Workers at the Starbucks on Port Republic Road in Harrisonburg are in the process of unionizing. They went on strike last week and are expected to vote on unionization this Friday, December 19. WMRA’s Calvin Pynn spoke with barista and union rep Michael Hulleman and asked what led to the decision to unionize.
Michael Hulleman: So, for a lot of us, we’re facing a lot of the same conditions that workers all across the country are facing, particularly at Starbucks, but not at all exclusive to it. For us, a big issue has been both understaffing, so we have people, the company tries to cut as much labor as possible to put the least amount of people in the store as possible to keep up with demand. And that leads to a lot of overwork. It leads to people really having to run around on the floor, particularly, you know, you can miss out on some of the cleaning tasks, the upkeep that they ask you to do. It can lead to a lot of injuries and just exhaustion and overwork, especially when it’s combined with kind of a neglect for people’s breaks, people’s breaks getting run not on time, people’s breaks just being forgotten conveniently. A lot of us also either are working multiple jobs or are students, and a lot of people just aren’t getting scheduled enough hours that they need, you know, in order to make rent to pay all of their bills. So, a lot of our workers, a lot of our partners, are having to choose between, am I paying my rent this month or am I buying groceries? And there’s just a lot of frustration that comes with that, especially when you feel like you have a management that doesn’t really want to listen to you, that doesn’t really take your concerns or your interests at heart. And when it feels like the company’s only being run for the benefit of, you know, the shareholders or the CEO or the people that are, you know, taking home the vast amount of profits. At the end of the day, they’re paying our CEO, Brian Nichols, $100 million for what comes out to four months of work, which is 600 or 6,666 times more than what the average barista makes. And so, it’s, you know, it’s a lot of that kind of stuff.
WMRA: I was looking at it earlier. I know that as of 2024, as of last year, there have been 500 stores across the country that had unionized. Have they provided any guidance on how to go about this?…