Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: My dad died in eighty seven, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: try and build the kind of company he never got
Speaker 2: a chance to work for.
Speaker 1: That's Howard Schultz, three time CEO of the Starbucks Corporation,
Speaker 1: when he was a guest on this podcast in September
Speaker 1: of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: So the entire business model was trying to balance profit
Speaker 2: with conscience, benevolence, and social impact. So the first thing
Speaker 2: I did was everyone at Starbucks was going to be
Speaker 2: an owner. So I gave ownership to every employee in
Speaker 2: eighty seven, which I've done since then. And I gave
Speaker 2: comprehensive health insurance, first company in America to provide comprehensive
Speaker 2: health way before.
Speaker 1: The Affordable Care for every single person that works for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, what does that cost you a year before
Speaker 2: the Affordable Care Act? It costs three hundred million a year,
Speaker 2: more than the cost of coffee beans for Starbucks. Thought
Speaker 2: it was crazy, and I was trying to raise money
Speaker 2: at the same time. I had all these ideas and
Speaker 2: people said, wait, you.
Speaker 1: Want to get rid of that component?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I said no, I said, I'm going to
Speaker 2: prove to you that we will have lower attrition, higher performance,
Speaker 2: and our customers will know what we're doing for our people,
Speaker 2: and it will resonate with the brand.
Speaker 1: And this is going to be our marketing stretch. Though
Speaker 1: Schultz is discussing the benevolence that his company has shown
Speaker 1: to its employees, one could argue that Schultz is feeling
Speaker 1: a tad underappreciated these days. While in the last five
Speaker 1: years the stock price of Starbucks has doubled and in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the coffee chain's revenue reached thirty two
Speaker 1: billion dollars, the US is experiencing a labor movement resurgence,
Speaker 1: with union petitions up more than fifty percent in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two from the previous year. Current Starbucks unionization efforts
Speaker 1: began in twenty twenty one, and the company mounted an
Speaker 1: aggressive anti union campaign in response. As a result, a
Speaker 1: federal judge found Starbucks engaged in quote egregious and widespread
Speaker 1: misconduct unquote, and the National Labor Relations Board found the
Speaker 1: company violated federal labor law one thousand, three hundred times
Speaker 1: under Schultz's watch. Schultz was even called to testify before
Speaker 1: Congress over the union busting allegations, and ended up stepping
Speaker 1: down from his position early. My guest today is a
Speaker 1: Starbucks Workers United organizer and an employee of one of
Speaker 1: the first Starbucks in the country that filed for a
Speaker 1: union election, Gianna Reeve. Since Reeve and her colleague's initial
Speaker 1: organizing efforts in Buffalo, three hundred and twenty eight stores
Speaker 1: in thirty nine states have voted to unionize, and more
Speaker 1: elections are under way. I wanted to know how Reeve's
Speaker 1: journey with the coffee chain began.
Speaker 3: Working at Starbucks in September to October of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: I started at a Tim Horton's. As you know, Buffalo
Speaker 3: born and bred that I am. You always started like
Speaker 3: a Tim Hortons or somewhere like that, and I didn't
Speaker 3: really enjoy the job. I felt like it was a
Speaker 3: series of management overstepping bounds. They were a franchise location,
Speaker 3: so I was looking for something better, and what looked
Speaker 3: better was Starbucks.
Speaker 1: Why did you want to go to Starbucks? Did you
Speaker 1: think that this was a good place to work? Do
Speaker 1: you have a sense of it just was a quick opportunity.
Speaker 1: They were hiring why did you end up there? Specifically,
Speaker 1: from what.
Speaker 3: I knew about Starbucks being a consumer first before a
Speaker 3: prospective employee, I thought it sounded amazing. I looked at
Speaker 3: the benefits. I looked at the way they treated their
Speaker 3: queer employees. I looked at the way that they wanted
Speaker 3: to connect with customers, and when, wow, this is this
Speaker 3: is a company that really values human connection. That's something
Speaker 3: that I'm missing working at Tim Horton's that I would
Speaker 3: really like to have. While I'm working a coffee job,
Speaker 3: I had a bit of rose colored glasses on going
Speaker 3: in that were slowly taken off over time. But that
Speaker 3: was really the thing that brought me to Starbucks, was
Speaker 3: that value on humanity.
Speaker 1: Now, when you get there, how soon do you begin
Speaker 1: to sense that there's changes that need to be made
Speaker 1: In your estimation? Was everybody like minded about this or
Speaker 1: did you have to open people's eyes? What was the
Speaker 1: dawning of we have real problems here that can only
Speaker 1: be addressed by unionization.
Speaker 3: Well that's a very loaded question in the sense that
Speaker 3: I think each Starbucks brist Dom I tell you a
Speaker 3: different story, but I can tell you mine, and that
Speaker 3: my store location was one of the first three to organize,
Speaker 3: and it started for folks even before they were at
Speaker 3: the location they were at. So my location was fairly
Speaker 3: new at the start of the union drive in Starbucks,
Speaker 3: we were maybe a year old. At that point. A
Speaker 3: lot of us came from other locations, and through our
Speaker 3: experiences at those other locations, we were starting to just
Speaker 3: become exhausted. We'd go through the right channels for things
Speaker 3: like understaffing, harassment, trying to uphold COVID policy because we
Speaker 3: were tasked with being the people to say, hey, like,
Speaker 3: you have to keep your mask on, and people would
Speaker 3: get aggressive, people would get violent about that. We know
Speaker 3: how people feel about that. So we weren't experiencing support
Speaker 3: and we weren't getting that protection that we needed from
Speaker 3: management and from upper corporate levels, and it was wearing
Speaker 3: down on everyone in different ways.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, the genesis of this, the fuse
Speaker 1: that led this, was related to COVID and COVID policies
Speaker 1: in the store.
Speaker 3: I think for a lot of people it was a
Speaker 3: bit of a turning point in looking at the company
Speaker 3: in a different way. But also even before that, the
Speaker 3: earliest seeds of Starbucks Workers United movement came from another
Speaker 3: coffee chain in Buffalo, New York, Spot Coffee Organizing, and
Speaker 3: through them, one of our works workers at the first
Speaker 3: three locations named Lexi Rizzo, contacted Workers United and said
Speaker 3: that this is something that we need to do. This
Speaker 3: needs to happen. COVID kind of put that on pause
Speaker 3: for a bit, but even though it put it on pause,
Speaker 3: it also started to stoke those flames. It really brought
Speaker 3: the issues that were already there and existed within Starbucks
Speaker 3: to the forefront of people's.
Speaker 1: Minds, such as.
Speaker 3: Understaffing, a lack of seniority benefits, benefits that partners have
Speaker 3: a hard time accessing. I know more partners on Medicaid
Speaker 3: than I know being on these Starbucks health insurance plans
Speaker 3: simply because they cannot afford them. They don't have the
Speaker 3: hours available to work. Starbucks often likes to parade their
Speaker 3: benefits being available for part time workers as well, but
Speaker 3: we're starting to see, and we have been seeing partners
Speaker 3: becoming so decreased in hours that they're not hitting that
Speaker 3: twenty hour a week limit that you need in order
Speaker 3: to be able to be eligible for those benefits.
Speaker 1: So they're deliberately scheduling it that way.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's very difficult to be excited about benefits that
Speaker 3: you can't obtain, and it's even more frustrating when it
Speaker 3: feels like the company isn't listening to you. And one
Speaker 3: of the best ways to get a company to listen
Speaker 3: to you is to come together with your fellow co
Speaker 3: workers and say, no, you need to listen to us.
Speaker 1: Now, when you say partners, what do you mean by partners?
Speaker 3: Partners is the term that Starbucks uses to describe their employees.
Speaker 3: So we are all considered partners by Starbucks.
Speaker 1: Are you still working at Starbucks now?
Speaker 3: I am still working at Starbucks now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What's that like? Give us a description of So
Speaker 1: you're at a Starbucks location. This one location, which the
Speaker 1: one you were at is the Camp Road Starbucks. Correct,
Speaker 1: you're still there now at the Camp Road Starbucks. Using
Speaker 1: just that as an example, I'm not going to assume
Speaker 1: they're all identical, but maybe they are. How does the
Speaker 1: management breakdown? This is someone who's title, who runs the show,
Speaker 1: Who's in charge?
Speaker 3: If you asked Starbucks that it would be the managers.
Speaker 3: If you asked any other worker at Starbucks that they
Speaker 3: would probably say the shift supervisors. Why because shift supervisors
Speaker 3: are the day to day sort of operations. The manager
Speaker 3: comes and goes, the manager writes the schedule, but the
Speaker 3: shift supervisor is going to be the one that baristas
Speaker 3: are in the most contact with. If you're coming into work,
Speaker 3: if you're calling in you're like, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be late, that's going to be your shift supervisor. If
Speaker 3: you don't know where you're going to be on the
Speaker 3: floor for the day, if it's going to be drive through,
Speaker 3: or you're going to be on the espresso bar, if
Speaker 3: you're going to be making the cold drinks, that's the
Speaker 3: shift supervisor deciding that. So a lot of your day
Speaker 3: to day operations are being overseen by the shift supervisors.
Speaker 1: So the manager, are they off managing multiple locations? Do
Speaker 1: they have them taking a little tour of the area,
Speaker 1: because as everybody knows, Starbucks is kind of ubiquitous. Are
Speaker 1: they going to different locations there? In Buffalo?
Speaker 3: Typically, now that the union busting heat has died down,
Speaker 3: it's typically one manager per location, But at one point,
Speaker 3: at the peak of the union busting and at the
Speaker 3: height of the first three store locations union elections, there
Speaker 3: would be sometimes five six, seven what Starbucks would call
Speaker 3: support managers on the floor that were there to supposedly
Speaker 3: help the Buffalo district because we were struggling so hard
Speaker 3: and they just missed the more completely with us. They
Speaker 3: were so apologetic, but really they were essentially spies. I
Speaker 3: couldn't go anywhere in my store location without there being
Speaker 3: one of these support managers breathing down my neck. I
Speaker 3: couldn't talk on the headsets at work and have organizing
Speaker 3: conversations without a manager wearing a headset and listening in
Speaker 3: at all times.
Speaker 1: Right out in the open. They did it right in
Speaker 1: front of.
Speaker 3: You, right right now.
Speaker 1: Your phone conversation is about organizing, right in front of you.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was never hidden as a secret that that's
Speaker 3: their motive.
Speaker 1: How did you feel about interacting with management? I when
Speaker 1: you say that the actual managers, as supposed to the
Speaker 1: shift supervisors come and go, what was your relationship black
Speaker 1: with these people who were monitoring your phone calls?
Speaker 3: So the relationship with management at the time of the
Speaker 3: union election, I Camp wrote it was a lot of
Speaker 3: me trying to be as professional and employing my customer
Speaker 3: service voice on them as much as I was on customers. Really,
Speaker 3: I wanted to make sure that they knew that I
Speaker 3: wasn't just coming in to make trouble, because it seemed
Speaker 3: to be like that was the feeling we were getting
Speaker 3: about how they were depicting union organizers, and I wanted
Speaker 3: them to know that, no, I've got a clean record,
Speaker 3: I'm a model employee. I'm doing this because I love
Speaker 3: my partners and I want them to have the best
Speaker 3: experience at work as possible. I want this company to
Speaker 3: be what it says it's going to be. So I
Speaker 3: thought the best way to exhibit that was to remain optimistic,
Speaker 3: remain nice.
Speaker 1: And don't take the bait. Don't let them provoke back
Speaker 1: to something where you're going to give them grounds to
Speaker 1: terminate right now. I mean, I go to Starbucks, period,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot more kind of owner operated places
Speaker 1: I go to in my neighborhood, smaller coffee shops and
Speaker 1: so forth. But I mean, I'm I'm a Starbucks person.
Speaker 1: I like their products. I have what I order at
Speaker 1: Starbucks that I like. And one of the last times
Speaker 1: that I was out of Starbucks was up in Vermont.
Speaker 1: We were there and I couldn't believe the pace, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe the intensity, and I couldn't believe the
Speaker 1: look on the faces of the women and the men
Speaker 1: that were working there as they were like spinning, pivoting,
Speaker 1: whipping and hitting the button to have the water shoot
Speaker 1: the other thing to clean it and put more milk
Speaker 1: in it, and they're trying to make these drinks in
Speaker 1: this balletic way. But it was more it was like
Speaker 1: some primitive army coming down a mountaintop to kill you, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean they were like so the amount of the
Speaker 1: heaving and breathing that was going on from these people.
Speaker 1: They were working their asses off, you know, they were
Speaker 1: working their asses off. There's a certain type of person
Speaker 1: that they hire who is just like a super hard
Speaker 1: working person. And those people that come there who don't
Speaker 1: get it, who don't get the Starbucks program of you
Speaker 1: got to be quick and you've got to be you know,
Speaker 1: really fast moving, they don't make the cut. Is that
Speaker 1: kind of how it works?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they they don't last too long. You have to
Speaker 3: move at a certain kind of pace like that, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of like learning a dance how you said,
Speaker 3: it's it is a bit ballatic and that you gotta
Speaker 3: move around, you gotta it's almost like a part dance,
Speaker 3: part coffee shop, part working in a kitchen, because sometimes
Speaker 3: you'll be like, oh, behind hot, behind corner, going around
Speaker 3: because if not, you're going to just have a pile
Speaker 3: of baristas on the floor covered in sugar syrup and espresso,
Speaker 3: wondering what the hell happened.
Speaker 1: And you think also that there's people who I have
Speaker 1: this image of people who, like day one, within a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, there's a certain type of person who's
Speaker 1: like in the bathroom crying and they're like, what have
Speaker 1: I gotten myself into? I got to get out of here.
Speaker 1: You know, this isn't for me. It's too fast.
Speaker 3: It definitely exists. It's a bit of a culture shock,
Speaker 3: that sort of feeling. It's I hate to say it.
Speaker 3: Starbucks now sort of feels like the fast food of
Speaker 3: coffee in a lot of ways because of that, like
Speaker 3: increased demand for breakneck speeds and for pushing out as
Speaker 3: much coffee as possible. The way that we earn more
Speaker 3: labor hours to have more people on the floor at
Speaker 3: any point in time is based on how many customers
Speaker 3: we get in and out of our stores or in
Speaker 3: and out of the drive through at any point. So
Speaker 3: a lot of the times you'll hear barista's saying, you know, hey, manager,
Speaker 3: so and so, we really need more people on Saturday.
Speaker 3: Saturday mornings are just brutal. Can we get one more person?
Speaker 3: And they'll come back and say, unfortunately, the labor doesn't
Speaker 3: cut it. You know, we don't have the time, we
Speaker 3: don't have the people. We need to work on getting
Speaker 3: some more people out of our drive through and then
Speaker 3: we could see if that ups our labor budget to
Speaker 3: have more people on the floor. So it's it's this
Speaker 3: constant cycle of work harder, go faster, and maybe you'll
Speaker 3: have a little bit of put on you if they
Speaker 3: have another person to the floor, But that's a really
Speaker 3: big if.
Speaker 1: Well, Now, other than the staffing issues when you were
Speaker 1: at Starbucks initially, what did you begin to notice were
Speaker 1: some other problems? In other words, what were the problems
Speaker 1: that were substantial enough that guided you to want to
Speaker 1: start a union to address them?
Speaker 3: For me, it was a lack of accountability for management,
Speaker 3: a lack of accountability through the company as a whole.
Speaker 3: Later on, as I began to learn more and more things,
Speaker 3: but really it came down to the actions of my manager.
Speaker 3: A lot of the time, he's no longer with the company,
Speaker 3: but it was right when I started at Camp Road.
Speaker 3: I transferred from another location in Buffalo from McKinley location
Speaker 3: and came to Camp Road as it opened up, and
Speaker 3: we had a lot of new hires coming in. They
Speaker 3: were bright, prospective people, and I was really excited to
Speaker 3: work with them. And as we know, there is the
Speaker 3: stereotype of the gay barista, and I think so Starbucks
Speaker 3: kind of loves it because we just they flock. We
Speaker 3: flocked to Starbucks to work because it's seen as a
Speaker 3: progressively valued company and it seems like a safe place
Speaker 3: to work that you might not get otherwise. So we
Speaker 3: had a lot of openly gay partners, openly trans partners
Speaker 3: that came into my store to work, and they were
Speaker 3: amazing people. I love talking to them, I love their
Speaker 3: work ethic. They were going to be great. I remember
Speaker 3: thinking to myself, these are going to be amazing people
Speaker 3: on the floor. Once they get those drinks down, they
Speaker 3: are going to do amazing stuff. And as time went on,
Speaker 3: over a period of two or three months at my location,
Speaker 3: I saw all of them forced out in one way
Speaker 3: or another. One by one. Partners were being outed on
Speaker 3: the floor by management where I would have no idea
Speaker 3: that someone was trans, or I wouldn't know their gender
Speaker 3: identity because what's at my business, and they would go
Speaker 3: and say it out right. There was a partner at
Speaker 3: my location and she didn't have access to a vehicle.
Speaker 3: Starbucks has benefits for ride share and stuff, but it's
Speaker 3: not comprehensive coverage to gets you to work from nine
Speaker 3: to five, so she would rely on rides from friends.
Speaker 3: But she was quick, she was smart. I thought if
Speaker 3: anyone was going to really excel, it was going to
Speaker 3: be her. And I came into work one day expecting
Speaker 3: to see her on my shift and asked my fellowship supervisors, like, Hey,
Speaker 3: why isn't she in? And they told me that my
Speaker 3: manager had fired her, And that just left me a
Speaker 3: little bit flabbergasted. I was like, what do you mean
Speaker 3: he fired her? She was doing great. I'm not understanding.
Speaker 3: And the reason he fired her was because she was
Speaker 3: a couple minutes lately, two to five minutes late coming
Speaker 3: into her shift, despite him knowing that she relies on
Speaker 3: other folks to get rides, that she was trying her best.
Speaker 3: She was doing amazing, and I've seen people late far
Speaker 3: more far more often than this scenario. And she was
Speaker 3: just gone. And she was so excited to use the
Speaker 3: healthcare benefits that Starbucks re fights because it's gender inclusive healthcare,
Speaker 3: so that she could actually begin hormone replacement therapy, she
Speaker 3: could look into surgery if she so wished, and she
Speaker 3: was just so optimistic, and she was so happy to
Speaker 3: be working for Starbucks. And it was just gone in
Speaker 3: a snap. And I saw this same trend repeat over
Speaker 3: and over again, and I just didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3: I was angry. I was frustrated because this isn't what
Speaker 3: this isn't what I signed up for, This isn't what
Speaker 3: I expected this to be like. But I didn't know
Speaker 3: how to change it. So I was just sort of
Speaker 3: left frustrated.
Speaker 1: And you think that they targeted her because she was.
Speaker 3: Trans I do think so. I do think my manager
Speaker 3: targeted her because she was transit.
Speaker 1: Other than the firing itself, he was the one that
Speaker 1: made comments in front of other people publicly about her gender. Yes,
Speaker 1: when you say that, I mean regardless of one's view
Speaker 1: of transgenderism and companies being asked to pay for hormone
Speaker 1: injections and surgeries and so forth, like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: people are entitled to a certain amount of privacy and
Speaker 1: dignity in the workplace. How did everybody else react? Because
Speaker 1: what I'm getting to is, when did the moment come
Speaker 1: for the unionization thing where it dawns on you and
Speaker 1: you start to enlist people. Or was there a group
Speaker 1: think where there were a bunch of people who you
Speaker 1: were all talking to each other going this has got
Speaker 1: to change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish I had an easy answer in the
Speaker 3: sense that there was that sort of like click and
Speaker 3: boom moment. For me, it was a lot of situations
Speaker 3: like this where partners privacy wasn't being respected, where workers
Speaker 3: that have been in a company for seventeen years were
Speaker 3: making within a dollar what I was making coming in
Speaker 3: at two years. So at that point when the unionization
Speaker 3: effort kicked off, I was already ready to make something happen.
Speaker 3: I wanted change. I just didn't know that options like
Speaker 3: unionization existed for a Starbucks location until one of my
Speaker 3: fellow co workers texted me and said, Hey, can we
Speaker 3: talk about work stuff? But we can't do it at work?
Speaker 3: And I was a little bit confused. It's like, what
Speaker 3: could we possibly need to talk about work? Outside of work,
Speaker 3: I'm not following, and he said, please, like, can you
Speaker 3: meet me at Spot Coffee. I had no idea that
Speaker 3: I would walk into Spot Coffee and be asked how
Speaker 3: I felt about unionizing Starbucks. That one trip to a
Speaker 3: coffee shop changed my life.
Speaker 1: Activist Gianna Reeve. If you appreciate conversations about the labor movement,
Speaker 1: check out my episode with former California assembly Person and
Speaker 1: head of the California Labor Federation Lorena Gonzalez.
Speaker 4: My favorite part of the story is having to go
Speaker 4: to then Governor Jerry Brown. I mean, I'm like, oh God,
Speaker 4: I got to talk to him about cheerleaders. We were
Speaker 4: at a dinner together and I said, Governor, when you
Speaker 4: have a chance on and talk about this bill I'm
Speaker 4: working on. It has to do with professional cheerleaders. And
Speaker 4: he said I was a cheerleader, and I was like.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 4: I've hearing this.
Speaker 1: Luck would have it.
Speaker 4: He was a cheerleader in college or high school. And
Speaker 4: so I was like, oh, I think I'm going to
Speaker 4: get this one.
Speaker 3: But we did.
Speaker 4: I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Lorena Gonzalez, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Gianna
Speaker 1: Reeve shares some of the conditions that led to the
Speaker 1: unionizing effort at Starbucks. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing union organizer. Gianna Reeve was
Speaker 1: a shift supervisor at the Camp Road Starbucks in the
Speaker 1: Buffalo area of upstate New York when her location filed
Speaker 1: the petition to unionize in twenty twenty one. A simple
Speaker 1: meeting with one of her co workers would change the
Speaker 1: course of Gianna's life.
Speaker 3: He told me about the first union meeting that was
Speaker 3: going to have partners from all the different locations in
Speaker 3: Buffalo come together and talk and see if this was
Speaker 3: a movement with legs basically, so going to this meeting.
Speaker 3: Before this, I was sort of entrenched in Camp Road
Speaker 3: in that I didn't really go to other store locations.
Speaker 3: I didn't really pick up shifts there. I was really
Speaker 3: focused on just doing my job at Camp Road and
Speaker 3: doing it well, and I didn't have a lot of
Speaker 3: conversations with workers outside of my store. So going into
Speaker 3: this meeting and hearing a lot of the same problems
Speaker 3: existing at these other store locations in Buffalo that I
Speaker 3: think is what I would describe as like that clique
Speaker 3: for me, that this isn't just a camp road issue.
Speaker 3: This is a Starbucks issue, and this needs to be addressed.
Speaker 3: When you have a half dozen baristas in a circle
Speaker 3: all time talking to each other and going wait, wait,
Speaker 3: your store has wasps too, Yeah, my partner just got
Speaker 3: sent to the er because she was stung on the floor,
Speaker 3: and conversations like that of like, oh did they take
Speaker 3: away your non slip floor mats? My store doesn't even
Speaker 3: have non slip formats. My store has carpet in the
Speaker 3: back room, and just continuous stories just bouncing off each
Speaker 3: other of all of these things that haven't been addressed
Speaker 3: over the years they've been at Starbucks. It was just
Speaker 3: mind boggling how similar our stories were.
Speaker 1: So when you mentioned the carpeting versus the non slip thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, I only want to focus on that to say,
Speaker 1: so there were places, there were Starbucks that were making
Speaker 1: the necessary changes to protect their customers and their workers
Speaker 1: and some that weren't. And not was every Starbucks derelict
Speaker 1: than these kinds of modifications, or were some better than others?
Speaker 3: Some We're definitely better than others. A lot of store
Speaker 3: locations are older and that they haven't had remodels or
Speaker 3: improvements in years. It's kind of like if you had
Speaker 3: ten different things and you said pick three or four
Speaker 3: out of these ten. I think every Starbucks would be
Speaker 3: able to pick three or four things if I could
Speaker 3: sit here and make a list of either structural, safety, employment,
Speaker 3: or labor issues that they're having on the floor, and
Speaker 3: they would be able to do so. For me, it
Speaker 3: was seeing a lot of problems with labor cuts, with staffing,
Speaker 3: with wages, with healthkin safety, with management accountability, and for
Speaker 3: others it was something maybe like health and safety in
Speaker 3: the sense that carpeting in the back room is an
Speaker 3: absolute no for a food service jomp. I've never heard
Speaker 3: of anything like that before. There was a point when
Speaker 3: management had come in over one hundred corporate officials that
Speaker 3: come into Buffalo and they were asking workers, you know,
Speaker 3: what can we do to make things better for you here?
Speaker 3: We really dropped the ball on Buffalo what can we do?
Speaker 3: And for Camp Road, a lot of it was our floors.
Speaker 3: We were a brand new store. They weren't made to
Speaker 3: handle the salt that was coming in from the snow,
Speaker 3: and they were wearing down. We had our grout was
Speaker 3: just being eaten away, and that creates problems with fruitflies.
Speaker 3: So our store was just covered, covered and fruit flies.
Speaker 3: It was disgusting. No one wanted to work like that,
Speaker 3: No one wanted to serve food and drink like that.
Speaker 1: So interesting.
Speaker 3: At some point management said we got you, no worries,
Speaker 3: We'll take care of this, and they had a crew
Speaker 3: come in after clothes in the in the middle of
Speaker 3: the night and try and refinish our floors. What they
Speaker 3: did was they sanded away the ceilant on the tile
Speaker 3: and made it porous. They essentially ruined our stores floor tiling,
Speaker 3: and it was just the problem became even worse. It
Speaker 3: was exacerbated by this action. And to me that really
Speaker 3: it sounds funny to say. It's a little bit of
Speaker 3: an overall theme with Starbucks' attempts at either helping in
Speaker 3: quotations or union busting and saying, Okay, we're here, we're listening,
Speaker 3: making the.
Speaker 1: Wor workspace healthier for the workers and the customers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, let's make it healthier for you. What can
Speaker 3: we do to make it healthy and then us saying
Speaker 3: something and then being like hurt, you got it, but
Speaker 3: then taking actions that don't inherently help the problem or
Speaker 3: they make the problem worse.
Speaker 1: Do you find that that's a theme that the company
Speaker 1: didn't rely enough on the workforce to glean information what
Speaker 1: was best for those locations.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean everything I'm talking about and all of
Speaker 3: these problems that are existing in my store and now
Speaker 3: nationally on this level we're talking about, all of this
Speaker 3: could have been solved by a seat at the table
Speaker 3: on Starbucks's board of directors. They have two honorary empty seats.
Speaker 3: One is for I believe customers and the other is
Speaker 3: for all of the barife dosen' workers with the company.
Speaker 1: They've never filled those seats.
Speaker 3: Yes, why aren't those seats filled? Because if those seats
Speaker 3: were filled, I think this company could be so much better.
Speaker 3: Starbucks workers want this company to be that human, worker
Speaker 3: driven company that wants to spark change, positive change. We
Speaker 3: want to see that happen. That's why we're all here,
Speaker 3: That's why we sort of were interested in the company
Speaker 3: in the first place. That's why we applied.
Speaker 1: When does the word strike, When does the word union?
Speaker 1: When does that enter the conversation and the person you
Speaker 1: were with at the other coffee shop was that they
Speaker 1: need to talk to you about work outside of work.
Speaker 1: Where does it go from there?
Speaker 3: That goes into that first meeting we had with other
Speaker 3: Starbuck partners from other locations in Buffalo, not just from
Speaker 3: the first three but from all of them, and then
Speaker 3: very rapidly after that, where right now the timeline is
Speaker 3: August of twenty twenty one, and we're going forward and
Speaker 3: we're saying, yeah, we need this to happen. So the
Speaker 3: next step in the organizing process is going to be
Speaker 3: signing union cards and talking to each worker on the
Speaker 3: floor through one on one conversations. And there is this
Speaker 3: beautiful one week window where we could talk without restriction,
Speaker 3: and we could just discuss, and we could brainstorm, and
Speaker 3: we could imagine what this company could look like if
Speaker 3: all of our voices were put into it, and we
Speaker 3: could really make a difference. So we got I believe
Speaker 3: between sixty six and seventy percent cards signed at Camp
Speaker 3: Road in a matter of a couple of days, and
Speaker 3: we filed for union election. So there was that great
Speaker 3: one week window where a lot of movement was happening,
Speaker 3: a lot of progress, We had a lot of momentum,
Speaker 3: and then at the end of that week window it
Speaker 3: started to shift. We put out a letter from all
Speaker 3: of the workers that initially went to the meeting about
Speaker 3: our intent to organize, because it's generally good practice and
Speaker 3: it signifies your attempt to organize to the company so
Speaker 3: that you're protected legally. It's funny, the more public you
Speaker 3: are about your intent to organize, the more protected you are,
Speaker 3: and from a legal standpoint, because the company can't argue
Speaker 3: that they didn't know. It is retaliation if they try
Speaker 3: to terminate you or reprimand you at that point. So
Speaker 3: they got our letter. We had our amazing week, and
Speaker 3: then we started to see people from Starbucks corporate flood
Speaker 3: into Buffalo. I think we've counted over one hundred different
Speaker 3: names to do, what to surveil and to intimidate, and
Speaker 3: to influence.
Speaker 1: And to look for grounds to terminate you.
Speaker 3: Yes, right, absolutely.
Speaker 1: How many of the people that were perceived, whether they
Speaker 1: signed any paperwork or whether they were completely fully expressing
Speaker 1: their support of the unionization publicly, How many of your
Speaker 1: fellow workers there were terminated since they commencement of the union.
Speaker 3: Organizing the termination? I can't say exactly a number. They
Speaker 3: did terminate one of our my friend that I met
Speaker 3: in the coffee shop Will. They terminated Will for wearing
Speaker 3: a suicide awareness pin. So prior to the corporate members
Speaker 3: coming into Starbucks Buffalo locations and staying there for months,
Speaker 3: might I add, they had changed Starbucks policy to that
Speaker 3: you can no longer wear non Starbucks affiliated pins unless
Speaker 3: it's a labor pin. This was a direct dig at
Speaker 3: us wearing our union pins on the floor, so now
Speaker 3: we were no longer allowed to wear them. Unfortunately, at
Speaker 3: my location, we had a partner passed away by suicide
Speaker 3: and we all got these pins. One of our partners
Speaker 3: got these pins that say you are not Alone, and
Speaker 3: it has like the number for the one of the
Speaker 3: suicide foundations on it, and we asked and asked and
Speaker 3: asked if we could wear these on the floor, if
Speaker 3: they could just make one exception because we lost someone
Speaker 3: that we all loved, And they said, sorry, but no,
Speaker 3: we don't care. We're not You're not going to get
Speaker 3: an exception for this not wearing it, ignorant of the
Speaker 3: fact that even making this policy change was illegal in
Speaker 3: the sense that they cannot change conditions in the store location.
Speaker 3: The rules that exist when you file for union election
Speaker 3: have to be the same throughout the union election. So
Speaker 3: they've made this change and now they've said, we are
Speaker 3: not going to make this exception.
Speaker 1: Can they moved the goal post in order to find
Speaker 1: a way to fire people.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that was a change of our it's called laboratory conditions.
Speaker 3: That was a change of laboratory conditions. So that shouldn't
Speaker 3: have happened in the first place. And to not display
Speaker 3: the empathy that's typically so embedded in the ethos at
Speaker 3: this company, and saying, why can we at least wear
Speaker 3: pins to honor a partner that's passed away, the partner
Speaker 3: that everybody looked on the floor. Can we at least
Speaker 3: have that even for a week? For a day, no
Speaker 3: leeway was given.
Speaker 1: Organizer Gianna Reeve. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you'll get your podcasts
Speaker 1: when we come back. Gianna Reeve shares the public's reaction
Speaker 1: to Starbucks workers striking. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. Starbucks union organizer Gianna Reeve attended
Speaker 1: a meeting in Buffalo with then CEO Howard Schultz and
Speaker 1: other members of Starbucks leadership in late twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: She would end the meeting confronting Schultz about the company's
Speaker 1: labor busting practices. I was curious how such an unorthodox
Speaker 1: meeting came together in the first place.
Speaker 3: The invite list was every partner in the Buffalo area,
Speaker 3: So if you're barista, you were invited. They closed our
Speaker 3: star locations early to have us go to this meeting
Speaker 3: at a high regency hotel, as they put it, special guests.
Speaker 3: Some of us thought it might be Taylor Swift. Others
Speaker 3: among us were like, they're going to bring out Howard.
Speaker 3: They're going to try and bring out the big guns
Speaker 3: to convince us that what we're doing isn't the right
Speaker 3: move for the company.
Speaker 1: How many people were in that room, would you guess.
Speaker 3: Between one hundred and two hundred. But the interesting part
Speaker 3: of that is that about a third of the people
Speaker 3: that were in the room were the corporate members that
Speaker 3: had been coming to the Starbucks locations for months at
Speaker 3: that point and surveilling and harassing and impeding on the
Speaker 3: flow of operations in these stores. They were there as well,
Speaker 3: wearing crisp out of the bag Green Aprons sitting and
Speaker 3: listening and just eating up on this whole experience, while
Speaker 3: there was another bunch that were just baristas from the
Speaker 3: Buffalo's stores wondering what the hell was going on.
Speaker 1: How long did the meeting last?
Speaker 3: The lasted about an hour and a half. It was
Speaker 3: about a half an hour of the actual talks and everything,
Speaker 3: and maybe about ten minutes when Howard came out and spoke.
Speaker 1: So he was not in attendance for the whole meeting.
Speaker 3: No, he only came out for his speech and then
Speaker 3: promptly left.
Speaker 1: So he was actually interested in talking but not listening.
Speaker 3: Yes, he wanted to talk, but not listen. And when
Speaker 3: I believe there was there was a little bit of
Speaker 3: tension in the room because as many as there were
Speaker 3: Green Apron extras, there were also people in the front row.
Speaker 3: I sat in the front row with another organizing partner
Speaker 3: from Sheridan Bailey's location named James, and we sat in
Speaker 3: the front row together because we had talked prior a
Speaker 3: bunch of us and said, wouldn't it be crazy if
Speaker 3: someone asked Howard Schultz after he was done speaking to
Speaker 3: sign our set of fair election principles which provide us
Speaker 3: more protections. It provides union workers equal time. If they're
Speaker 3: going to have captive meetings with workers, we would be
Speaker 3: given essentially the same time. It would be a document
Speaker 3: saying that we're not going to threaten union workers anymore.
Speaker 3: We're extending an olive branch. So he said, wouldn't it
Speaker 3: be crazy if someone did this? And someone asked? And
Speaker 3: for some reason in my stupid bravery or just impulse
Speaker 3: or adrenaline, I said, yeah, wouldn't it? And I took
Speaker 3: the paper and went and sat in the front row
Speaker 3: and I listened to his whole speech so in depth.
Speaker 3: I also listened to the podcast episode he was on
Speaker 3: with you Alec, and I noticed a lot of the
Speaker 3: same beats, the same story of this is the company
Speaker 3: that he wanted to be, that he modeled this after
Speaker 3: what his father didn't have. He wanted this to be
Speaker 3: a company that his father would be proud to work from.
Speaker 3: The projects yes, as often likes to say yes. And
Speaker 3: so going into that and just listening and hearing the
Speaker 3: same story now over and over again now that I've
Speaker 3: heard it, and wondering, wouldn't his father have wanted union
Speaker 3: membership for himself and wanted representation and protections at work.
Speaker 3: And during this Congress meeting with Howard, Senator Ed Marquis
Speaker 3: brought this up, and that was another point in which
Speaker 3: Schultz bristled and became visibly annoyed or frustrated with this
Speaker 3: line of questioning, even though it's something that baristas have
Speaker 3: been thinking for a while now, because you can't separate
Speaker 3: Howard from Starbucks, and this message and this idea is
Speaker 3: embedded into the company. And as we're looking for ways
Speaker 3: to meet the company better by having a worker focus,
Speaker 3: you just can't help but think of that and wonder
Speaker 3: what's happened. And I think what's happened is that the
Speaker 3: workers don't have a voice, and we need to see
Speaker 3: that shift.
Speaker 1: Shultz step down.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yes, he's replaced. He went from Howard to Kevin
Speaker 3: Johnson to Howard to now Laxman.
Speaker 1: Where is the effort now? Where's the unionization at Starbucks? Now?
Speaker 3: Right now we are at over I believe three hundred
Speaker 3: unionized locations and counting where filing petitions nearly every day.
Speaker 3: We are continuing to build power within the Starbucks locations
Speaker 3: and find baristas that are experiencing the same problems that
Speaker 3: we have because after Buffalo, and we won in Buffalo,
Speaker 3: just a monumental win.
Speaker 1: So the Buffalo location is unionized, yes, and everybody that
Speaker 1: works there is in the union. Everybody, Yes? What union
Speaker 1: are they affiliated with?
Speaker 3: We're affiliated with Workers United, So we aren't Starbucks Workers United?
Speaker 3: Affiliated with Workers United. We don't pay dues until we
Speaker 3: have a contract, and that's been kind of the sludging point.
Speaker 3: Starbucks has not really been bargaining in good faith with us.
Speaker 3: There have been times where we'd come to the table,
Speaker 3: we'd set up a meeting, it would be the briests
Speaker 3: coming in and Starbucks' lawyers would show up for two
Speaker 3: minutes and then leave and gone. Nothing negotiated, nothing really discussed.
Speaker 3: And we've been seeing that sledge happen time and time
Speaker 3: again with these bargaining sessions that we've been trying to have.
Speaker 3: We have our non economic proposals all ready to go,
Speaker 3: they're just not coming to the table.
Speaker 1: How can you compel them to sign the contract? How
Speaker 1: does that work?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm so glad you asked. That's going to come
Speaker 3: from building power within our consumer base. Consumers. You think
Speaker 3: that they would be jumping at the chance to sort
Speaker 3: of vote with their dollars and say no, I can
Speaker 3: take a stand by not buying Starbucks. But the thing
Speaker 3: is is that a lot of customers still don't know
Speaker 3: that this is happening within Starbucks locations. They don't realize
Speaker 3: that Starbucks has been putting on one of the most
Speaker 3: aggressive union busting campaigns in modern history. So a lot
Speaker 3: of the next steps are going to be educating consumers
Speaker 3: and moving forward and letting them know what's happening in
Speaker 3: these store locations and saying like, are you going to
Speaker 3: not cross the picket line when you see us out
Speaker 3: on strike? And we've had large strikes where there's been
Speaker 3: over one hundred locations on strike at any given point
Speaker 3: during some of the companies largest days of like Red
Speaker 3: Cup Day. You come in, you get a free red cup,
Speaker 3: you get your holiday drink, and you go. We had
Speaker 3: strikes going at over one hundred store locations across the
Speaker 3: country on days line.
Speaker 1: And the strike entail people just not working, yeah, work stop.
Speaker 1: It was just no service.
Speaker 3: People can't say coffee, wow, No, you cannot.
Speaker 1: What was the public's voice in that? What would people
Speaker 1: say to you while you were striking?
Speaker 3: There's always a couple of people that aren't too happy
Speaker 3: when they see a picket line for whatever reason or other.
Speaker 3: But a lot of the times it was customers being like, wow,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that. I had no idea. I've been
Speaker 3: coming here for the past however long, and I just
Speaker 3: had no knowledge of this. I'll go to Spot coffee
Speaker 3: or something instead, or like we point them to one
Speaker 3: of the unionized coffee shops in Buffalo. Points like that.
Speaker 3: On strikes, a lot of people are enthusiastic, and especially
Speaker 3: in the Buffalo area. Buffalo's a union town. We have
Speaker 3: higher union density than a lot of other locations across
Speaker 3: the country. So chances are that you are in a union,
Speaker 3: or you know someone that's in a union, or family
Speaker 3: members in a union. So you see a picket light
Speaker 3: and you're you're not crossing that.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just say thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your courage and your intelligence. I mean, you really really
Speaker 1: are are somebody who you've obviously examined this from every
Speaker 1: angle and you've brought about what's important. Changed because when
Speaker 1: I saw those people at the Manchester Vermont Starbucks, I
Speaker 1: mean working themselves, I mean just it was crazy. It
Speaker 1: was crazy. And when you sit there and say you'd
Speaker 1: like to have those conditions be improved. You're to be
Speaker 1: committed for it. You've done. It's really, really truly amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Starbucks Workers United organizer Gianna Reeve. This
Speaker 1: episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that is
Speaker 1: brought to you by iHeart Radio