‘We want transparency and accountability’
Bath Beach Starbucks employees join growing unionization drive
COURIER LIFE, FEBRUARY 18-24, 2022 33
BY BEN BRACHFELD
The employees of a Starbucks
in Bath Beach are looking
to form a union — becoming
the fi rst in Kings County
to join in the labor movement,
and becoming the latest in a
national wave of labor organizing
by workers at the ubiquitous
coffee shop.
Six employees at Starbucks’
location in the Ceasar’s Bay
Shopping Center, a waterfront
mall in southern Brooklyn,
signed a letter to CEO Kevin
Johnson notifying him of their
intention to organize with
Starbucks Workers United,
which is affi liated with the
Service Employees International
Union and has successfully
unionized the fi rst two
Starbucks in the nation in Buffalo
in recent months.
The employees, referring
to themselves as “partners”
per Starbucks internal lingo,
say that they are struggling
to pay for food and rent on
the meager wages and sparse
hours they are afforded by the
company, which directly owns
its stores rather than franchising
outposts like many
other large chains.
The workers say they’ve had
to endure racist harassment
and verbal attacks throughout
the pandemic, and that the company
neither trained employees
on dealing with that nor provided
suffi cient support — leaving
workers to provide for one
another through mutual aid
and other forms of care.
“We, the partners at the
Ceasar’s Bay Starbucks, want
to rebuild the trust between
partners and Starbucks that
has deteriorated over many
years,” the six employees said
in the letter. “We realize, like
our fellow partners across the
nation, a union is the way to
build back that trust and create
a true partnership.”
The employees say that company
management called them
in for a “listening session” in
order to voice concerns, but
that their grievances were not
addressed. “We want transparency
and accountability,”
they said. “Unionizing gives
us the power to make sure our
presence is felt.”
The Ceaser’s Bay employees
were joined in their organizing
push Thursday by
workers at two Manhattan locations:
Astor Place in Greenwich
Village, and the baristas
and manufacturers at the
company’s “Reserve Roastery”
in the Meatpacking District,
where the company runs
a number of coffee bars and a
coffee bean roasting facility.
The Reserve Roastery is the
largest store on the East Coast,
the union said in a statement.
In a statement, a Starbucks
spokesperson said that the
company is “listening and
learning,” and said that the
company believes they have
a good working relationship
with employees which a union
would wedge itself between.
“We are listening and
learning from the partners
in these stores, as we always
do across the country,” the
spokesperson said. “Starbucks
success — past, present,
and future — is built on how
we partner together, always
with Our Mission and Values
at our core. We’ve been clear
in our belief that we are better
together as partners, without
a union between us, and that
conviction has not changed.”
The spokesperson also said
that the company respects
workers’ right to organize,
and that it will bargain in
good faith with the union.
But the company has reportedly
been going to great lengths
to prevent its workers from
unionizing. Organizing employees
in Buffalo said that the
company sent company management
into the Erie County
locations to monitor workers
and perform labor typically
done by baristas, which the employees
saw as a form of intimidation.
Motherboard reported
that employees were forced to
attend mandatory meetings
where executives attempted to
dissuade them from organizing,
a common union-busting
topic, and the company later
went so far as to temporarily
close two stores that were attempting
to unionize.
Nonetheless, the union’s
success in Buffalo has inspired
employees at stores across the
country to attempt to organize
a union. On Feb. 9, Starbucks
fi red seven employees at
a Memphis location that they
said had violated health and
safety policies by talking to the
media within the store, while
not wearing a mask. However,
all seven employees were either
part of a unionization
committee or supportive of the
union, and Starbucks Workers
United claims that their termination
was retaliation.
In their letter, the employees
asked that Johnson sign
a pledge to not interfere in
their union election, including
promising no mandatory
anti-union meetings, no antiunion
material posted in the
store (unless an equal amount
of pro-union material can also
be posted), no threats, no retaliation,
and neutral arbitrators
resolving disputes.
The Starbucks spokesperson
said that the company
wants its employees to have the
right to vote in the election and
that its “aiming to provide our
partners with the educational
resources that we have to help
them make an informed decision,”
but would not comment
on whether the company would
sign the fair election pledge.
The Starbucks at Ceasar’s Bay Shopping Center, which has fi led petition
to unionize. Google
BY MIKAELA WEGNER
The Brooklyn Community
Foundation recently shared
$2.5 million with local nonprofi
t youth organizations —
nearly 75 percent of which are
Black-, indigenous-, or peopleof
color-led.
Over the span of four
months, 16 Youth Advisory
Council members from ages 16
to 24 directed where the grant
money would go, marking the
start of the Brooklyn Community
Foundation’s full transition
into participatory grant
making.
In all, the Brooklyn Community
Foundation split the
pool between 55 different organizations
— 55 percent of
which currently have budgets
under $1 million. Those
groups in turn receive the organization’s
Invest in Youth
grant, part of a program
which aims to increase opportunities
and improve outcomes
for young people of
color in Brooklyn.
“We were defi nitely fi lling
a gap for many of these organizations,”
LeAnne Alexander,
program offi cer at the Brooklyn
Community Foundation,
told Brooklyn Paper.
Continuing to support
smaller organizations “on the
ground,” the Brooklyn Community
Foundation is focused
on achieving “equal-access
quality education,” and “promoting
youth voice,” Alexander
said. The grant application
only asked two questions:
how would the money be used
and what is the organization’s
greatest need.
“We are not a funder that
is looking to overburden our
grantee partners with spending
valuable time fi lling grant
applications,” Alexander said.
In participatory grant
making, local leaders are fully
immersed in decision making
and distributing funds from
the foundation.
Brayan Pagoada, a 22-yearold
member of Brooklyn Community
Foundation’s Youth
Advisory Council, moved to
the US from Honduras as a
child. Quickly plugging into
a local non-profi t, he realized
his passion to create safe
spaces for underserved youth.
“I didn’t have any fi nancial
support, or I didn’t have the
space, but being able to have
the support from the Brooklyn
Community Foundation, I
was able to create the space,”
said Pagoada, who also serves
as deputy director for organizing
at Churches United for
Fair Housing.
This story has been edited
for brevity. For more, visit
BrooklynPaper.com, and for a
full list of organizations that
received grants this year, visit
BrooklynCommunityFoundation.
org.
Local youth give $2.5M to
BIPOC-led organizations
UPROSE, members of which are pictured here marching for climate justice,
was one of 55 groups recently awarded grants from the Brooklyn
Community Foundation. File photo by Paul Frangipane
/BrooklynPaper.com