Workers At 2 Twin Cities Starbucks Stores Want To Unionize

MINNEAPOLIS — Hourly workers at two Starbuck locations in the Twin Cities Friday petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a union representation election.

Workers United International said that a majority of workers at the 4012 Cedar Avenue store in Minneapolis and at the 300 Snelling Avenue store in Saint Paul signed union authorization cards.

"We as workers at Starbucks invest our time, well-being, and safety into a company that has shown repeated apathy towards its employees," workers at the Starbucks store on Snelling Avenue at Stanford Avenue said in a statement.

"We are organizing a union at the Snelling and Stanford store in Sanit Paul to improve our workplace for ourselves, for members of our community, and for Starbucks as a whole."

Union efforts that began in New York last year have spread across the county, with 70 of the total 9000 Starbuck locations filing for a union election.

Two locations in the Buffalo area successfully formed unions, the New York Times reports. Efforts to unionize a third Buffalo store failed.

"Starbucks calls its employees 'partners' but it is abundantly clear that this so-called partnership is one of convenience for the company," Workers United International Vice President Kathy Hanshew said Friday.

"It is time for Starbucks to do the right thing, acknowledge the voice of their partners, and allow their workers to unionize without interference."

In an email, a Starbucks spokesperson told Patch the following:

We are listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country. Starbucks success—past, present, and future—is built on how we partner together, always with Our Mission and Values at our core. We’ve been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us, and that conviction has not changed.

Rossann Williams, evp and president, North America, has also shared with our partners that we respect their right to organize and will bargain in good faith.

She also noted in a letter sent to all partners in December that “the vote outcomes will not change our shared purpose or how we will show up for each other. … We will keep listening, we will keep connecting and we will keep being in service of one another because that’s what we’ve always done and what it means to be partner.”