The Roastery Rundown
Chicago Roastery partners reject Workers United, overwhelmingly electing to maintain their direct relationship with the company.
Our Chicago Roastery partners voted 119 – 90 to maintain their direct relationship with Starbucks Siren Retail. With more than 230 partners, the Chicago Roastery is the largest Starbucks-owned store in the country. This outcome represents a significant vote of confidence for the direct relationship we currently maintain with nearly 97% of our stores across the U.S.
We are grateful to our partners who chose to make their voices heard – and we are immensely proud of the more than $1.4 billion in partner investments we’ve made to improve the partner experience over the past year. We look forward to focusing on what unites us as partners and continuing to enhance and evolve the partner experience in whatever ways we can – often with the direct input of our partners, and always with partners at the core of the decisions we make.
At Starbucks, we are all partners. No vote could ever – or will ever – change how we show up for each other with respect and dignity. This is the foundation of our core mission and values and what makes us a limitless partner-first company.
We’re at our best when we’re shoulder-to-shoulder, working together. We won’t always get it right, but we show up every day to do right by every partner – just like we’ve done for partners over the past 52 years. That’s why we’re better when we’re together.
Questions from our partners.
Will other partners know how I voted?
No. Other partners will only know how you voted if you choose to tell them. The election is administered by the NLRB and is conducted by secret ballot in a secure voting booth. You do not identify yourself on your ballot and no one will know how you voted unless you decide to tell them.
What we’re reading.
Trader Joe’s union is not what we bargained for
“My experience prompted me to do my own research into unions, and I’ve been shocked by what I’ve found… Untold numbers of paid union “salts” — many fresh out of college with little to no work experience — have been deployed to get jobs at targeted employers and covertly organize them from the inside.”
“Employees have few rights or protections in their dealings with unions, and union-backed laws such as the PRO Act would make it even worse by muzzling the speech of workers and companies opposed to unionization. Barring companies from providing their employees with the other side of the unionization debate does nothing to help workers make an informed choice.”
The undercover organizers behind America’s union wins
“Salting draws its name from a bygone form of fraud: sprinkling gold in a spent mine to trick someone into buying it. Over the past century, salts have gone to work in just about every US industry, sometimes calling the practice “industrializing” or, more awkwardly, “colonization.”’
“Stories from salting’s previous peak, circa the Great Depression, have been a touchstone of Inside Organizer School workshops since a pair of longtime organizers, Richard Bensinger and Chris Townsend, began holding them in 2018.”
Workers United paid nearly $2.5 million to organizers at Starbucks
“While the actual amount is likely much higher, according to financial records (known as LM forms) on file with the U.S. Department of Labor, Workers United — an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — paid 41 union consultants, organizers, union “salts,” or union activists $2,422,324 in 2022.”
