PROVIDENCE – Employees at a downtown Starbucks have become the first Starbucks store in Rhode Island to unionize.
Workers at the 1 Financial Plaza store on Monday voted unanimously 13-0 to join Starbucks Workers United.
“I’m so excited to be in solidarity with workers across the globe who are fighting for our rights,” said Hannah Gentley, who has worked for Starbucks Corp. for the last two and a half years.
The workers at 1 Financial Plaza join a quickly expanding nationwide movement of more than 9,000 baristas organizing what the union says is for justice, fighting for improvements on core issues, including respect, living wages, racial and gender equity, and fair scheduling.
“We workers are igniting a fire of resistance and power for all workers in Rhode Island and everywhere in the country,” said Juani Cantu, who has also been with Starbucks for two and a half years.
At least 370 company-operated Starbucks Corp. stores in 41 states and the District of Columbia have voted to unionize since late 2021.
The Starbucks unionized effort was at the leading edge of a period of labor activism that has also seen strikes by Amazon.com Inc. workers, auto workers and Hollywood writers and actors. At least 457,000 workers have participated in 315 strikes in the U.S. just this year, according to Johnnie Kallas, a Ph.D. candidate and the project director of Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker.
The Providence Starbucks employees joined their fellow colleagues from more than 200 of the coffee chain’s U.S. stores and walked off the job on Nov. 16 on "Red Cup Day" in what organizers called the largest strike yet in the 2-year-old effort to unionize. Two days prior, the employees at 1 Financial Plaza filed with the National Labor Relations Board to unionize.
Starbucks Corp. opposes the unionization effort and has yet to reach a labor agreement with any of the stores that have voted to unionize. The process has been contentious; regional offices with the National Labor Relations Board have issued 111 complaints against Starbucks Corp. for unfair labor practices, including a refusal to bargain. Starbucks says the union is refusing to schedule bargaining sessions.
Relations between Starbucks Corp. and Starbucks Workers United have grown increasingly tense. Last month, Starbucks sued the union, saying a pro-Palestinian post on a union account damaged its reputation and demanded that the union stop using the name Starbucks Workers United. The union responded with its own lawsuit, saying Starbucks defamed the union by suggesting it supports terrorism and violence.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
