WESTLAND, Mich.—Starbucks workers here have voted to unionize with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), making their store the 20th in Michigan to do so.
The vote comes as the union pushes for a tentative agreement with a company that has historically dragged its feet at the bargaining table and closed stores that have organized.
Those tactics did not stop Ella Sinclair and her coworkers, like Dachi Spoltore, from organizing, they told People’s World.
“We recognized that Starbucks workers deserve more than what we are given. I hope that our win shows that our voices will be heard as long as we speak together!” Sinclair said.
In an interview, Sinclair described a scattered work history.
“My employment history honestly has been really all over the place. I worked as a farm hand for a couple years. I’ve worked in the food industry at a couple other places. Starbucks has been one of my longest jobs. I’ve been working there for almost a year now.”
At Starbucks, Sinclair saw the pressure her coworkers were under, as baristas across the country have: Understaffed stores, not enough hours, not enough pay. The dissatisfaction added up.
When it came to the question of whether to organize, Sinclair thought of one thing.
“Honestly, it was wanting to be there for the people I work with. The biggest point of Starbucks Workers United is wanting things to be better for the people after you. It might not be making it better for yourself, but it’s making it better for people who work there with you, for the customers, and for the people that will get hired after you.”
The Westland effort continues a wave of worker-led organizing across the country at the coffee giant. It recalls the workers who organized their own stores in 2021 and 2022, like Sinclair’s colleague, Dachi Spoltore.
“Oftentimes, you know, it’s a big scary company that makes a lot of money, and for a lot of the time we were kind of like, ‘Oh god, is this gonna work?'”
But the fear didn’t stop them. Spoltore remembered what made organizing worth it. “I had to remember: It’s us, we run the stores.”
High turnover is a constant problem in labor organizing, and many workers feel it’s easier to quit than stay and exercise their right to organize. Spoltore, like Sinclair, had an answer for that.
“Wouldn’t you want to take that time you have to change things now, so that in the future, those who come behind you don’t have to go through what you’re going through right now?”
Baristas juggle multiple tasks with too few co-workers on the floor, learn new drinks on the fly, and face unexpected store closures. That burden is why organizing matters. In recent months, Starbucks Workers United has escalated its agitation as the company procrastinates on reaching a tentative agreement.
The worker-led movement has produced a wave of recent actions from Starbucks baristas, including boycotts and walkouts.
In April 2024, Starbucks Workers United met with the corporation for its first bargaining session. What once looked like a promising sign turned into a familiar employer strategy: delaying tactics and refusing to bargain in good faith.
Two years and a new CEO later, there is still no contract. Instead, Starbucks found it fitting to hand CEO Brian Niccol a $96 million pay package.
As People’s World previously reported, on Aug. 25, SBWU launched a boycott of Starbucks as the company continued closing stores and refusing to bargain in good faith. The boycott has been joined by other unions, including the AFL-CIO and IUPAT, and political organizations like the Working Families Party and the Communist Party USA.
Starbucks is not only guilty of bargaining in bad faith; it also faces over 700 unfair labor practice charges.
Workers have taken action beyond the boycott, including walkouts against new drinks like the Unicorn Frappuccino, which contained an ingredient that many workers said made them feel sick after exposure.
Starbucks Workers United has also helped workers get transferred or collect unemployment when their stores were closed. Even without a contract, being organized still gives workers more say, as Spoltore noted.
“One of the biggest things that I’ve seen since organizing has been people being able to protect themselves within the workplace.
“A lot of people don’t know that they have the ability to stand up for themselves, and that shouldn’t be penalized. You have the ability to do that.”
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