Mililani Starbucks moves to unionize

A Mililani Starbucks store has become the first Starbucks in the state to join the more than 130 stores across the country seeking to unionize the coffee-retailing giant.

Amy Nakabayashi, who has worked at the Mililani Shopping Center Starbucks for nearly three years, said dissatisfaction with a monthlong closure of the store in January when employees lost hours and benefits was the catalyst to seek representation by the Workers United labor union, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

“They said we weren’t going to lose our hours, but half of our partners either didn’t get shifts or only got 10 hours a week to support themselves. A few partners lost their benefits,” Nakabayashi said. “It really is (scary to lose your health care) in the middle of a pandemic.”

Nakabayashi said communication from Starbucks managers during the shutdown was poor, and worker schedules were often posted last-minute.

“If we had a union, I do feel that our authorities or higher-ups would be held more accountable,” she said.

Workers United’s efforts to help Starbucks workers unionize resulted Thursday in employees at three more Buffalo, N.Y.-area Starbucks voting to do so. The results, announced Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board, were the latest development in one of the most formidable challenges to a major corporation by organized labor in years. Starbucks has had a union-free model for decades.

Thursday’s developments brought the number of U.S. Starbucks stores with a union to six, out of roughly 9,000 nationwide. Five of the unionized stores are in the Buffalo area, and one is in Mesa, Ariz.

Michelle Eisen, a Starbucks barista and union organizer in Buffalo, said the union has begun collective bargaining with the hope of securing a contract within the first six months.

While the Mililani Shopping Center Starbucks is still the only Hawaii store to petition to unionize, Eisen said other Hawaii stores have “expressed interest.”

Nakabayashi said the vote to unionize at the Mililani Shopping Center Starbucks is expected to begin later this month or in early April.

Starbucks employs 13 workers at the Mililani Shopping Center store, so Eisen said it would take seven votes to approve the petition there.

A Starbucks spokesperson told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in an email, “We are listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country. Starbucks success — past, present, and future — is built on how we partner together, always with our mission and values at our core.”

The spokesperson said the company believes that “we are better together as partners, without a union between us, and that conviction has not changed.”

Rossann Williams, Starbucks executive vice president and president of North America, has shared with Starbucks employees that the company respects their right to organize and will bargain in good faith.

Williams noted in a letter sent to all partners in December that “the vote outcomes will not change our shared purpose or how we will show up for each other. … We will keep listening, we will keep connecting and we will keep being in service of one another because that’s what we’ve always done and what it means to be partner.”

Still, tension between the union and the company has been escalating. Last week the union filed about 20 unfair labor practice charges, many of which accused Starbucks of singling out union supporters for harsher treatment.

Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges said in an email that “any claims of anti-union activity are categorically false.”

Efforts by Starbucks workers to unionize follow a recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that the nationwide number of union wage and salary workers fell by 241,000 in 2021, lowering the total to 14 million workers. The bureau also reported that the nation’s union membership rate in 2021 fell to 10.3% from 10.8% in 2020.

The declines are major when contrasted with bureau data from 1983, the first year for comparable union membership data. That year the rate was 20.1%, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

The entry of Hawaii into the Starbucks union battle could prove significant given that the state’s union membership rate in 2021 was still the best in the nation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the percentage of union members in Hawaii was 22.4% in 2021, down from 23.7% in 2020.

Eisen said that in the future there may be less union shrinkage as a result of the pandemic, which has given workers a chance to reevaluate and realize that they deserve more.

“It’s unacceptable to be a member of the working class and to be working full time or more and still be fearful that you are not able to pay your bills,” she said.

In contrast, Eisen said Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson received a pay package worth over $20 million based on how well Starbucks stores have produced in the middle of a global pandemic.

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The New York Times contributed to this story.