LADUE — Things were back to relatively normal Monday morning at the Starbucks on the corner of Clayton Road and Lindbergh Boulevard.
A table of retired gentlemen sat at their regular table next to the window facing north, solving the world’s problems over morning coffee. In the back, a young man in a suit opened his laptop. Up front, a servicewoman in Army fatigues waited on her drink. The store, across the street from Plaza Frontenac and one of the busiest in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region, was full.
Alex Barge was behind the counter with about eight other partners. That’s what Starbucks calls its employees these days. It’s a bit of a marketing ploy to turn attention away from the fact that the “partners†are unhappy with their working conditions and pay, so much so that across the country have voted to join the Starbucks Workers United union.
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This store, smack dab in the middle of one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country, is one of them.
Barge and her colleagues work in one of five stores in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region where employees have formed a union. On Saturday, the workers at Lindbergh and Clayton held a one-day strike to bring attention to the plight, locally and nationally. After a manager opened the store in the morning, about a dozen employees walked in and let the boss know they weren’t working that day. They walked outside and set up tables with signs letting their customers know why they were on a one-day strike.
“Skeleton crews scare away customers,†said one sign, proving the workers have maintained their Halloween spirit during pumpkin spiced latte season. “Hour cuts = wage theft,†said another.
Among the key issues, Barge told me Monday after she was off work, is that despite having plenty of baristas who want hours — unlike some restaurants who can’t find employees — the management at Starbucks has been cutting hours. This fits a trend nationwide at stores that have voted to form a union.
“It’s been building for a while,†Barge says. “There has been a lot of frustration in our store over staffing issues. People are struggling to pay rent ... people are worried about losing their health insurance. We just have not been able to keep up with the volume of customers that we get. We have a ton of people who actively wanted hours.â€
The walkout was meant in part to draw attention to how hard Starbucks is working against the unionization of its stores. Last month, for instance, the National Labor Relations Board alleged that Starbucks by raising the pay of workers in nonunion stores to $15 an hour, while workers in union stores only make $12 an hour.
And in Memphis, a federal judge of seven workers who had been fired after they spoke to reporters about their unionizing efforts.
Corporate officials from Starbucks, in various public statements, deny that they have violated labor rules. In a town hall meeting with workers earlier this year, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz defended the company’s actions.
“I’m not an anti-union person. I am pro-Starbucks, pro-partner, pro-Starbucks culture,†Schultz said in April. “We didn’t get here by having a union.â€
But there’s no doubt that at some stores that have unionized, there is tension as workers fight for their rights. It is a transient employee population, as some baristas leave to find more hours and others head to school.
“People are afraid of the company,†says Jon Gamache, one of the Ladue store union organizers. “They’re afraid to put that target on their backs.â€
Nationally, the Starbucks workers — the movement started in Buffalo — have helped spur an uptick in union organizing. It’s happening at libraries, in the halls of Congress and at warehouse stores like Amazon. Last week, workers at an Amazon warehouse in St. Peters distributed a list of demands to management, including higher pay and better working conditions.
Amid a tight job market, workers are reaching for the power of union protection in industries that suddenly hold them in high demand.
Gamache and Barge said they got great support from their regular customers during the walkout on Saturday. Those folks find themselves waiting in line longer at a store that regularly used to staff 14 or more workers during morning rush times. It now staffs closer to the eight that I saw Monday morning.
“This was a wake-up call,†Gamache says of the one-day strike. “This was the first action like this in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. It won’t be the last.â€