Bargaining attempts still slow-going for Starbucks and its union baristas

The drive to unionize Starbucks baristas is approaching what may be a pivotal one-year mark. Union organizers scored a flurry of victories early on, but then stalled out as the coffee giant made moves to stem their momentum. The National Labor Relations Board is exploring multiple complaints concerning those tactics.

Meanwhile, tentative attempts to meet at the bargaining table resumed this week. To learn more, KUOW’s Kim Malcolm interviewed Chicago-based reporter Noam Scheiber. He covers workers and the workplace for the New York Times.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: You've been covering the Starbucks unionization campaign since it began late last year. The story seems to have dropped out of the headlines in recent months. How would you characterize where workers and Starbucks management are right now?

Noam Scheiber: I think there were really three phases to this. The first phase was late last year through the spring, where this campaign really exploded onto the national scene. A few stores unionized in Buffalo, then it really seemed to spread all across the country. By February, March, April, the workers were filing election petitions in about 60 to 70 stores per month. So, it was growing very quickly.

By the spring, the company began to do a number of things that slowed it down. The biggest one was offering wage and benefit increases, but only to non-union stores. That seemed to really slow things down.

The third phase, over the last few months, saw the rate of growth in the union campaign has really slowed down, but the union has won a lot of elections. There are going to be unionized Starbucks stores, and now it's just a matter of bargaining, and figuring out what a union contract will look like.

It's kind of been this war of attrition between both sides to shape the parameters for bargaining. On the union side, to try to win some concessions. On the company side, to try to give as few as possible,

What's your sense on how dug in people are on both sides, and how long some kind of resolution might take?

Typically, it takes about a year or more to get a first contract. This is not a quick process. I think we are in this sort of stalemate period. The union has won over 250 elections, which is a lot of elections. But Starbucks has around 9,000 company-owned stores in the United States. So, as a percentage of their overall footprint in the United States, 250 is not that much. So, we're in this stalemate where the number of unionized stores is not going to go down to zero, but they're very far away from having a majority of stores in the country.

I think what we're going to see is the union really make a push in a handful of cities where it has what we call ‘high density.’ I've talked to union officials who say things like a citywide boycott is not off the table. That's something that if it started to impact buying patterns, customer behavior in a city, could really get Starbucks’ attention. I think the phase we're at now is trying to use these pockets of leverage, pockets of power that the union has, to really move the needle in the bargaining.

As you continue to cover this, what development will you be looking for next?

Bargaining formally resumed yesterday. There were five stores where the bargaining was supposed to begin. It was a pretty short session. The company officials got upset that union representatives were trying to broadcast the session on Zoom, and were upset that they were trying to record the session. So, they all ended pretty quickly.

What I'll be looking for is just to see whether we actually do get down to some substantive negotiations; whether there are discussions about wages and benefits that union employees would get; something like a grievance policy that might protect workers if they are fired and they believe that they've been fired unjustly; concrete gains that the union might be able to get in writing.

I think if we see substantive bargaining around these proposals, and we see something in writing that suggests the union is able to get a concession, then that could produce more momentum for the union.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.