Starbucks Workers in Mesa, Ariz., Vote for Union

At least one prominent Starbucks investor echoed that concern, arguing that the company appeared to be wasting money in its efforts to resist the union. “The company is devoting quite a bit of time and money to putting forward these arguments in front of the N.L.R.B.,” said Jonas Kron, the chief advocacy officer of Trillium Asset Management, which makes investments to further environmental, social and governance goals and had a roughly $43 million stake in Starbucks at the end of last year. “It doesn’t feel like they’re using investor resources — stakeholder resources — that well.”

Mr. Kron and Trillium have urged the company to take a neutral stand toward the union. Other labor experts suggested it may eventually be forced to do so whether it wants to or not.

“I’m sure there will be a tipping point at some point,” said Amy Zdravecky, a management-side lawyer at Barnes Thornburg. “How many losses do you have before you change strategy?”

Ms. Zdravecky added that the union’s ability to win an election in a state not normally sympathetic to organized labor suggested that the campaign had staying power, and that one risk for Starbucks’s approach to opposing the union is that it could begin to alienate the company’s liberal-leaning customer base.

“Fighting unions may not align with where they want to be elsewhere,” she said.

Many of the issues that workers in Mesa cited in their decision to support the union were similar to those identified by workers in Buffalo, like staffing and Covid-19 safety. Liz Alanna, a shift supervisor at the store, said that customers sometimes waited 45 minutes last fall after submitting a mobile order because there were not enough baristas to handle the volume. “The lobby would be full of people waiting,” Ms. Alanna said.

.

The Mesa campaign had an additional subplot that raised the stakes for workers. In early October, the store’s manager, Brittany Harrison, was found to have leukemia. The company initially appeared to rally behind her, Ms. Harrison said in an interview, but its posture later changed.

“I’d reach out to the district manager and it would go to voice mail or ring forever and she wouldn’t call back,” she said. Ms. Harrison, and other workers like Ms. Alanna, said that she repeatedly sought an assistant manager to help at the store but that none was forthcoming.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/business/economy/starbucks-union-vote-mesa-arizona.html