Starbucks Farmingville Workers Unite To Unionize

SACHEM, NY — Thirteen to one, that is how union partners at the Farmingville Starbucks voted in favor to unionize on Tuesday morning.

Since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, baristas from the Starbucks located at 2280 North Ave., feel as though the coronavirus crisis brought to the forefront the labor issues at the coffee company, according to the partners of the Starbucks Workers United Organizing Committee of Farmingville.

“We are super excited that all of our hard work has finally come into fruition. We hope more stores will join the fight and collective bargaining will begin soon,” Sam Cornetta, a Farmingville NY union partner, said in a statement.

Over 200 Starbucks stores have unionized, across the country according to the Starbucks Workers United Organizing Committee of Farmingville, which said it “simply” would like the workers’ voices to be heard.

Starbucks stores in Westbury, Massapequa, Great Neck and Wantagh casted votes earlier this year, with only Great Neck failing to receive enough votes to unionize, as reported by Patch and the Long Island Press.

"We are listening and learning from our partners in these stores as we always do across the country," said a Starbucks spokeswoman to Patch. "From the beginning, we've been clear that we are better as partners without a union between us and that conviction has not changed. We respect our partners' right to organize and are committed to following the NLRB process."

The workers said they felt they felt dehumanized and like they were treated like robots, that safety measures were lacking throughout the pandemic and that they have lost benefits and hazard pay as well, according to a letter sent to the Starbucks’ former CEO Kevin Johnson earlier this year, according to the union partners.

The current CEO of the coffee giant is now Howard Schultz.

"Throughout the pandemic, we met and exceeded the latest directions from the CDC, health experts and federal government," said the spokeswoman. "We support partners with vaccine pay, sick days and isolation pay ... Above all that, all leaders are empowered to make any changes they extend for our neighborhoods, which include store hours and moving to store hours only. We were consistent to that."

Starbucks staff are allowed to use isolation pay, even if their Covid-19 test ends up being negative, said the spokeswoman.

"We have a protocol for all partners who work a shift that includes a temperature check and a checklist of questions they have to past or they can't work," said the spokeswoman. "We do not make our partners work if they are not sick."

Samantha Galmedis, a Starbucks union partner told Patch she felt differently.

"We were told to refrain from telling customers to use their masks," Galdemis told Patch. "When I asked a customer to put on a mask and she would say something, I would go to my manager. She would say, 'Don't even bother. Just don't.'"

The Farmingville Starbucks was next to a CityMD, which had patients, many that the staff believed to have had Covid-19, in it's store and drive thru, Galmedis said.

"We had to wrangle the line," said Galmedis.

Galmedis said that staff was hounded for not working fast enough at the drive thru.

"There are customer connection numbers that they calculate that we are reprimanded for," she added. "We weren't staffed and we were expected to do work that is done by three separate people."

The success of a Starbucks and the number of people that are staffed there are determined by the amount of money being brought in and surveys by customers, however, during the pandemic one half the store's workers would get sick and then the other, said Galmedis.

"When the numbers get lower because we are understaffed, we are reprimanded for those customer connections, even though it's not our fault," said Galmedis.

The lack of staffing was one of the main issues that Covid-19 brought to the fore, said Galmedis.

"The managers pretty much neglected us," added Galmedis, about the other problems at the store.

Galmedis said that the union committee members believe the staff should have more say in how the business is run.

"The partners are the people on the floor at all times," said Galmedis. "Not the people who are determining how many people are allowed to have, or how many hours are given to the store. We hope to have a voice in the store, guaranteed support, proper staffing and enough resources for the standards they want us to meet."

The Starbucks spokeswoman said that the workers are on the ground and that the company understands that the staff has a better understanding of what the community spread of the virus is and that it is empowered to temporarily close the store, change the store hours or adjust operations for a drive-thru or grab-and-go.

When it comes to the CityMD, Starbucks said the Farmingville location went drive-thru only as a way for social distancing when the concerns were brought to management.