Workers at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Chicago's Michigan Avenue — the largest Starbucks in the world — are seeking union representation.
Starbucks employees who work at the company’s Reserve Roastery, a 35,000-square-foot store at 646 N. Michigan Ave., filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Friday.
The prospective bargaining unit includes about 230 baristas and mixologists who serve elaborate coffee-based drinks and cocktails, bakers who make pastries in-house, and operations leads who work in retail and customer service at the five-story caffeine emporium, according to the workers’ union filing.
People who work roasting coffee at the Roastery are not retail employees and are not included in the unit.
The Chicago Roastery was the sixth in the world when it opened in 2019, and the third the company had opened in the U.S. The other two American roasteries, in Seattle and New York, unionized last spring.
In interviews with the Tribune, Chicago Roastery employees raised concerns about wages, inconsistent scheduling and store management’s responses to safety issues at the Roastery.
“They’re constantly being like, ‘This is the only place like it in the world, we have to make like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it’s the largest Starbucks in the world,’” said Lucy Polkinghorne, an operations lead at the Roastery. “If we were being paid in a way where we were treated like that important, it would be different.”
Starbucks said prospective bargaining unit workers at the Roastery are paid between $18.75 and about $30 an hour. Casey Moore, an organizer and spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United, said most bargaining unit members make $23 or less an hour.
“The second that you ask for a little bit of respect, or the pay that you deserve, whether it be 60 more cents an hour, a dollar more an hour — anything like that — it’s treated like you’re asking for the whole world,” said Jamie Williamson, an operations lead working in retail who has worked at the Roastery for close to a year.
Employees raised concerns about overcrowding and fire safety at the Roastery, which is a tourist magnet, particularly during the summer.
“It’s not safe for the workers, it’s not safe for the space. But the management only cares about the money,” said Kyra Supnet, a barista at the Roastery who was recently promoted to mixologist. “There have been so many times where we wish we could have had a say in whether or not they should hold the line at the door.”
Supnet said the store had also experienced nitrogen gas leaks from tanks used to make nitro cold brews and gelatos. Employees also pointed to being expected to continue working throughout recent tornado warnings in Chicago.
“We continued working throughout the entire thing,” said Williamson, 22. “I feel like part of the reason for that was there was a giant Wells Fargo event happening on the fourth floor that they didn’t want to have to move down or evacuate. And that was their main priority.”
Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trull said the company remains “committed to supporting our Chicago Roastery partners.”
“Our partners and their safety are core to our operation,” Trull said in a statement. “We work with urgency to address any reported issues that may impact the well-being of our partners and the experience we offer at our Chicago Roastery.”
The company said it adheres to fire code and capacity requirements at the Roastery and said all food service equipment in the store is cleaned and inspected regularly to ensure adherence with health and safety standards.
Supnet, 21, said she hoped a union would allow Roastery workers to have more of a say in how issues at the store are addressed.
“The biggest thing we want to see is just being able to make a decision with management,” she said. “Hopefully they can see that they no longer have this upper hand over us all the time.”
As of Friday, 340 Starbucks cafes had unionized nationwide, according to the NLRB. The count includes just over a dozen stores in the Chicago area.
As of Friday, Starbucks Workers United had notched a win rate of just over 80% in the more than 400 union elections that had been held nationwide, though the unionized stores represent only a fraction of the company’s approximately 9,300 company-owned cafes in the U.S.
Though the first Starbucks cafes unionized in late 2021, no store has secured a first contract. The union has accused Starbucks of refusing to bargain in good faith with baristas; the company has said it is the union that refuses to do so. Regional directors for the NLRB have issued complaints against the company alleging it has failed to bargain in good faith with the union at numerous cafes around the country. Starbucks denies the allegations.
Starbucks has been found in violation national labor law numerous times by administrative law judges over the course of the campaign, including in Chicago, where a judge found the coffee giant had illegally fired a Hyde Park barista who led the union campaign at his store and threatened workers at two cafes over their union activity. Starbucks is appealing that ruling; the coffee giant has generally denied accusations and findings of lawbreaking.
In May, a worker at the unionized New York Roastery filed a decertification petition with the NLRB. A decertification petition, which a worker can file one year after unionization if they do not have a contract, seeks to force a second union election during which employees must vote on whether to remain unionized.
The employee who filed the decertification petition was represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an organization opposed to compulsory union membership.
A hearing in the decertification case has been postponed indefinitely because of complaints issued against Starbucks alleging violations of labor law at the New York Roastery, according to NLRB filings.
The next step in the Chicago Roastery workers’ union campaign will be to vote in a union election held by the labor board in Chicago. If a majority of workers vote to unionize, they will form a union represented by Starbucks Workers United.
