Starbucks workers in Bloomington begin effort to unionize

Bloomington resident Stefanie Sharp started working at Starbucks last summer and expected to work 35 hours per week — but many weeks she has been assigned shifts that total just over 20 hours.

Sometimes she works a day shift, sometimes a mid-shift, sometimes a late shift, depending on the whim of the scheduler.

“You don’t really know what your income is per month,” she said.

Sharp said she and her co-workers also have to worry about cracking 22 hours a week to retain their benefits.

Those uncertainties — and other concerns — have prompted Sharp and about 30 of her co-workers to try to unionize with Starbucks Workers United. The employees said in a news release this week they have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board.

The Bloomington employees are part of a trend: According to the union, more than 330 of the chain’s coffee shops have unionized in 38 states and Washington, D.C., which, the organizers said, was “more than any company in the 21st Century.”

Sharp, of Winslow, Indiana, in the southwestern part of the state, came to Bloomington for college. She took off a year after the pandemic but is about to go back to school. She has about 18 credit hours left on her political science degree.

Employees: Starbucks wages too low, especially for Bloomington

Sharp said the hourly wages Starbucks is paying are too low. Sharp earns $15 per hour and said she can barely afford to live in Bloomington. She lives on the city’s south side, in a house she shares with two other people. Monthly rent is $1,475, but is about to increase to $2,000. Sharp is moving to a less expensive place on the city’s north side.

Sharp said Starbucks has been limiting employees’ work hours and requiring them to work three positions at once. And yet the company is pushing employees to make connections with customers to encourage repeat business. And while her store at Third Street and the Ind. 45/46 Bypass is one of the highest volume stores in the state, Sharp said employees have to worry about whether they can pay the next month’s bills.

“It’s just awful, and we’re just tired of it,” she said.

As employees talked, Sharp noticed they were sympathetic toward unions, so she decided to spearhead the unionization effort with one of her colleagues, Charlie Graham.

Graham works as a barista but also is a graduate student at Indiana University’s Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, where they study public administration and environmental science.

Graham said Wednesday that two of their co-workers that day were having a conversation about whether they were going to have enough hours that week to retain their benefits. And, Graham said, those employees would like to work full-time.

At the same time the company is limiting employee hours, it is making it difficult for workers to take a second job, Graham said. If employees take a second job and limit their availability at Starbucks, they usually are offered even fewer hours at the coffee shop.

Graham also said employees know how much money comes into the store, and they understand the materials for the drinks are “dirt cheap,” which means almost all of the value the store generates comes from the employees’ work. The national union, they said, is asking for a national average wage of $20 per hour.

Graham said they were shocked when they moved from Evansville to Bloomington last summer. They live on the city’s northwest side in a $1,300 apartment with their fiancée, who is an elementary school teacher.

Pride flag removal part of Bloomington Starbucks unionization push

Graham and Sharp also said they want to unionize to have more authority about what happens in their store. For example, they said employees recently put up a flag to celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month, but their manager took it down.

To Graham, who uses they/them pronouns, and Sharp, who is trans, the issue is personal.

Starbucks has shown that it has the power and will to remove such displays, Graham said, and employees want to be able to prevent such interference.

Sharp said the removal prompted employees to walk off the floor, leaving the store inoperable for about an hour.

As a concession, management allowed an employee to draw a mural on the chalkboard, she said. And while the mural is “awesome,” Sharp said, the Pride flag still has not been reinstalled.

IU grad workers went on strike. Now, some won't have a job at all

Starbucks spokesperson Rachel Wall said via email Starbucks has “not altered its corporate policies or approach to celebrating Pride Month” and “store leaders remain empowered to decorate their stores for heritage months, including Pride Month.”

Wall’s email included a quote from Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan, who said, “Starbucks has been and will continue to be at the forefront of supporting the LGBTQIA2+ community, and we will not waver in that commitment.”

Wall also said in the email that Starbucks’ labor relations division has sent a letter to Workers United President Lynn Fox to express “deep and urgent concern about the blatant fear mongering campaign … especially the knowingly and recklessly false statements that Starbucks corporate had ‘banned’ PRIDE related décor in all stores.”

Wall added all employees enrolled in the company’s health plan retain access to “industry-leading gender affirming care benefits regardless of organizing activity.”

According to USA Today, a sister publication of The Herald-Times, a National Labor Relations Board judge this year ruled the company had committed “hundreds of unfair labor practices” during unionization efforts at stores in the Buffalo, New York, area.

Sharp said it’s unclear when exactly the Bloomington shop will vote to join the union, but she believes other local Starbucks shops also will try to unionize.

“This is the beginning of a … Bloomington-wide campaign,” Sharp said.

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington Third Street Starbucks workers attempting to unionize