Starbucks sort of like having this image as like like progressive organization and okay, like one of the things they've been big on sort of recently is like portraying themselves as this like pro l

G B t q I A plus like thing. And I think, like, okay, so there's something that like traditional media has finally discovered because they haven't covered labor organizing in forty years and they suddenly started doing it again, and they were like, oh my god, all of the union organizers are queer. And it was like anyone who's ever organized a union or anyone who knows anyone who's ever been in the union could have told you this

like thirty years incredible stuff. Is like wow, congratulations, you've discovered this. But yeah, I wanted to ask about sort of I don't know that this kind of bind that like I feel like we're people doing organizing are in right now, which is that Like Okay, So on the one hand, you have like in you know, the last sort of year or so, this like incredible increase in rampant homophobia but then simultaneously, like so you know, you

have to fight that fight. And then simultaneously you have these corporations who are trying to you know, like, yeah, they're like nominally on our side, and that they're not well, I mean they are, they are, they are funding the rampant homophobus, but like publicly they don't you know, publicly their supportive, but also you know that like their supporter because they're trying to sell our identity as a brand.

And then you know when queer people are like, hey, can we like have stuff that lets us live there? Like no, And I was wondering how you've been sort of navigating that. Yeah, so that's been really tough because, um, a lot of our queer partners in Pittsburgh get get their health insurance through Starbucks. You get gender care through Starbucks. And one of the biggest union busting tactics is our cuts. And if you cut someone's hours, then they're not eligible

for healthcare. So they're really just like dangling the carrot on the stick in front of our faces like, oh, if you unionize, then we're going to cut your hours and then you can't get your gender affirming health care. So that's like, that's really really sucked. UM. In addition to that, UM, there have been now four people about to be five. Um, we think one of one person is going to be fired one of these back from vacations. But out of all of us that are fired or

about to be fired, we are all queer people. So UM, I think that really shows how much store books peer partners. And since I've started organizing, in addition to like homophobia and like discrimination against the rare community, I've also heard just rampant stories about microaggressions and racism. UM. I've actually met a UM a partner that was fired from a

store in Virginia. I want to say she was I believe for my understanding, she was the only black woman that worked at her store, and she was fired for aggressive behavior. And when I heard that, I was like bidding me so just like and also that support manager that I was talking about, I've heard rumors that like she was transferred from one store to another because she

was like caught being racist at the first store. Instead of being fired, she was transferred and now she got she was promoted to store manager and then she fired a trans partner at her store, and now she's our support manager and fired me. So like it's it's the homophobia. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's it's the Catholic Church for racist homophobes.

Well okay, the Catholic Church for racist homophobes, but corporate and well okay, I I I am not going to make a claim on the air that they're not also doing this with sexual assault, because I they had like there's no way that they're not. But yeah, that is Yeah, that that that's incredibly bleak. And I would go back a second to sort of the gender affirm and care stuff because like, yeah, that stuff, it's like like, Okay, the thing that they are doing is just like we

we are holding the genocide button over you. It's like, yeah, if if you if you don't comply with us and you don't like accept the like absolute ship and scraps that we give you, we are going to try to kill you. And that is just indescribably horrific. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, I know it's something that partners up. There's at least one partner at my store that's dealing with that right now.

She's twenty five about and she is trans, and I know that, Um, she's on her parents insurance at the moment, but in less than a year she'll have the fun insurance elsewhere, most likely through Starbucks. And it's something that really got her into organizing. I know that for sure. Um yeah, it's it's been a really scary moment for her. Definitely something she's worried about. Yeah. Yeah, just the risk of being fired, the risk of having your hours cut

and stop being eligible for benefits. It's awful, and like she doesn't feel like she can get a job like anywhere else just because Starbucks is one of the like Starbucks offers like decent health insurance, so it's like I'm kind of trapped here until I can get out, until I can get another job with insurance benefits. Yeah, and you know, that's incredibly it's incredibly hard, especially right now.

I mean, yeah, I don't know, it's i mean, it's not really surprising that they're doing this, but it's yeah, it's it's really depressing and it sucks. And the fact that they're you know, like sending sending racist to do homophobias like h it's yeah, it's like dystopian like this

happened and been like is this real life? Like this is crazy and um, they just fired another black Clear organizer and fits were just yesterday and they're trying to make it look like he resigned, um, but really they gave him like a couple like options like you need to have at least one weekend day available, or you need to demote yourself, or you need to transfer to a different store. And they were like, I can't really do any of those options, like none of those work

for me. And then the company said like, oh, yeah, Jimmy resigned, like we totally didn't fire them, but they just resigned and sorry, you get to peel it because you resigned by yeah, it's a real we didn't fire you. We simply forced you out by making utterly impossible demands. Yep.

It's like it really reminds me of like it's the kind of stuff a country does when they want to go to war, where it's like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna give you a bunch of demands that it is literally physically impossible for you to comply with, and that because you don't comply with him, we're getting invade. M hmm, yeah, exactly exactly, Like oh, um, although I did just find

out some good news today. So there's this one bar where most of the union organizers hang out all the time, and they message us on Twitter today and they want to throw a queer dance party fundraiser for like our solid and strike fund. It was like literally the most us thing I can mostly think of, like a queer dance party fundraiser at our favorite bar. Like the bathroom attendant from the bar like showed up to our strike at my store and friends of the bartender there. It

was like the best Twitter DM ever. I was like, that's so funny. I'm literally going there with the other person that got fired from my store like tonight. So we're very excited for that. Yeah, and I guess that means that something else I wanted to talk about, which is, um, Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about like what happened after you got fired and the support you've been getting in the like the backing from other unions

that you've been getting. Totally. Yeah. So my store is actually just like a block away from the United steel Workers headquarters, which is incredible because anytime we have any sort of direct action, we get like forty steel Workers' star. Yeah. The day after I was fired, I I have this very funny picture that's on my Twitter UM of me just standing like with like forty steal workers sitting behind me. They found like the two biggest foods sting on each side of me where I started up stay and in

the protest. This is my new favorite picture of myself. So that was day one. We had a rally. We had really good turn out with all the steel workers and a bunch of other community allies are Symphony UM. Symphony musicians have a have a labor union to the library workers. UM. They all came out for the first day of the rally at Market Square and my citywide organizing committee was actually able to pull together a total of four strikes. What happened within the course of two days.

The planning happened in like basically under twenty four hours. Insane. So yeah, I got fired. Wednesday, Thursday was the rally at my store with all the steal workers. Friday, the East Carson Store in the South Side of Pittsburgh went on strike. The East Side store in the Bloomfield store all went on strike for the full day UM. The south Side store continued the strike into Saturday and then UM Sunday, my store went on strike finally, so, um,

it was incredible. We had we have a labor choir in Pittsburgh, which is in It's just like a dude with a guitar. He's my favorite person ever. Um. So we had the labor choir out at all of our events. And um we had, like I said, the library workers, the steel workers, the Symphony Union. Um, we have UE. We have d s A, which is Democratic Socialists of America. We have the Party for Socialism and Liberation or really

strong allies to us. And we had like a lot of the regular my my favorite customers showed up at my store of course, which made cry. One of my customers, one of my favorite customers who comes in multiple times a day, said you shouldn't be standing out here on the on the sidewalk, you should be back there behind the counter making coffee. And I was like, I know,

thank you. Um. We had a couple of our regulars change their mobile order name to Tori and Kim, so that every time he orders a drink to my store, they have to call out the name Tory and Kim. That's great. And we set up a go fund me and we received way more donations than we thought that we would get so um for all the workers at

my store that went on strike. In addition to the seventy pay that we received from the union for the day, UM, we were able to pledge twenty dollars to each of them to try to make their paychecks pole and cover some of their last tips. That was incredible and really just a demonstration of how much support we have in our area. You know, they say Pittsburgh as a union town. Yeah, really is? It turns out, yeah, And it's really cool

to see. I don't know, I there like one of one of the things that I keep seeing is this sort of like like one of one of the sort of right wing tactics that have been like just inundated within the last like a couple of years, has been like trying to separate out like oh, here are these people who are workers, but like, oh, they're not workers because they're like oh, they're like doing cultural stuff for They're like, oh, they just like serve drinks and like,

you know, you look at actual labor. It's like that's no, like none of this, none of this, none of these division things are real like people showing from each other. It's always get worried that people will be like judgmental about that. Like I'm always kind of like surprised when the steel workers show up. I'm like, I know, I'm not a steel worker. I don't make steel, I don't work in a factory or anything. Just make coffee. But um, everyone is so supportive and they are always so willing

to stand in solidarity, which is really cool. But it's something I'm always like worried about, Like I know, it doesn't feel like I'm a real worker, but like union, I mean, I'm in a podcast union, so like talking about yeah, I have I have like arguably like if if if if if you're going to use the really silly like like I don't know, sort of like cultural analysis of what a worker is. Like a podcast union is like the silliest union every and it's great, no

it rules. It turns out where workers we go fight for other people to other people fight for like the the when when when we when we were trying to get union recognition, like the NFL Players Association was like, hey, you guys need to recognize this, and we were like yeah, yeah, just um, We've been going to a lot of rallies for the Planned Parenthood Union and yeah, which I didn't I didn't actually know that they existed. That yeah, I actually,

well it wasn't Pittsburgh, but I was just talking. Actually probably I don't know what these are gonna err in, but like, yeah, that I just talked to people from the union. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they were cool. To the labor choir there again, I would tell you solidarity all around. I love to see it. Oh yeah, that's that's really cool. Mm hmm. Yeah, lots of unions in Pittsburgh. A good time. I met a lot of really cool people.

I feel like all the people I've met since I've been involved with union stuff, I have been like really cool. The first time I talked anywhere, it was at the Pennsylvania a f l C i OH convention and um whatever. I was told that when of our I talk, my speech was supposed to end with brothers and sisters, can I count on your support? Because they were passing a resolution for us. But one of my brieftas told me it would be funnier if I said, can I get

a hell? Yeah? So I said some very serious words to this room full of serious look at people, and then I said on behalf of all of our partners at the market Square Starbucks. Can I get a hell yeah? And they all so happy and I was like, cool, I found my people. That was like the first time I talked anywhere. That was funny. That's awesome. Yeah, this is and and and another reason to unionize. You get to beat a bunch of really cool people and then

they show up for you and it's just incredible experience. Yeah. On my last kid vassing trip, we went out in Games of two when when we reconvened at the end of the night for dinner, and we were like, oh, we should stop at our one store that we visited again, like all four of us, and I was like, yeah, we should like go in and be like, look, guys, I joined the union and I made three whole friends. Yeah. Also just talking at the UM, I was on a

panel at Women's Labor School, which was really awesome. It was at Penn State University and that was a really really cool experience. I met all the all the female union leaders. It's a really great event overall. It's really cool people involvedaltore. Hell yeah, I love unions. Good stuff. Absolutely. I got a cool pin that says labor women get in good trouble and I was like, yeah, that's what

I'm doing absolutely hell yeah. Yeah. So these days I'm just working with UM some other stores in the Greater Fitburg area helping get them filed. I won't be too specific about this, but we are going to see some stores picking up in DC, which is really really exciting.

We've been doing some canvassing trips out there. Well. At Starbucks Workers United, we call it a clean play because in Starbucks what a clean play is is that one day a week, UM, all the closing crew is scheduled for an extra two hours at the end of their shift deep clean the store, and they call that a clean play. So we like to take Starbucks plan language. So we feel like our little canvassing blitzes clean plays. So for the DC clean play, we've been I've been

out there twice. UM. We have visited a ton of stores, definitely some interests there. Seems like the union busting has been really tough, but we have we have one store that's guys and you'll see it in the news soon. Hell yeah, I'm very proud. It was like one of

that was one of my DC leads. UM they've reached out to us on our website for an organizing request, and um, they've just been like super strong leaders and they've been incredible and union investing really hasn't faced them at all, and they're going to be stress very proud of them, a little bit proud of myself, but they they can have all the credit for that. They they really like stay strong throughout the union busting, do good stuff. It's scary to be the first store in your area too,

to actually make moves. Like my friend Jake Welsh, he was the first store in Pittsburgh. His store was the first in Pittsburgh. And I know that's like really scary, and I'm glad that it's happening because it feels like once the one store goes, then the dominoes starting to fall. So once we see that one store in DC file for the union election, we're going to see a lot more go down there. Um, are you able to talk at all about what the search of organizing process has

been like? And you know, if you can't talk about like what has been like as an organizer, just like what it was like at your store and what it's been like going to other stores totally. So at my store we started. We had heard a little bit about what Buffalo was doing, and we started very casually talking about it at my store, like, yeah, if any store needs a union, it is the store. Like we are an absolute shit show here, so we could definitely usnized

that would be awesome. Um really had no idea how to get started though, until a couple of weeks later, I get a panicked phone call from one of my baristas and she was like, Tori, this weird guy came into the store when I was on a register today and he started asking me questions about unions, and I know he wasn't a barista, and I think he was a corporate spy. And we were like, oh okay, So we googled a guy started to like like get some information.

We found like his LinkedIn or his coworkers LinkedIn account, and we were like, okay, they seemed trustworthy, We're still in not sure, So we emailed the guy from a burner email account. The fake name. I think the fake name was like Darren or something, even though like our

names are like Tor and Kelly and Kayla. So we emailed them from a fake name and a Burner account and eventually got in contact with Daisy Pickens, who is now our national campaign director, but at the time she was working mainly in Pittsburgh and from there she she taught us everything we know about organizing. We built an organizing committee consisting of me, Kelly, and Kayla because like the three of us were pretty good friends. And we

got cards signed. We were able to get on people want my store to sign a card, and we filed unanimously. Yeah so um. Something that stores do right before they file is they write a Dear Howard letter. And you might have seen these on Twitter. If you haven't, you didn't find them on the Starbucks Workers United like national official Twitter, they always post those there. So we wrote

our Dear Howard. We turned in our cards to the n l RP office, and right after I finished turning in the cards to then l RB, I walked right back to my store and I had printed out a physical copy of our Dear Howard, and I handed it to my store manager, Joe. I wanted you to hear it from me, and he was like, okay. UM. From there,

the union busting started. We had captive audience meetings, which I believe to my understanding the company has stopped doing because they were kind of declared illegal, or maybe it was just that the information they were sharing was so misleading that it was declared illegal. But they handed us like a bunch of really really misleading handouts saying things like withdrawn petitions. If Workers United thinks that you're going to lose lose your union election, they will withdraw your

petition and abandon you, which is crazy. Another thing was that like, if if the union thinks that you're going to vote no, they're going to try to talk you out of voting. But Starbucks is the one that really cares about your voice, and we wanted to make sure everyone has a voice. We're like, literally, you can look

objectively at this. You can see what Starbucks has done to try to prevent you from voting, Like they were pushing for in person stores or in person elections in stores where most of the partners don't have cars, are um, busy with other things, have second jobs, and just couldn't feasibly vote in person. Um. They challenge ballots left and right,

they think. I think they challenged a total of nine ballots at my store, including Kelly's ballot, even though Kelly was literally like working at the time of our ballot count. She was literally behind the counter and like you can see her like in the zoom call like people as she came out to watch the ballot counts on her break, they tried to challenge her ballot claiming that she didn't work there. So there's just like hard evidence that the company is the one that doesn't want people to vote.

So we got through the union busting. It was it was tough, it was an uphill battle, and eventually we won our election eight to one on May six. So after that, I became an intern with Workers United UM for the Summer Solidarity Internship program, and that's when I started really getting into helping other stores file. So there was one out in out in the Pittsburgh suburbs like Greater Pittsburgh area. Peters Township was the first store, like my first really solid lead that I ever took on UM.

They filed. I helped them write their Dear Howard letter. We were interviewed by the Washington Post. Super cool. So they have their ballot count on August eighteen. Very excited for them. I have my stores in DC that I'm working with and a lot of other stores throughout Pittsburgh and um going on a lot of Queen play trips, whether it's a big one to Washington, d C. Or

smaller local one. But we'll go out in teams of two, visit as many stores as we can possibly get to in one day, and we wear our Star Wars Workers United shirts, so immediately people know why we're there. Basically, just go up as if we're going to order a drink and be like, hey, so, like we heard about what we're doing in downtown Pittsburgh were like the stores in Buffalo that unionized. You have to feel like, what do you guys think of that? And typically our approach

is to find the gayest looking person. Yeah, we gotta trying to find like the young, like maybe like twentysomething person with like dyet hair and a septom piercing. It's always the sceptom piercings. Let me tell you, they're always the leader, the ring leaders at their store. I don't know why, but it's been funny. So yeah, I try to find the gayest person and be like, hey, so what do you think about unions? And that's how we brought a new store. Yeah, yeah, and we've been pretty

successful with it. A lot of people either don't know what a union is or they really like their boss, and that seems to be the company's best union tactic union busting tactic because by having good bosses, because we always say that sometimes the best organizer is the boss. So sometimes the stores where they're like, we love our boss, our boss takes such a good care of us, I'm like, darn it, um, Like, good for you guys, but you

should unionize anyway. Yeah, I would also like, like I would say, it's like I really like my boss, and I am also still because yeah, totally trying to explain to them too. Sometimes those stores where they say that they're hard to talk into it, but I always tell them what happened at my store and what happens that we had the same store manager for I believe like five years. He was great. We loved him, he was cool,

and when we unionized, it wasn't about him. It was about the working conditions at our store and that upper management had been giving us false promises and the things that needed to be changed at our store were kind of out of my store manager's hands, like that was like above his vay grade, so he couldn't do much about it. And we made it clear, like Joe, it's not about you. You're great, we love you. UM gotta

do it, do you though, Sorry, buddy. UM. Then we got even though we loved Joe, we got a new store manager in mid June, and she was a little bit less awesome. And you know, you never know when things that your store can change. And even if you love the store manager you have now, they could they could leave tomorrow. So you gotta like, the only thing that guaranteed your store manager isn't guaranteed to be at your store forever. What is guaranteed is a contract, and

that's something that's really important. Sometimes it's hard to get people to see the long term of it, though. UM. Otherwise we're normally pretty successful. UM. We uh typically try to get phone numbers at every store, reach out to them within the next two days, and then we'll hold

like an intake meeting. So whenever we have an intake meeting, we tell them make a spreadsheet of every partner at your store, what shift they work, what their job is like if they are strip supervisor or barista, and assign one person on your organizing committee to talk to that person. So every person at your store should have an organizing

committee member assigned to them. From there, once they have a plan for who's going to talk to who, we get cards to them and they can be either physical cards like my store did, or digital cards, and then they start getting signatures, having little conversations like hey, here's what do you mean is here's why we're doing this.

If you agree, sign this card. Once they have sevent cent of cards signed, then we take it to the on l r V and say hello, we would like to do a union please, and then hopefully they get a valid count date. And the company always pushes for in personal elections, we always push back. We pretty much always win, and um we always want mail in ballots because we do, like, really genuinely want everybody to be

able to vote. Whenever I was organizing at my store, I told everyone my best possible outcome, best case scenario is that every single person here votes and votes. Yes. My second best possible outcome is that everyone here votes and some of you vote. Now, like I I want everyone to vote. I want every single person here to vote.

I don't want to be like there is one store in my district that did end up winning their union election, but out of there I think fifty to sixty partners, only twelve people voted, and although they won, like, that is not the way we wanted to get you want everyone to have a day, yeah, which I think is interesting on sort of two levels. One, it's like you can see the exact moment at which corporations start carrying about Prince are pretending to care about democracy, which is like,

oh wait, hold on, our workers are doing stuff. Oh no, we have to care about Yeah. Suddenly we're like this incredible pro democratic force we want everyone to have to say. It's like, okay, it's funny. They actually just came out with this happened after I got fired. That happened in the past two weeks. But they came out with I believe It's an app where partners can share their feedback

and share their experiences. Um. So they are trying to be so democratic, Like, look at them just really listening to us. Um. Yeah. They also did this really fun thing where even though hours are being cut across the company, people are having their hours drastically cut because this poor little billion dollar corporation can't afford to schedule us any

more hours or properly staff their stores. We were all scheduled an extra hour for one of our ships during the week so that we could sit down and watch an hour long speech by Howard Shoulder do a survey about how much we like our job, which was funny. That Wow, that was like a kind of a new load for Starbucks. Like wow, there's two people working on the floor right now, one person like making drinks and one person on register and they're getting slammed out there.

It's so glad you guys had the had the labor hours to be able to schedule me to sit here and watch this Howard speech. Great. Thanks, Like I think, like just the scheduling stuff like that, everyone being consistently understaffed. It's like this is something I was talking to the plant parenthood people about two, which is like like there too. It's like you get you get these managers who are like, wow, okay,

we're gonna do cost cutting. We're doing and you know the price of cost cutting is we're gonna just make all of our people work can possibly hard because we refused to put enough people in the store. And then you know, we're we're we're we're not going to let you work long enough, like we're not gonna let you work long enough to actually get benefits. And then yeah, it's like the worst combination. Yeah, but but it's like you know, okay, you know, like like they have the buddy,

they can't schedule you. It's like, yeah, what I mean, like like you know, I think like it ideally, in a society that wasn't just like like not even not even like a perfect sidey, in a society that was not like entirely based on cruelty and violence, it wouldn't even be able to do this at all. Everyone would

just have a fixed schedule. Yeah, just like exactly, because it's so it sucks so much because it's like I barely get to go to work even though I asked for a full time I'm scheduled seventeen hours a week, but I am there. I'm like so freaking stressed because there's just not enough people to make the number of drinks that need made, and all the customers are super piste off because they've been waiting ten minutes for their drink,

and like corporate is just watching this happen. I'm sure that they have to be getting bad reviews, Like there's no way people aren't calling corporate to complain about the weight times because there's only two of us working on a Sunday morning, and like they're really just shooting themselves in the foot, just all around, all around, shooting themselves

on the foot. Yeah. But I think also like there's a part of this which is just like they are insulated from this, like you know, I don't know, it's like the managers don't have to deal with this ship and it's like, yeah, they're gonna they're just gonna throw all of the angry customers, Like people who are angry because of decisions of management do they throwat you? And it's like this is this is fucking bullshit, Like yeah, it's like here's a cupe on for a free drink,

Go bully the brist does again. Yeah. Yeah, it's like Michelle, my district manager, doesn't have to come in and deal with like forty angry customers staring at her while she tries to frantically make drinks. Like yeah, it's like I don't know, like there is definitely a part of me that is like I mean, okay, like I know, on the one hand, this isn't true because there have been a lot of terrible corporate people. There's been a lot of like I don't know, like terrible world leaders who

actually had to work real jobs. But like, okay, like like some part of my soul still holds onto the belief that if like these people actually had to work in these conditions like consistently, that it wouldn't be like this because they wouldn't be completely insulated from just the

absolute horror they're inflicting an iPhone. And it's, yeah, you can see whenever my store manager is scheduled to be on the floor, like scheduled for a coverage shift, which means that they're required to be out on the floor making drinks and doing register, they were always very fully staffed. Whenever whenever the man is scheduled for coverage, there's always

at least five other people on the floor. But whenever it's like me on a Sunday morning opening the store and there's like a Steelers game and a convention in town and everyone, like the city is packed, and all the hotels around around my store are packed. Everyone's gonna

want coffee. There's like three of us, which is just like it's really frustrating to sort of like on a political level, it's like every job that I've ever worked, it's like if it was literally just us running this and there was no management, everything would work a hunter

times better. Yeah, and it's like yeah, that's yeah, it's like okay, Like at a certain point you have to just be like get rid of these people, like what why why why are we doing this our new new store manager since our recent new one quit because working visions are so bad. Our new new one is an outside hire who doesn't know how to ring in drinks, you know, how to make drinks, doesn't know anything, and they just put him in my store as a store manager.

And my roommate is also a barista, and she's been like having to coach him every day, which is a really awkward situation because she's not even a supervisor. She's like a a barista and she has to be like, hey, there's a difference between nitro coold Brew and regular coold Brew, like keep putting the wrong button. Very frustrating when they sent this guy into run my store. Meanwhile, like he

probably knows less than everybody else that works there. Yeah, definitely knows you do, like, yeah, definitely knows less than me. It's so funny. Since I've been fired, I still like every time there's an emergency at my store, my barristas called me. It's wild. Like I got a call at five in the morning the other day from one of my favorite barristas and he was like, hey, Tori, I know you don't work here anymore, but sal was supposed to open and he's not here yet and I'm locked

out of the store. What do I do? Or Like another barrista called me when I was in d C. And he was like, Tori, I just shrote up for work and the store is closed. What do I do? And I was like, I don't know that I can do my best to help you, but I there's not

much I can physically do. I don't have keys anymore. Sorry. Yeah, And it's it's really like, you know, one of one of the things that I mean, I guess you get this in both sort of like like when I want to like so I went to the rist of Chicago, and you know, it's like, okay, so these are the people who infamously produced all of the terrible economics to make the world suck, right and it's like, okay, well you take econ classes there, and it's like everything is

about sort of like I like, you're doing all of this because I like, okay, so like the you're doing all of this under the assumption that if you let corporations run into free market, they will do everything optimally and they will produce the lowest prices and they will produce everything as efficiently as possible. And it's funny because

like you see this in Marxist theory too. And then it's like you look at like any store place and it's like no, no, no, they're firing their most competent workers and hiring people who are incompetent because like because the thing that they actually like care them most about, even more than efficiency, even more than like making more money,

is maintaining their power. And it's like it's something that like is really obvious when you're working, but somehow, like the people who write about this stuff has like deluded themselves into not being able to understand Yeah, that's no idea.

It's like it feels like they almost don't want the experienced workers to say I've seen like so part of my internship project is keeping a database of the fired partners in the anti union firings, which is kind of ironic because I was like, well, got to add myself to this, but she now, But I've seen I see people must French treat who worked the company for five years. There's one person on there who worked for the company for seventeen years. But we don't get raises or anything

for seniority or anything like that. There's actually a cap on how much you can make in each state from Starbucks because they don't they don't want you to work there forever because then the frustrations start to come through, and then new the new unionized, and it feels like

they the high turnover feels really intentional. Sometimes I think it is, like I think that that's that's like a pretty common like Amazon Justice too, where it's like like their whole their their whole business strategies is intentionally on working every one so hard if they quit so I can get a new group of people, and so people don't organize and it's yeah, yeah, it's really brutal and horrific and I hate these people. Yeah, same, It's like if I see this person here for ten years and

make this look like it's a sustainable career. Then then we have to make it a sustainable career, and I

don't want to do that. So it works people out after like two or three, so very frustrating, which I think I guess also helps them with the sort of like like the way that people look at like I mean minium wage workers and also just service workers in general, where they're like, oh, well, yeah, you know, we don't need to raise minium wages a bunch of teenagers, Like these people don't need like good wages because this is like, you know, you're not actually supposed to be doing this,

this is like a transition thing. It's like that's not how any of this works, Like it's just not that's just you're you're you're making excuses for corporations doing exploitation. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah. And it also seems like another thing they're doing is that we've seen a lot of really high manager turnover too, and I think that also is really intentional because they had to even though the store manager that ultimately fired me was new, like she couldn't she didn't even have

the heart to do that. She had to bring in They had to bring in a support manager to like actually say the words like you're fired. Here's your termination notice. And it feels like the reason they're making the managers anniverse so high is so that the managers don't like form those relationships with staff of the store because it

doesn't feel as bad to fire them. Like, I don't think this ever would have happened to me if my original store manager, who had been there for five years and like knew me personally, was still at my store, I don't think this would have happened. And I think that's why they're doing this big manager shuffle right now at least. I mean, I'm sure it's happening in other places. It's definitely happening a lot in Pittsburgh. I think there are very few stores in my district that had the

same manager that they had three months ago. It feels like they're intentionally shuffling them around so they don't form like personal relationships or any sort of emotional tie to the partners at their store, and they don't feel guilty firing them. Yeah, it's like it's community is really dangerous

to them. M absolutely, Like I think I talked about this like some number of episodes ago, but like, yeah, like this is this is the thing that's really common with like IM but I'm just I'm just gonna straight up called Starbucks dicatorial organization because it is, like it is just a dictatorship. It's like the tatorships do this a lot where like, yeah, like communities are really dangerous

to them. Communities with any kind of strong bonds with each other really dangerous because people will fight for each other, and you know, you can't for example, like I don't know, it's it's really really hard to support someone who has

a strong community around them that will fight back. But if you can isolate those people, if you can like like physically isolate them, if you can like socially isolate them, if you can make sure that they don't have the support networks, then you can then you can you know, do whatever you want to them. And that seems Yeah, it seems like it's it's a very deliberate like and everything. It's like you know this also like this just makes everyone's life worse, right, Like did you see what happened

in Seattle with the new Starbucks Heritage District. I think I've vaguely heard about it, but yeah, so in Seattle, the three like original I believe it's the three original Starbucks stores, like first ever Starbucks stores to open the free in Seattle. Um, they've made it so that you don't the partners there don't have a specific store that

they're assigned to. They're assigned to the district and can be scheduled at any store at any time, So you're not working with the same people all the time and you're not forming those relationships. And if you were to somehow forming a relationships to start organizing, UM, you wouldn't be able to vote as a store. You have to vote as a district, which is just a lot more

logistically difficult. And there was a lot of pushback that happened, but unfortunately those stores hadn't filed for an election yet and UM weren't really able to do much about it. But we're definitely scared of that happening, like in Pittsburgh and like at other Starbuck stores around the country, that they're going to make it so that you work for the district the specific store, and that's kind of terrifying.

So yeah, I mean, and I think that that's not everything where it's like okay that they have to have to weigh efficiency versus like their own power and they're going to choose their own power every time, and as like there's just like an aspect of that too where it's like they're just incredible dehumanization of it. Yeah, it's just totally it's like really careless, like you don't know

what someone's transportation situation looks like. Um, you don't know, like if they feel comfortable working with like different groups of people, Like I don't know, I know that like a lot of people at UM. So this is just reminding me of something that happened at the store in my area. So at Penn Center East, the Penn Center East Starbucks, they are union store. They decided they were closing Penn Center East for like a for an entire week and gave them the option to work at three

stores that were like an hour away from them. And of course, like they were only given the option to work at other stores that were unionized, they weren't going to send the union people into the non unionized store potentially influenced them. So one of the partners, the one that was actually fired yesterday, it was like, I do not feel comfortable working at this store because I worked

at the store at one time. And I they still a lot of discrimination from the from the manager there, from the partners there, and I don't want to be put in that situation again. There's like a customer at this other store that said that called me a racial slur, and I don't want to be in this area. I don't I don't want to go out to these stores.

And it just like exposes partners to like a lot more like situations that they're potentially not comfortable with there, with new managers that they don't have like a good rapport with yet, And it makes everything just a lot more difficult. Like just let everyone work at their own store, Like we all have friends. All the partners that, like my store at least were very very close. I know a lot of the stores are the same way. It just makes work worse to not be working with your friends.

I don't think anyone would work in Market Square if we weren't all really close with each other. Um, overall, just work situation. Yeah, And I don't know, hope, hope, hopefully they're not able to do that on a large scale, because yeah, yeah, that would be it just feels like a disaster, especially since I mean there's a lot of Starbucks stores like concentrated in cities, but I know, like the Penn's Center East Starbucks was kind of out there

in the suburbs. And another big issue that they faced was that like, we don't have some of us don't have cars, and we just can't get to like the city Starbucks stores because our parents drive us to work to our parents drive us to work every day because we're in high school, and we just don't have like a means of transportation. There's nowhere to park there and just puts them. It just makes them face a lot of issues that they weren't really planned on dealing with,

planning on dealing with, and aren't really prepared to. And they probably chose the store that they currently work at because like they didn't just pick it at random. They picked because it was convenient to get to, They like vibes there and it was like a good fit for them. And forcing them to work at other other stores where there are a lot less comfortable not a good decision. Just feels shady, very humanizing for sure. Yeah, and so

I guess I do. I do have phone messing to ask, which is if people want to support you and people want to find you in places where can they do that? Oh yeah, So my Twitter is Tory Underscore TIMBERLINI and that's my personal Twitter. We also have a Pittsburgh Starbucks Workers United Twitter account. Um, if you want to support me and Kim specifically, there is a link to our go fund me there. There's a link in my bio

and somewhere in the Pittsburgh account as well. We also just released a national solidarity fund um through Coworker, but I'm actually not quite clear on how people can donate to that yet. I can, it's very new, so I can send you an email with a link to that. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, well we'll put all the links in the show notes. Awesome, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Thank you so much for joining us. Is Yeah, it was really good. Yeah,

thank you so much for sharing my story. I I feel like there's a lot of fired partners, fired partners across the country, and like we all kind of need to stand together. And I like people to hear my story and hear about how the union has supported us, and there's been a lot of community support. And you know, as soon as I was fired, I was immediately hired by work with United. You know, they're really willing to

take care of us. And if I had like anything to kind of like like any advice to give the partners who are trying to organize, Like, the union has your back, don't worry too much about losing your job. Probably won't happen. If it does, the union has your back, and all the other fire protters have your back as well. Thanks. Hell yeah yeah. And on that note, yeah, fight your bosses together. You can beat them. Uh yeah. Go out into the world and make havoc for people who do

bad stuff, cause problems on purpose. It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could Happen here. Update in my at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.