Chicago is seeing a wave of union activity. Among the reasons: Workers ‘saw the willingness of their bosses to let them die.’
Last year, Brick Zurek, a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in Chicago's Loop, found working conditions at the store becoming increasingly untenable.
People coming into the store threatened and screamed at baristas. One person, after being served a cup of scalding hot water, poured it on the manager, Zurek said. On top of that, the store was short-staffed, sometimes with just a few baristas tasked with serving a line out the door.
Zurek had read on Twitter and in the news about Starbucks employees in Buffalo, New York, who were pushing to unionize their stores.
Zurek thought about the threats, the violence, the unrelenting workload, and wondered: “What if we had a bigger say? What if we could make it so that wasn’t allowed?”
Zurek has worked for Starbucks for about two and a half years, and at the Loop store at Randolph Street and Wabash Avenue since it opened in October. Last fall, workers there began discussing the possibility of forming a union. Zurek reached out to Workers United, the Service Employees International Union affiliate that now represents Starbucks workers across the country. In January, baristas at the store became the first in Chicago to file for union representation. Votes in a union election there will be counted June 7.
Nine Chicago-area stores followed Zurek’s in filing for union representation. Last week, baristas at two Starbucks in Edgewater won union elections, becoming the first in the city to unionize. Union elections for four other Chicago Starbucks are scheduled in June.
Nationally, workers at more than 270 Starbucks have filed for union elections, according to late-May data from the National Labor Relations Board. The company has pushed back, prompting numerous complaints from the agency alleging violations ranging from illegally firing workers who are seeking to organize to illegal surveillance. The NLRBelections that have been held nationwide as ofMonday, baristas have lost 14.(A handful of results are being contested.)
