With seven years of experience as a barista, Sarah Broad knows how to make all kinds of coffee.
Now a Starbucks worker also knows what it’s like to be a union member and face the growing United Steel Workers (USW) campaign. to merge Starbucks stores in Canada.
“I never realized how passionate I would feel about the labor movement,” Broad said in an interview from his basement apartment in Victoria, British Columbia.
Broad, Victoria’s shift manager, helped organize her store in August 2020, the only one in Canada at the time. She is one of a number of service and retail workers in North America who have joined the labor movement since the beginning of the pandemic.
The surge in interest has led some workers’ leaders and experts to wonder if this moment could mark a turning point for unions, which have seen a decline in the sector for years.
In addition to efforts to unification of Amazon warehouses, there are efforts in the United States to introduce unions in Apple stores and Merchant Joe. There was a successful campaign in Canada to organize a handful of Indigo locations and PetSmart store.
A recent survey in the United States showed that 68% of Americans approve of unionsthe highest number since 1965.
“I think this could be a turning point for Canadian and American unions,” said Nicole Denier, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton who studies unions.
“We’ll see next year if the momentum continues to increase.”
WATCH | Workers trying to unite hundreds of Starbucks stores:
The unification effort is coming to Starbucks, the restaurant workers
Starbucks is the newest major food service company that has recently seen efforts to unite unions in Canada.
Baristas are fighting the iconic brand
Starbucks is upright wave of alliances.
An online tracker and map Based on data from the U.S. National Labor Council (NLRB), it shows that about 300 Starbucks stores in the U.S. have filed for union in just six months, including the leading roast in the hometown of the Seattle company. According to the tracker, run by a non-profit media organization that focuses on work stories, more than half have been certified.
in Surrey, British Columbia, second Canadian Starbucks just united in unions and half a dozen stores in Alberta are trying to do the same, including five in Lethbridge.
Broad says health and safety issues related to the pandemic, customer abuse and the high cost of living in Victoria have led her and her colleagues to seek union representation to improve working conditions and improve their wages.
Although the process was “a little embarrassing,” she said it didn’t take long to attract workers to her store because most were “super gangsters.”
It took a little over a month to get the store’s trustee certified under British Columbia law, but it took almost a year to negotiate a collective agreement with Starbucks Canada.
It will be expensive for USW to organize and maintain very small locations one by one compared to organizing large factories, lumber mills or offices. But small negotiating units are not the only challenge in organizing the services and retail sectors.
“The main problem is employee turnover. It’s a younger, transitional workforce,” said Mike Duhra, USW’s representative for Western Canada.
Another factor, Duhra says, is that unions are so rare in the sector that some workers are simply unfamiliar with them or unaware of how they can help.
Mike Duhra, USW’s representative for Western Canada, says companies like Starbucks are difficult to organize because employee turnover is high and there are many places, but the union wants to expand into sectors such as food services and retail. (James Dunn / CBC)
Starbucks cancellation
Another factor is Starbucks’ opposition to unions. Well-known former CEO Howard Schultz recently returned to head the companyand he was vocal for his opposition of unions for years.
Company executives have visited shops to dissuade workers from uniting in the United States, and workers claim a location was closed earlier this month because it recently merged.
Starbucks announced increased benefits and salaries for the entire company in May, however they are not offered to workers in union shops in the United States or Canada.
A Starbucks Canada spokesman told CBC News that the company believes it is better without a union, but continues to “respect the right of our partners to organize.”
In addition, the combined place in Victoria does not offer salary increases, as it has “its own collective agreement, including its own unique salary increase schedule”.
Broad believes that union-funded stores don’t get promoted because “they’re just trying to make us look bad and get revenge for unionization.”
Economic conditions prepared for union growth
Mikal Skuterud, an economist at the University of Waterloo, says the current tight labor market and high inflation are conducive to union growth.
“The union rate is pro-cyclical,” Scooterwood said, “so when the economy booms, the union rate tends to go up.”
According to the NLRB, applications for job creation in the United States have increased by 57% this year compared to the first six months of 2021.
Equivalent data on trade union organization in Canada are not available, but Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labor Congress, said “we are seeing a growing impetus in Canada to unionize, especially among young workers.”
While there is movement in large companies, young workers have also organized unions in a video game manufacturer and a liqueur shop.
Workers from a place in Indigo, Mississauga, Ont., Gathered in September 2020 before their successful vote to join United Food and Commercial Workers. (UFCW Local 106A)
However, Scooterwood says private sector unions in Canada could desperately use the push.
“The union rate, especially in the private sector, is the lowest it has ever been.”
Duhra of USW says unions are really looking to move into new growth sectors.
“We need to find new members … and this is the perfect industry where people need a union,” he said, adding that Starbucks workers come to USW for help.
Will the momentum continue?
Lawyer and professor Kenneth Thornicroft of the University of Victoria is skeptical that Starbucks will become a highly unionized company.
“Unless the union is able to achieve a fairly deep penetration of the store network,” he said, Starbucks “can just wait for them,” and because members get tired of paying fees, stores will be deserted.
Thornicroft points out that this is exactly what happened when a handful of BC stores united in an alliance in the 1990s.
He believes unions may have better growth opportunities in the banking and financial services sector than in food services.
But Denier believes the retail and food sectors are ripe for unionization because the two industries have long been insufficiently united.
According to her, workers are not only committed to receiving better wages, “but also to having a voice in the workplace.”
She added that workers are also focused on making companies that advertise themselves as progressive responsible for their public image.
For her part, new union activist Sarah Broad is looking forward to advising and supporting potential barista siblings trying to set up other shops.
“I’m so excited that they want to join and it’s going to be a challenge,” she said, “but it’s worth it.”
Add Comment