The Starbucks on a leafy corner of Douglas and Alpha Streets in Victoria, British Columbia, appears like any other, but there is one important difference: in August 2020, it became the first corporate-owned location in North America to unionize in recent history. But Sarah Broad, a shift supervisor with about four years’ experience at Starbucks, says, “It started as a little bit of a joke.”
It was the early days of the pandemic. Broad says communication was poor and tensions were high between the company and the store’s thirty or so employees. When it came to COVID-19 precautions, “we were being told one thing and then a week later being told something else,” she says. “We felt like we didn’t know what was going on and like we were being taken advantage of.”
