Overland Park Starbucks becomes fourth KC-area store to unionize. It took over 2 years

In a unanimous 14-0 vote Monday, workers at the 75th Street and I-35 Starbucks in Overland Park elected to unionize. The store is the fourth Starbucks location in the Kansas City area and the first in Johnson County to do so.

“We want a seat at the table,” shift supervisor Alydia Claypool told The Star. Claypool has been involved in the union effort for more than two years.

“We want to be able to make decisions in our store that directly impact our team and our customers,” she continued.

Claypool works at a “container store,” a compact Starbucks location with no indoor areas for customers to gather. She said that the store’s layout has created challenges like insufficient inventory storage space and inadequate parking for employees.

The victory for 75th I-35 SBWU, the store’s union, comes after years of organizing and several worker strikes. In November, employees from the Overland Park store joined those at around 200 other Starbucks locations nationwide in walking off the job to protest poor working conditions.

After the National Labor Relations Board validates the vote, the next steps for the employees will be to initiate the bargaining process with Starbucks on a new contract for the store’s workers.

“We respect the rights of our partners to organize and bargain collectively, and we are eager to reach ratified agreements in 2024 for represented stores,” the company said in a statement to The Star.

Claypool is the only remaining employee from the group of co-workers who first voted to unionize in early 2022. Their election returned six votes in favor of unionization and one vote opposed, but Starbucks challenged the election’s legitimacy due to a lack of proper communication between the NLRB and the company.

A multi-year legal battle followed, in which an NLRB judge eventually threw out the results of the 2022 vote and ordered a new election. The Overland Park store even made national headlines when Starbucks used the NLRB’s handling of the store’s first vote to prompt a Congressional probe into the agency’s objectivity.

“It feels really powerful to me that even with a brand new team over the course of two years, we’ve been able to keep support for the union,” Claypool said.

The Overland Park store isn’t in the minority, either: Around 400 Starbucks locations across the country have voted to unionize through the national labor union Starbucks Workers United.

According to a map maintained by the labor news site More Perfect Union, three Starbucks stores in Kansas are unionized — one in Wichita, one in Lawrence and the latest in Overland Park. One additional store in Wichita has filed a union bid.

In Missouri, 11 Starbucks stores are unionized — three in Kansas City, one in Springfield and seven in St. Louis.

Several additional Starbucks locations in both Missouri and Kansas have voted on unionization but ultimately rejected the idea.

Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United announced in late February that they had agreed on a bargaining framework after years of stagnating negotiations and accusations from both groups about unlawful conduct.

The company said it was working with Starbucks Workers United on “ a foundational framework designed to help achieve ratified bargaining agreements, resolve certain litigation and address other issues.”

The company will now extend certain perks to unionized stores that non-union stores have enjoyed since 2022, such as the ability to receive tips on credit card purchases.

“We’re figuring out what our store is really wanting in a contract as well as coordinating with the national movement to get a bargaining representative,” Claypool said. “Hopefully, they are serious about coming to the table and bargaining in good faith.”

Do you have more questions about labor or unionization in Kansas City? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.