Starbucks baristas at Bucktown cafe vote to unionize

Baristas at a Starbucks in Bucktown voted nearly unanimously to unionize Tuesday, making their store the fourth unionized Starbucks in Chicago.

Workers at the Starbucks at 2101 W. Armitage Ave. voted 15-1 to unionize with Starbucks Workers United, the Service Employees International Union affiliate representing Starbucks employees. The vote count was conducted Tuesday morning on Zoom by the National Labor Relations Board.

“I’m feeling ecstatic,” said Nicole Deming, a shift supervisor at the Bucktown store and a member of its organizing committee.

Deming has worked at the Bucktown Starbucks since the beginning of the year; she was drawn to Starbucks in part by its reputation for providing employees with benefits like health care. But she said when baristas at her store filed for a union election in March, she found herself losing hours and scrambling to pick up shifts to work the number of hours needed to keep those benefits. Now, she’d like to see guaranteed hours enshrined in a collective bargaining agreement.

“Really, it’s a testament to how much we care about the company and about the workplace that we wanted to organize rather than just leave,” Deming said.

The Bucktown union victory comes after the Starbucks union faced two losses in Chicago elections last week out of three narrowly decided votes. Workers at cafes in the Loop and in Palmer Square voted against joining the union while baristas at a Hyde Park Starbucks voted in favor of unionizing. The union’s losses last week were unusual because of its winning streak nationally — on Tuesday, Starbucks Workers United said it had won 150 union elections and lost 18 — and because of Chicago’s reputation as a union town.

Starbucks Workers United won its first Chicago elections in May, when baristas at two Starbucks in Edgewater voted to unionize. Employees at Starbucks cafes in Cary and Peoria voted to unionize in April, becoming the first in Illinois to do so. The union lost an election at a Starbucks in La Grange in May. In total, 10 Chicago-area stores have filed for union elections since January, most recently in Edgewater and West Rogers Park. As of Tuesday, the union’s Chicago-area record stands at five wins and three losses.

In a statement last week, Workers United international vice president Kathy Hanshew criticized the NLRB for the length of time between when workers at the Loop and Palmer Square Starbucks filed for union representation and when the elections were held. The stores that voted last week had filed for elections in January.

“The amount of time that it is taking the Board here to get these locations to a vote allowed a tremendous amount of time for management to hold captive audience meetings, coerce and intimidate the partners,” Hanshew said in the statement.

Baristas at the Bucktown store filed for union representation in late March, meaning organizers there faced a shorter wait for their election.

Starbucks has consistently opposed the unionization effort. Nationally, the NLRB’s regional offices have filed more than 50 charges against the company, alleging a range of unfair labor practices.

“We will respect the process and will bargain in good faith,” the company said in a statement Tuesday regarding the Bucktown election, adding that it hoped the union would do the same. Starbucks said the NLRB’s allegations were false.

Reed Essex, a barista at the Bucktown store and another member of its organizing committee, said unionizing will allow employees to have a say in their workplace.

“I get to show up at work at a place where I know that there’s a modicum of respect that I’ll automatically get because we’ve earned it, and we’ve demanded it, and we’ve made it happen,” Essex said.