Aberdeen Starbucks workers petition to become first South Dakota location to unionize
The Starbucks coffee shop in Aberdeen is looking to start a union, according to a press release from Starbucks Workers United, a nationwide, worker-led unionizing effort.
Starbucks employees at the 7th Avenue location in Aberdeen filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to unionize, joining a nationwide movement of workers and baristas asking for better working conditions and wages. This is the first store in South Dakota to file for unionization, according to the press release.
Workers sent a letter to Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan to announce their campaign. The letter was signed by workers Demi Waldner and Ace Lloyd, with a line saying other partners wish to remain anonymous. According to Waldner, who's a shift supervisor and one of the head organizers, 13 out of the 18 people who work at that location have signed the petition.
Officials with Starbucks Corporate could not be reached for comment.
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“It’s just exhausting, you know?" Waldner told the Argus Leader. "I really do love my job. I love working here. I love the people here, but we all deserve so much better and we deserve to be set up for success.”
Waldner explained the store has had high turnover for the past several years. Waldner herself has only been working there for two years, and she’s the most senior member on staff, which includes the store managers.
"They’ll tell us that we’re fully staffed but tell outsides we’re hiring,” she said. “Corporate is just blind to everything and pretends everything is OK, even when customers and baristas can both clearly see that it is not.”
She added the store had essentially half its staff quit at one point. Barista Ace Loyd, who helped lead the organization effort, said they joke it's almost a "rite of passage" for new employees to break down from stress and cry in the back.
"It’s honestly the most stressful environment I’ve ever worked in," Loyd said. “I’ve worked a lot of food service jobs, but Starbucks is a completely different ballgame. You have to sit there and tolerate everything from corporate itself while not feeling safe to speak out.”
Waldner described one particularly bad day in February. Saturdays are always “horrific,” she said, since they’re busy and no one wants to work the shifts. Aberdeen was hosting a state tournament that weekend, and several workers called out when the schedule was poorly done to begin with.
It came down to one person making all the drinks–café, drive-thru and mobile–when there should have been three or four, she said. One person was manning the drive-thru and one person was on food. Then, of course, everyone had to take their state-mandated breaks.
At one point, one of the workers nearly passed out from stress and physical exertion, Waldner said, so they were down to two people. Customers waited for up to an hour both in the drive-thru and the lobby. Crowds of at least 20 people were always waiting for their mobile orders while the drive-thru line stretched around the block.
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“And there was no way out of it,” Waldner said.
She explained while sometimes they could close the store if they were short-staffed, they were often threatened with consequences and felt they didn’t have the right to do so anymore. Most of the time they make that request, she said, it’s denied.
“We couldn’t take any measures to correct it, to protect ourselves, or to make customers more happy,” she said. “Those measures are obviously a last resort, but they were needed. And they were just taken from us.”
Waldner hopes that, in addition to better wages and more hires, workers will be able to negotiate for shift premiums and get paid higher for working a "nightmare shift" like that one.
Loyd said a lot of the issues also boil down to having unsafe working environments that directly impact customers, adding upper management often won't listen to requests to address what's wrong with the store itself.
In one incident around Thanksgiving, the drains near the sinks started backing up onto the floor, they said, and workers had to wade through a couple inches of water trying to get drinks done. Despite it being a health code violation, the general manager told employees they had to stay open, Loyd said.
"We should not have been serving them in those conditions, and yet we were forced to anyway," they said. "We've been told we're the lowest performing store in the region and it’s like, ‘I wonder why?’ So I want it to be known that this [effort to unionize] is for the betterment of the community."
Waldner added it's not just the workers who have noticed how bad things can get.
“I've heard people say, ‘Starbucks is so bad. They should just close at this point,’ and I've been a little worried, honestly,” she said. “But we have always been super busy, despite everything. We’re the only Aberdeen store, and I think we are super valuable.”
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Recently, a federal judge ruled in favor of a Starbucks union in New York, and that helped encourage her. In the ruling, the federal labor judge found that Starbucks violated labor laws "hundreds of times” during a unionization campaign in Buffalo, New York, according to AP News.
More than 300 company-owned U.S. stores have now voted to unionize since the Buffalo store voted to unionize in late 2021, which was the first Starbucks in decades to do so.
The Aberdeen location will have to go through a hearing with the Nation Labor Relations Board before they can vote in an election to officially unionize, which they're hoping to do sometime in July.
“We’re jumping on the train and feel we’re joining in a really good place,” Waldner said. “We feel more protected with this effort moving forward. "
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Aberdeen Starbucks workers file petition to unionize, seek better pay
