Now the Starbucks employee also knows what it’s like to be a union member and the face of a growing United Steelworkers (USW) campaign. for the Starbucks Association in Canada. “I never realized how passionate I would feel about the labor movement,” Brodt said in an interview from her Victoria Underground apartment. Broad, a shift supervisor in a Victoria location, helped set up shop in August 2020, the only one in Canada at the time. She is one of several service workers and retailers in North America who have been part of the labor movement since the beginning of the pandemic. Rising interest has left some leaders and labor experts wondering if this could be a turning point for unions that have seen declining numbers in the industry for years. Recent poll in the USA showed that 68 percent of Americans approved of trade unionsthe highest number since 1965. “I think this could be a milestone for the Canadian and US trade unions,” said Nicole Denier, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton who studies trade unions. “We will see next year if the momentum continues to grow.”
CLOCKS Employees trying to unionize hundreds of Starbucks stores:

Trade union efforts are coming to Starbucks, catering workers

Starbucks is the latest major food service company to recently see trade union efforts spread across Canada.

Emblematic battle brand Baristas

Starbucks are facing a wave of unions leads. One web tracker and map based on figures from the US National Labor Relations Council (NLRB) shows that around 300 Starbucks stores in the US have applied to join a trade union in just six months, including the iconic steakhouse in the company’s hometown of Seattle. According to the tracker, which is run by a non-profit media organization that focuses on work stories, more than half have been certified. In Surrey, BC a second Canadian Starbucks just half a dozen unionized stores in Alberta try to do the same, including five in Lethbridge. Broad says health and safety issues related to the pandemic, abusive clients and the high cost of living in Victoria have prompted her and her colleagues to seek union representation to improve their working conditions and improve their wages. Although the process was “a little scary”, she said the boarding of workers at her store did not take long, as most were “super gang-ho”. It took a little over a month to certify the store’s association under BC law, but it took almost a year to negotiate a collective agreement with Starbucks Canada. For the USW it will be expensive to set up and support multiple small sites one at a time compared to setting up large factories, carpentry or offices. But small trading units are not the only challenge to organizing the service and retail sectors. “The most important issue is employee turnover. It is a younger, transient 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 do not recognize how they can help. Mike Duhra, USW Representative for Western Canada, says companies like Starbucks are difficult to set up because the turnover is high and there are many locations, but the union is looking to expand into areas such as food service and retail. trade. (James Dunne / CBC)

Starbucks pushback

Another factor is the opposition of Starbucks to the unions. Renowned former CEO Howard Schultz recently returned to the helm of the companyand was vocal for its opposite in the unions for years. Company executives have visited stores to discourage union workers in the US and employees claim a location closed earlier this month because it was recently unionized. Starbucks announced enhanced benefits and wage increases across the company in May, but not offered to employees in trade union stores in the US or Canada.
A Starbucks Canada spokesman told CBC News that the company believes it is better off without a union, but continues to “respect the right of our partners to organize.” In addition, wage increases are not offered at the Victoria Trade Union Center because it has “its own collective agreement, including a unique wage increase schedule.” Broad believes that union stores do not receive an increase because “they are just trying to make us look bad and pay us back for the union.”

Economic conditions favor the development of trade unions

Mikal Skuterud, an economist at the University of Waterloo, says the current tight job market and high inflation are driving union growth. “Trade union rates are pro-cyclical,” says Skuterud, “so when the economy is booming, union rates tend to go up.” According to the NLRB, applications for union formation in the US workplace increased by 57 percent this year compared to the first six months of 2021. No equivalent data is available on trade unionism in Canada, but Bea Bruske, President of the Canadian Labor Congress, said: “We are seeing a growing momentum in Canada towards trade unionism, especially among young workers.”
While there is a movement in large companies, the young workers also organized unions in a video game maker and one beverage shop. Employees from an Indigo location in Mississauga, OD, rallied in September 2020 before their successful vote to join United Food and Commercial Workers. (UFCW Local 106A) Even so, Skuterud says private sector unions in Canada could desperately use a boost.
“Trade union rates, especially in the private sector, are the lowest ever.”
USW Duhra says unions are really trying to move into new areas for growth. “We have to find new members … and this is a perfect industry where people need a union,” he said, adding that Starbucks workers came to the USW for help.

Will the momentum last?

Kenneth Thornicroft, a lawyer and professor at the University of Victoria, is skeptical that Starbucks will become a highly affiliated company.
“Unless a union is able to penetrate deep enough into the store network,” Starbucks said, “they can just wait,” and as members tire of paying contributions, stores will collapse. Thornicroft points out that this is exactly when he played a handful of BC stores were unionized in the 1990s. He believes that trade unions may have better opportunities for growth in the banking and financial services sector than in the food services sector. But Denier believes the retail and food industries are ripe for unionization because both industries have long been under-unionized.
In her view, employees are not just committed to getting better wages “but to have a voice in the workplace”. He adds that employees are also focused on making companies that are advertised as progressive responsible for their public image. For her part, the new union activist Sarah Broad willingly offers advice and support to potential barista brothers and sisters trying to set up other stores. “I’m so excited that they want to participate and it will be difficult,” he said, “but it’s worth it.”