PITTSBURGH, PA — Today, two more Starbucks locations in Pittsburgh went public to demand a safer, more democratic workplace and file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. The partners at stores #65815 (McKnight Rd.) and #793 (East Carson St.) joined Starbucks’ partners across the Steel City, making six total Starbucks locations working towards union representation in the company.
The Pittsburgh stores join a national wave of Starbucks stores that have begun organizing since workers at two Buffalo locations won their elections last year, becoming the first of 9,000 corporate-owned Starbucks locations in the country to successfully unionize. More than 150 Starbucks locations throughout the U.S. have now petitioned for union elections, with many additional stores actively organizing to prepare to file for elections. 9 out of the 10 Starbucks stores who have held votes nationally have already successfully unionized. Bloomfield’s Liberty Avenue location will be the first in Pennsylvania to have their votes counted on Wednesday, April 13th.
In open letters to Starbucks’ Interim CEO Howard Schultz, the East Carson St. and Northbound McKnight Rd. Starbucks Organizing Committees outlined a series of grievances with the company, highlighting deep inequities.
Southside’s East Carson Street Starbucks Organizing Committee wrote the following:
“At every level of the Starbucks business model, as with most other multi-billion dollar companies, workers are what make the brand successful. It is the dedication, perseverance, labor, creativity, and ingenuity of our work that brings in business. We deserve your appreciation and respect as we develop that appreciation for Starbucks in our customers, and we are entitled to a fair share of the surplus value generated by us and stolen by corporate. At the hands of corporate greed, we see an increase in brutality and heartlessness from the decision makers at Starbucks, and we deserve to be heard.”
The Northbound McKnight Road Starbucks Organizing Committee wrote the following:
“We are a new store in the region, with many new partners to the company, and in our short few months of operation, we have become acutely aware of inequities that partners face while donning the green apron. In our quest to make our cafe the Third Place that our customers deserve to enjoy, we have endured the consequences of a company who has not done all it can to create an equally warm environment for its partners.”
Third Place is a concept introduced by former CEO Kevin Johnson for Starbucks stores in the wake of COVID-19 to make Starbucks stores a safe place for customers to visit and spend time outside of their homes and workplace.
Pittsburgh partners are organizing in spite of Starbucks’ outrageous anti-union campaign across the country. You can read the stores’ full letters below.
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Southside’s East Carson Street Starbucks Organizing Committee
Dear Howard,
We, the undersigned Partners of South Side Starbucks at 1400 East Carson St in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, write this letter to formally announce to you our intent to unionize.
Starbucks prides itself on being a company with a strong set of ethics, however, we feel these principles are being hollowly preached and not practiced, undermining your stated commitment to fair and honorable leadership. We believe that it is the duty of Starbucks to provide partners with a living wage, a reasonable amount of hours, safe working conditions, as well as respect for our basic human rights. These needs have been continuously ignored for far too long. As Starbucks employees, we are disappointed in our leadership and ashamed to be associated with the dismissive treatment of partners by our corporate leaders. Any company that cannot ensure these basic needs to their employees cannot call itself an ethical corporation. It has become evident to us that there is only one way to advocate for these changes: standing together with our other stores, representing one another, and gaining control over our own happiness through unionization.
While Starbucks continues to make record profits year after year, we have watched our cost of living continually increase, with little or no improvement to our wages. We suffer when our hours are forcibly slashed, leaving us with massive gaps in our income, putting our health insurance and other vital benefits in jeopardy. At every level of the Starbucks business model, as with most other multi-billion dollar companies, workers are what make the brand successful. It is the dedication, perseverance, labor, creativity, and ingenuity of our work that brings in business. We deserve your appreciation and respect as we develop that appreciation for Starbucks in our customers, and we are entitled to a fair share of the surplus value generated by us and stolen by corporate. At the hands of corporate greed, we see an increase in brutality and heartlessness from the decision makers at Starbucks, and we deserve to be heard.
You call us “partners,” and unionization is hopefully the first step toward actually being treated as such.
In Solidarity,
Committee Members and card signers of 1400 E Carson St
Abbie Levans B Roll
Alex Steele Kai Brown
Jeremy Rhine And others who felt safer in anonymity
The Northbound McKnight Road Starbucks Organizing Committee
Dear Howard,
We are the partners of Starbucks McKnight Road - Northbound, and we are writing this letter to you to formally announce our intent to form a union at our store. We have been inspired and invigorated by the history of unionization in the area. The work done by partners at other nearby locations has shown us that we now have the opportunity to mark another milestone in Pittsburgh’s rich history of protecting worker’s rights.
We are a new store in the region, with many new partners to the company, and in our short few months of operation, we have become acutely aware of inequities that partners face while donning the green apron. In our quest to make our cafe the Third Place that our customers deserve to enjoy, we have endured the consequences of a company who has not done all it can to create an equally warm environment for its partners.
In 2021, Starbucks had an unprecedented year in profits, amassing $8.1 billion in profits in the fourth quarter alone. While the higher-ups at Starbucks enjoyed reaping those benefits, baristas and shift supervisors waited, and continue to wait, for a humble $3/hour raise, which is still not enough to support the cost of living. Along a similar line, as we have been building our business, our store manager has been put in a situation where he cannot provide our partners with the hours they need due to Starbucks’s labor hours allocations. Partners who have children, partners in school, and partners simply trying to live comfortably have had to take on second jobs and struggle to make ends meet because our store has not been provided with the labor hours that partners need to stay afloat during a year of extreme financial hardship.
We also seek to ensure an equitable distribution of non-tippable hours, or eliminate non-tippable hours entirely. We seek guaranteed meals during all shifts - partners end up paying for meals, while still being the key factor in Starbucks’s ever-growing profit margin. We seek guaranteed hours, with the support of Starbucks’s increased distribution of labor hours. We seek stronger training programs, and accountability for payment to trainers. We seek more accessible benefits, and of course, we seek a living wage that supports the cost of living in Pittsburgh in 2022.
We work at Starbucks because we believe in the power of a Third Place, as described by Kevin Johnson in 2020: “a feeling of comfort that uplifts customers everywhere, in every way that they experience Starbucks”. It is time, now, that we as partners feel that same comfort, and with the support of Workers United, we will.
Sincerely, the partners of Starbucks - McKnight Road, Northbound #65815.
Olivia DiPrimio
Philip Holzapfel
DaZhon Jackson
Sky Lieberman
Kamryn Nash
Nicole Schibler
Gabby Young
Alongside the eleven partners who wish to stay anonymous at this time.
