"The day after we sent a letter to Kevin Johnson telling him that we're forming an organizing committee and that our goal is to form a union, they sent in people like Rossann Williams, their support managers at all of our stores, they've been hosting weekly or bi-weekly anti-union meetings." "It's just been completely insane," Moore said in an interview. Only minutes later, after doing a quick Google search, Moore learned he was the COO of the entire company.
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In one instance, Moore said, Culver came into her store and introduced himself without revealing his full name and position, telling her that he's a "partner" (a company term used to denote "worker"). So over the past several months, the company has swarmed its Buffalo-area shops with company officials from out-of-town or out-of-state. Buffalo employees told the Times that the maneuver is "part of a counteroffensive by the company intended to intimidate workers, disrupt normal operations and undermine support for the union."Ĭasey Moore, a Buffalo-area Starbucks barista on the union organizing committee, confirmed that high-level executives like Rossann Williams (President of Retail for North America), Allison Peck (Regional Vice President), and John Culver (Chief Operation Officer) have all come into stores unannounced to meet with employees or deliver presentations about the apparent ills of unionization. Meanwhile, the union effort has reportedly expanded westward to Arizona. But its conflict with employees – who are set to cast an official vote on unionizing by December 8 – rages on. The development marked a decisive blow for Starbucks because the company had previously asked the agency to hold a single vote pooling together twenty stores in the area – a maneuver critics saw as a bid to delay the election or dilute the electoral strength of pro-union employees.įor now, Starbucks appears to have lost its battle with the NLRB. In late October, after three months of organizing, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the three Buffalo locations could hold separate union votes. RELATED: Starbucks union-buster is ironic winner after liberals push nuclear option "They know that previous generations organized unions to build the middle class, and they are determined to stand up for their right to organize a union." "This generation of workers understands that unions are the one vehicle that puts workers on an even playing field with management," he said over email. Gary Bonadonna Jr., International Vice-President of Workers United Upstate New York, told Salon that the pandemic "showed that they cannot simply rely on management to look out for their health and safety or financial well-being." Citing difficult hours, insufficient sick days, and chaotic working conditions – all of which were reportedly exacerbated during the pandemic – it didn't take long before workers established a partnership with Workers United Upstate New York, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The organizing effort was first launched back in August, when three Buffalo stores in New York state filed petitions seeking representation by a union, according to The New York Times. In it, he encouraged Starbucks workers of all stripes to "never embrace the status quo," advising them to approach the world with a sense of "empathy" and "kindness." But in recent months, as dozens of Starbucks employees organize a first-of-its-kind union drive – an effort that would ostensibly upend the company's status quo – critics argue that Starbucks has plainly jettisoned its ethos of empathy and kindness to stamp out the burgeoning workers' movement. In June of 2018, just weeks before stepping down, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz issued a farewell address with a few words of wisdom for the company he'd leave behind.