Originally published in the Spring 2022 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 68, printed April 21. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Spring 2022 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Kat McNeal

On April 19, workers at five Starbucks coffee shops in the Richmond area voted overwhelmingly to join the Workers United union. According to the Northern Virginia Labor Federation, an AFL-CIO affiliate working with Philadelphia-based Workers United, the overall vote was 82-14 at the shops at Westchester Commons, Forest Hill Avenue, Huguenot Village, Willow Lawn and Carmia Way.

Four other Richmond-area stores were yet to vote. As of presstime, there were 150 Starbucks locations with organizing drives out of a total of 8,947 company-operated and 6,497 licensed stores in the country. The first to unionize was in Buffalo, N.Y.

The Virginia Defender spoke with one of the organizers who are helping to turn Richmond into a union town.

Meridian Stiller is a 17-year-old high school senior from Powhatan County. Stiller, who uses the pronouns they/them, has worked as a barista at the Starbucks at Westchester Commons in Chesterfield County since June of last year.

That Starbucks was the first in Virginia to start organizing, although it wasn’t the first to go public. There are now some 15 stores in the state with organizing campaigns: in Doswell, Falls Church, Farmville, Leesville, Midlothian, Newport News and Roanoke, in addition to the Richmond-area stores.

According to Stiller, the Westchester store has about 30 employees, about a third of whom are people of color. Most are high school or college students, with the average age 17 to 20 years old. The union organizing committee has five members, three of whom are seniors at Powhatan High School.

Here is our interview:

VIRGINIA DEFENDER: The first two stores to file with the National Labor Relations Board did so pretty quickly after the Buffalo store. Had the desire to unionize been circulating for a while?

MERIDIAN STILLER: It was spontaneous, to my knowledge. Buffalo went public in August, and then other partners went, wow, this is a great idea… It’s growing exponentially. My store was one of the first 20 in the country to go public. Now we’re up to 150. Eventually there will be a tipping point where Starbucks sees it’s more economical to work with its partners.

Would you say there’s widespread support for the union among the workers in your stores?

About half are very strong definite “yes” votes, about half are very strong definite “no” votes and there’s some small amount of “undecided.” We did have about 70 percent of people sign the union cards. A lot of the “no” votes have been intimidated by management. We’re now publishing “The Richmond Partner” magazine, modeled after Buffalo’s “The Partner.”

Can you speak a bit on the issue of COVID safety in the workplace, which I have seen listed as a major grievance?

At the very beginning of the pandemic, workers felt that Starbucks did a great job of keeping workers safe: Block scheduling to prevent contact between shifts, mask requirements, closed cafes, encouraging mobile ordering, etc. However, as Virginia’s regulations changed, so have Starbucks’, even though employees aren’t comfortable with a lot of it. Masks are now optional, quarantining rules have changed, paid time off after exposure ended. At our stores there were plexiglass barriers between us and customers, but they took them down.

At our store, they took our plexiglass down and one of our older employees wanted it back up. We wrote a very polite letter asking for it back, and our manager got very angry and offended and said that this was inappropriate. This was actually right before we decided to organize.

Obviously, COVID protocols are not the bottom line of union organizing – worker organizing will live on after COVID, but I felt it really was an example of management not taking our voices into account.

How about the issue of seniority pay?

Seniority pay is an economic issue that Buffalo is bargaining for, and we’re looking to them for guidance, although we’re all going to be independent in what we choose to bargain for. At my store, we sent around a survey, and we are interested in seniority pay because Starbucks generally, and my store specifically, has a high turnover rate. Often it’s just one experienced partner and five or so of what we call “green beans,” or new workers. It’s harder to be a senior partner, so it deserves more pay.

Every barista makes the same amount of money. I make $12 an hour; a barista that works there for 15 years would also make $12 an hour. There aren’t any talent raises, either. The company decides if there will be a raise and they apply it uniformly. Shift supervisors are paid uniformly also.

What about cost-of-living raises or base pay?

Inflation-adjusted cost-of-living raises are another thing we’re looking at. We want three steps: A base pay increase, as yet undetermined; seniority pay; and a cost-of-living increase each year.

The Genesee Street and Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo [the first stores to organize], also has this other proposal: If someone calls out at Starbucks and doesn’t come in, Starbucks just reabsorbs their pay. Their idea is that Starbucks should just redistribute that person’s pay to everyone who has to work the short shift, since everyone on that shift is having to pick up slack.

What’s been the public’s reaction?

Nationally, there’s been 69 percent support from the public and 67 percent customer support. We’ve been seeing support in my store. People have been coming in and giving their name as “Union Yes.” We’re seeing a lot of that.

This is extremely public – Starbucks is the third-largest fast food chain in the country – and people from other unions especially have been extremely supportive. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have come out to support, the DSA. Virginia Diamond is president of the Northern Virginia Labor Federation and another leader is with the United Auto Workers. Neither of them are directly from Workers United, so that just goes to show how cross-union the campaign has been.

There’s been a lot of union support, but we’re also a very independent, grassroots union. We want this to be partners-only. Our strongest support is partners for other partners, figuring out how we’re going to run things.

What about Unity Fest, the rally that’s scheduled to take place April 24 at the National in Richmond? [Editor: https://www.eventbrite.com/ e/unity-fest-tickets-307813377097]

Unity Fest is a thing that two workers from the Richmond area put together to celebrate six vote counts happening immediately prior.

What can the public do to support you?

I’d say the “Union Yes” cup thing. And we really love it if you come in and strike up a conversation with your barista about the union effort. We have Starbucks Workers United pins available for the public to buy. You can wear those pins into the store. [See the Starbucks Workers United website here.]

If you’re with an organization, you can send a letter or a note. We love getting the notes, but Starbucks does not. In the Forest Hill store, they had an area where they were pinning them up and displaying them and the manager tore them down and said they couldn’t have them because it wasn’t “an official break room.”

So, order under “Union Yes,” share our stuff on social media, talk to your baristas, wear your pin.

Do you have any advice for other workers who are thinking about organizing?

Yeah, definitely. As someone who was brand-new to organizing and even to having a job, I would say that it seems scary, but networking is your friend. Find people, talk to them – it’s so much more accessible than I thought it was.

My main advice is don’t let fear of the unknown overwhelm you. The labor organizing community is very friendly and welcoming. I’m sure if I’d just contacted some guy at the IBEW and told him I was a Starbucks worker interested in unionizing, it would have gone somewhere.

For more information on the Starbucks union drive, see the Starbucks Workers United webpage.