Noticing Your DFW Starbucks Isn’t as Clean or Well-Stocked Lately? A Union Effort Could Fix It.

A group of employees at 18 Starbucks shops nationwide filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on June 4, joining over 10,500 baristas. The list includes two cafes in New York City, one in Seattle, one in Burbank, and one in Miami — and one in Hurst, Texas, just east of Fort Worth.

The filing came as Starbucks began negotiating with Union Starbucks for the first time — the company and unionizing employees are in their second round of negotations, which Starbucks Workers United refers to as “mak[ing] significant progress toward a foundational framework for store contracts.”

Local organizers and Starbucks employees Illyana Morales and Christopher Baltimore spoke to Eater Dallas about why they opted to organize their store now. Morales notes that being scheduled to work enough hours to survive on their paychecks was a primary motivator, along with having a set schedule they could depend on each week. “There are a lot of things that Starbucks demands that you have to be inside the store to do at all times,” Baltimore says. “So, simple things, even running trash out — because we’ve had our hours and partners reduced — now there are less partners to take the trash out.”

Baltimore says even getting supplies to make drinks when the store runs out has become difficult because of the reduced staff and hours. “You [can] no longer leave the store because you’re leaving just one person inside the store.” And that, he notes, would be a safety violation.

Baltimore notes that customers have begun to notice that their store isn’t as clean and that service has been affected. Baltimore attributes this to not having enough “hands on deck” to accomplish everything that needs to be done in a shift without leaving work for the following shift.

“Partner work schedules are published on a regular, rolling basis three-weeks in advance and are built based on recorded partner availability and the operational needs of each store,” says Starbucks spokesperson Jay Go Guasch. “Our retail leaders have the flexibility to build and adjust staffing schedules to reflect the unique and dynamic needs of each store — balancing store resources and expected customer demand to ensure partners are on the floor when they’re needed most ...As recently announced, we’re also working to implement additional store scheduling improvements to provide all hourly U.S. partners more stability, flexibility and consistency in their weekly work schedules.”

Morales was the local worker to contact and organize a unionizing effort after a year of talks at the store after years of requesting more resources and people to do their jobs properly and requesting that things be fixed in the store without a timely response. “Right now, for our supervisors and baristas ...it seems like 10 of us are for sure on board [to unionize],” they say.

Another problem the workers in Hurst, and across the country, have is their benefits. Morales explains that the cut back in hours for workers makes vacation time accumulate more slowly, and it thins the bench for people who can fill in if you take that paid time off. “I know a lot of our partners feel that we want to take care of each other, and its almost as if we don’t want to use [our vacation time].”

Morales is excited that the company is negotiating with the union, while Baltimore says it has been a long time coming.

“In our area, it seems that we haven’t had the immediate union-wanting community,” Morales says. “I want to put it out there for other stores around us that we can be together. I know our store is not the only one with these problems. I have worked at other stores, I know other partners, and I want this for them as much as I want it at my current store.”

Update: Monday, June 24: 12:47 p.m.: This article has been updated to include a statement from Starbucks.