It was not over coffee, but over a small table of breakfast at Red Robin, that the workers at a Lakewood Starbucks first brought up the idea of joining a nationwide movement—they would later file to become the first Starbucks in Southern California to unionize.
“That was the real start,” said Tyler Keeling, lead organizer at the Starbucks on Candlewood Street. “It was almost an instantaneous thing between the couple of us sitting there.”
Even after hours of pouring hot coffee for busy customers, conversations about Rossann Williams, president of Starbucks’ North American operations, and her lack of support for unionization, reenergized the group of baristas.
“I was immediately excited and really proud to see [unionizing] happening,” Keeling said. “When I saw them fighting for us for a seat at the table and for a say in the workplace I was really proud and I immediately wanted to join them in that.”
Williams had unknowingly had a similar effect on many Starbucks partners, as her efforts to defend the company in suing the National Labor Relations Board has resulted in over 250 stores filing for union in under a year. Starbucks in Santa Cruz became the first California location on May 11.
On Friday, May 13 workers at two Starbucks locations—one in Long Beach and another in Lakewood—will find out if they are the latest to join that group. The decision was easy for Keeling, he said, who after working for the company for six years, was ready for change.
“I had another partner say it in a way that just rang true with me and I think about it every time,” Keeling said. “It’s hard to find a partner who works at this company […] and doesn’t have a gripe with the company or has a problem with the company or has seen the way people can be mistreated at this company or overworked. That really rang true with me.”
Since filing months ago, and finally voting on April 29, Keeling can recount many changes occurring in his Lakewood store. He said he and other partners are now routinely pulled into one-on-one and two-on-one meetings with the store and district manager, the latter of whom he rarely saw in his three years at the Lakewood location.
“Since we’ve filed we’ve been seeing a lot of captive meetings,” Keeling explained. “Which are basically like one-on-one and two-on-one meetings with our store manager and either another store manager and our district manager”
Keeling said that following Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s announcement of new benefits for baristas, workers at his location were told the new benefits would not be applied to union stores. This claim was later publicly denounced by legal officials and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
“The biggest way we’ve been able to combat it is through communication and educating ourselves and honestly we’re really lucky because we have labor lawyers out there who are jumping to help us,” Keeling said. “Not just my store, but every store and help provide clarification and factual information and tell us what Starbucks is saying is not true, they’re phrasing it specifically to scare you, here’s actually what the law is.”
Union ballots will be counted by the NLRB in Washington, D.C. on Friday, May 13.
