Starbucks workers have been unionizing across the country since 2021. They’ve met on Zoom about strikes and communicated via social media about their demands for better pay and working conditions.
This week will be the first time many of them meet face-to-face – and it will be here in Cleveland at the Workers United union’s convention at Rocket Arena. (The convention is closed to the public.)
Michelle Eisen is driving from Buffalo with some of her fellow baristas who work at the first Starbucks in the nation to unionize. More than 11,000 baristas at 550 stores in 45 states and Washington, D.C. now belong to the union. There are 26 unionized Starbucks stores in Ohio, eight of them in Greater Cleveland.
Ohio is also a major hub of the Starbucks Workers United campaign. With 26 union stores and counting in Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Mansfield and Westlake, baristas here and across the Rust Belt are powering forward the future of the labor movement.
Workers United union, which represents Starbucks workers
“It’s going to be very exciting to be able to see some of these people in-person,” said Eisen, also a staff organizer for Workers United. “We’re a large breadth of workers from across the country, so it is very difficult to get us all in one place at the same time.”
Workers United said it is expecting hundreds of convention attendees, dozens of whom are Starbucks baristas. In Greater Cleveland, Workers United also represents workers in other fields, including employees at hotels and sporting arenas.
Ohio has played a notable role in organizing Starbucks baristas
While Ohio doesn’t have the largest number of unionized Starbucks stores in the nation, its share is considered fairly large, Eisen. Ohio doesn’t have a high concentration of Starbucks locations as in states such as California. But the role Ohio has played in the labor movement, including organizing Starbucks workers, is among the reasons the convention is being held here.
“Ohio is also a major hub of the Starbucks Workers United campaign,” a statement the union emailed Signal Cleveland said. “With 26 union stores and counting in Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Mansfield and Westlake, baristas here and across the Rust Belt are powering forward the future of the labor movement.”
Akshai Singh, a barista at the University Circle store, has been active in the union effort, including being a bargaining delegate for what will be the union’s first contract. He said even without a contract, workers have gotten the company to agree to a $15 minimum wage, allowing baristas to receive credit card tips and a better parental leave policy.
“We have been able to work with the company to improve the floor [workplace] for everybody, whether in the union or not yet,” he said. “We fully anticipate that we are going to win a lot more for workers.”
Workers United union in long battle to get contract for Starbucks workers
Throughout the United States, Starbucks workers organized for higher pay and working conditions, including more hours and consistent schedules. Even though workers voted to join the union four years ago, they still haven’t reached their first contract. The union has said the company hadn’t bargained in good faith and filed hundreds of complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. One included a worker at a Cleveland Starbucks, who won reinstatement and back pay, when an administrative judge found that the company had illegally fired him for organizing.
In late 2023, the company said it wanted to negotiate a contract with the union after a deadlock of more than six months. Many union members believed getting a contract was taking too long. During last Christmas holiday season, Starbucks workers across the country, including in Greater Cleveland, went on strike to show their dissatisfaction that a contract had not been reached.
Since then, many union members, including Eisen and Singh, are optimistic that the company will reach a contract with workers. Eisen reflected on how she and her fellow workers at the Buffalo store initially had no idea how their organizing efforts would resonate nationally – and internationally. A barista from Chile, whose Starbucks union is on strike, is scheduled to attend the Cleveland convention.
“I was very new to the labor movement at that point,” she said. “I didn’t really have a concept of just how groundbreaking and how history making this campaign was going to be.”
