Pod Insights Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin From the Archives: Activist Gianna Reeve on Starbucks’ Unionization About this episode Against the backdrop of soaring stock prices and multi-million dollar executive packages, the labor movement is undergoing a resurgence. A Starbucks location in Buffalo, NY became the first within the coffee chain to unionize in 2021, and since then, more than 330 stores in 39 states have followed suit – with more elections underway. All the while, the Starbucks corporation was engaging in controversial labor-busting practices: the National Labor Relations Board found that Starbucks violated federal labor laws and a federal judge ruled that Starbucks engaged in “egregious and widespread misconduct.” Guest Gianna Reeve is an employee of the Camp Road Starbucks in the Buffalo area – and an organizer with Starbucks Workers United. Reeve joins Alec Baldwin to share her experience at one of the first stores to organize, the conditions that led to the unionization efforts, and what the Starbucks Workers United organization hopes for the future.
Gianna Reeve is a featured participant in the upcoming documentary “The Baristas vs The Billionaire.” To learn more, visit: www.baristasvsbillionaire.com https://www.baristasvsbillionaire.com
Originally aired June 27, 2023
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 8,366 words · 14 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:35 Speaker 02 Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:07 Alec Baldwin? This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio.
1:13 Speaker 04 My dad died in 87, and I wanted to try and build the kind of company he never got a chance to work for.
1:21 Alec Baldwin? That's Howard Schultz, three-time CEO of the Starbucks Corporation, when he was a guest on this podcast in September of 2016.
1:31 Speaker 04 So the entire business model was trying to balance profit with conscience, benevolence, and social impact. So the first thing I did was, everyone at Starbucks was gonna be an owner. So I gave ownership to every employee in 87, which I've done since then. And I gave comprehensive health insurance, first company in America to provide comprehensive health, way before the Affordable Care Act.
1:55 Alec Baldwin? For every single person that works for you?
1:56 Speaker 04 Yes. Yeah.
1:58 Alec Baldwin? What does that cost you a year?
1:59 Speaker 04 Before the Affordable Care Act, it cost 300 million a year, more than the cost of coffee beans for Starbucks. People thought I was crazy. And I was trying to raise money at the same time I had all these ideas. And people said, wait, you want to-
2:12 Alec Baldwin? Let's get rid of that component.
2:13 Speaker 04 Yeah. And I said, no, I said, I'm gonna prove to you that we will have lower attrition, higher performance. And our customers will know what we're doing for our people, and it will resonate with the brand. And this is gonna be our marketing strategy.
2:26 Alec Baldwin? Though Schultz is discussing the benevolence that his company has shown to its employees, one could argue that Schultz is feeling a tad underappreciated these days. While in the last five years, the stock price of Starbucks has doubled, and in 2022, the coffee chain's revenue reached $32 billion, the U.S. is experiencing a labor movement resurgence, with union petitions up more than 50% in 2022 from the previous year. Current Starbucks unionization efforts began in 2021, and the company mounted an aggressive anti-union campaign in response.
3:10 Alec Baldwin? As a result, a federal judge found Starbucks engaged in "egregious and widespread misconduct", and the National Labor Relations Board found the company violated federal labor law 1,300 times under Schultz's watch. Schultz was even called to testify before Congress over the union-busting allegations, and ended up stepping down from his position early. My guest today is a Starbucks Workers United organizer and an employee of one of the first Starbucks in the country that filed for a union election, Gianna Reeve.
3:48 Alec Baldwin? Since Reeve and her colleagues' initial organizing efforts in Buffalo, 328 stores in 39 states have voted to unionize, and more elections are underway. I wanted to know how Reeve's journey with the coffee chain began.
4:05 Speaker 05 I started working at Starbucks in September to October of 2020. I started at a Tim Hortons, as you know, Buffalo-born-and-bred that I am. You always started like a Tim Hortons or somewhere like that. And I didn't really enjoy the job. I felt like it was a series of management overstepping bounds. They were a franchise location, so I was looking for something better, and what looked better was Starbucks.
4:32 Alec Baldwin? Why did you want to go to Starbucks? Did you think that this was a good place to work? Did you have a sense of, or it just was a quick opportunity? They were hiring? Why did you end up there specifically?
4:43 Speaker 05 From what I knew about Starbucks being a consumer first before a prospective employee, I thought it sounded amazing. I looked at the benefits. I looked at the way they treated their queer employees. I looked at the way that they wanted to connect with customers and went, wow, this is, this is a company that really values human connection. That's something that I'm missing working at Tim Hortons that I would really like to have while I'm working a coffee job. I had a bit of rose colored glasses ongoing in that were slowly taken off over time. But that was really the thing that brought me to Starbucks was that value on humanity.
5:24 Alec Baldwin? Now, when you get there, how soon do you begin to sense that there's changes that need to be made in your estimation? Was everybody like minded about this? Or did you have to open people's eyes? What was the dawning of we have real problems here that can only be addressed by unionization?
5:42 Speaker 05 That's a very loaded question in the sense that I think each Starbucks barista might tell you a different story, but I can tell you mine in that my store location was one of the first three to organize. And it started for folks even before they were at the locations they were at. So my location was fairly new at the start of the union drive in Starbucks. We were maybe a year old at that point, but a lot of us came from other locations. And through our experiences at those other locations, we were starting to just become exhausted. We'd go through the right channels for things like understaffing, harassment, trying to uphold COVID policy because we were tasked with being the people to say, hey, like you have to keep your mask on. And people would get aggressive. People would get violent about that.
6:27 Speaker 05 We know how people feel about that. So we weren't experiencing support and we weren't getting that protection that we needed from management and from upper like corporate levels. And it was wearing down on everyone in different ways.
6:41 Alec Baldwin? So in a sense, the genesis of this, the fuse that led this was related to COVID and COVID policies in the store?
6:47 Speaker 05 I think for a lot of people, it was a bit of a turning point in looking at the company in a different way. But also even before that, the earliest seeds of Starbucks Workers United movement came from another coffee chain in Buffalo, New York, Spot Coffee organizing. And through them, one of our workers at the first three locations named Lexi Rizzo. Contacted Workers United and said that this is something that we need to do. This needs to happen. Covid kind of put that on pause for a bit, but even though it put it on pause, it also started to stoke those flames. It really brought the issues that were already there and existed within Starbucks to the forefront of people's minds.
7:29 Alec Baldwin? Such as?
7:30 Speaker 05 Understaffing, a lack of seniority benefits, benefits that partners have a hard time accessing. I know more partners on Medicaid than I know being on these Starbucks health insurance plans, simply because they cannot afford them. They don't have the hours available to work. Starbucks often likes to parade their benefits being available for part-time workers as well, but we're starting to see, and we have been seeing, partners becoming so decreased in hours that they're not hitting that 20-hour-a-week limit that you need in order to be able to be eligible for those benefits.
8:04 Alec Baldwin? So they're deliberately scheduling it that way?
8:07 Speaker 05 Yes. It's very difficult to be excited about benefits that you can't obtain, and it's even more frustrating when it feels like the company isn't listening to you. And one of the best ways to get a company to listen to you is to come together with your fellow coworkers and say, no, you need to listen to us.
8:25 Alec Baldwin? Now, when you say partners, what do you mean by partners?
8:27 Speaker 05 Partners is the term that Starbucks uses to describe their employees. So we are all considered partners by Starbucks.
8:35 Alec Baldwin? Are you still working at Starbucks now?
8:37 Speaker 05 I am still working at Starbucks now, yeah.
8:40 Alec Baldwin? What's that like? Give us a description of, so you're at a Starbucks location, this one location, which the one you are at is the Camp Road Starbucks, correct? You're still there?
8:50 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
8:51 Alec Baldwin? Now, at the Camp Road Starbucks, using just that as an example, I'm not going to assume they're all identical, but maybe they are. How does the management break down? This is someone whose title, who runs the show? Who's in charge?
9:02 Speaker 05 If you asked Starbucks that, it would be the managers. If you asked any other worker at Starbucks that, they would probably say the shift supervisors.
9:08 Alec Baldwin? Why?
9:09 Speaker 05 Because shift supervisors are the day-to-day sort of operations. The manager comes and goes, the manager writes the schedule, but the shift supervisor is going to be the one that baristas are in the most contact with. If you're coming into work, if you're calling in, you're like, hey, I gotta be, I'm gonna be late, that's gonna be your shift supervisor. If you don't know where you're gonna be on the floor for the day, if it's going to be drive-through, or you're gonna be on the espresso bar, if you're gonna be making the cold drinks, that's the shift supervisor deciding that. So, a lot of your day-to-day operations are being overseen by the shift supervisors.
9:44 Alec Baldwin? So, the manager, are they off managing multiple locations? Do they have them taking a little tour of the area? Because as everybody knows, Starbucks is kind of ubiquitous. Are they going to different locations there in Buffalo?
9:56 Speaker 05 Typically, now that the union busting heat has died down, it's typically one manager per location, but at one point, at the peak of the union busting and at the sort of height of the first three store locations, union elections, there would be sometimes five, six, seven, what Starbucks would call, support managers on the floor that were there to supposedly help the Buffalo district because we were struggling so hard and they just missed the mark completely with us. They were so apologetic, but really, they were essentially spies. I couldn't go anywhere in my store location without there being one of these support managers breathing down my neck.
10:36 Speaker 05 I couldn't talk on the headsets at work and have organizing conversations without a manager wearing a headset and listening in at all times.
10:44 Alec Baldwin? Right out in the open, they did it right in front of you?
10:46 Speaker 05 Right, right.
10:47 Alec Baldwin? They monitored your phone conversations about organizing right in front of you?
10:50 Speaker 05 Yes, it was never hidden as a secret that that's their motive.
10:55 Alec Baldwin? How did you feel about interacting with management? I mean, you say that the actual managers, as opposed to the shift supervisors, come and go. What was your relationship like with these people who were monitoring your phone calls?
11:08 Speaker 05 So, the relationship with management at the time of the union election at Camp Road, it was... A lot of me trying to be as professional and employing my customer service voice on them as much as I was on customers, really. I wanted to make sure that they knew that I wasn't just coming in to make trouble because it seemed to be like that was the feeling we were getting about how they were depicting union organizers. And I wanted them to know that, no, I've got a clean record. I'm a model employee. I'm doing this because I love my partners and I want them to have the best experience at work as possible. I want this company to be what it says it's going to be.
11:49 Speaker 05 So I thought the best way to exhibit that was to remain optimistic, remain nice.
11:58 Alec Baldwin? And don't take the bait. Don't let them provoke you into something where you're going to give them grounds to terminate.
12:03 Speaker 05 Right.
12:04 Alec Baldwin? Now, I mean, I go to Starbucks periodically and there's a lot more kind of owner operated places I go to in my neighborhood, smaller coffee shops and so forth. But I mean, I'm a Starbucks person. I like their products. I have what I order at Starbucks that I like. And one of the last times that I was at a Starbucks was up in Vermont. We were there and I couldn't believe the pace and I couldn't believe the intensity and I couldn't believe the look on the faces of the women and the men that were working there as they were like spinning, pivoting, whipping and hitting the button to have the water shoot through the thing to clean it and put more milk in it. And they're trying to make these drinks in this balletic way, but it was more,
12:47 Alec Baldwin? it was like some primitive army coming down a mountaintop to kill you. You know what I mean? They were like, so the amount of heaving and breathing that was going on from these people, they were working their asses off. You know, they were working their asses off. There's a certain type of person that they hire who is just like a super hardworking person. And those people that come there who don't get it, who don't get the Starbucks program of you got to be quick and you got to be, you know, really fast moving. They don't make the cut. Is that kind of how it works?
13:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, they they don't last too long. You have to move at a certain kind of pace like that. And it's kind of like learning a dance, how you said, it's it is a bit balletic in that you gotta move around, you gotta, it's almost like a part dance, part coffee shop, part working in a kitchen. Because sometimes you'll be like, oh, behind, hot behind, corner, going around. Because if not, you're gonna just have a pile of baristas on the floor, covered in sugar syrup and espresso, wondering what the hell happened.
13:48 Alec Baldwin? And you think also that there's people who, I have this image of people who, like, day one, within a couple of hours, there's a certain type of person who's like in the bathroom crying. And they're like, what have I gotten myself into? I gotta get out of here. You know, this isn't for me. It's too fast.
14:03 Speaker 05 It definitely exists. It's a bit of a culture shock, that sort of feeling. It's, I hate to say it, Starbucks now sort of feels like the fast food of coffee in a lot of ways, because of that like increased demand for breakneck speeds and for pushing out as much coffee as possible. The way that we earn more labor hours to have more people on the floor at any point in time is based on how many customers we get in and out of our stores, or in and out of the drive through at any point. So a lot of the times, you'll hear baristas saying, you know, hey, manager so and so, I, we really need more people on Saturdays. Saturday mornings are just brutal. Can we get one more person? And they'll
14:48 Speaker 05 come back and say, unfortunately, the labor doesn't cut it. You know, we don't have the time, we don't have the people, we need to work on getting some more people out of our drive through. And then we could see if that ups our labor budget to have more people on the floor. So it's, it's this constant cycle of work harder, go faster, and maybe you'll have a little bit of ease put on you if they add another person to the floor. But that's a really big if.
15:11 Alec Baldwin? Wow. Now, other than the staffing issues, when you were at Starbucks initially, what did you begin to notice were some other problems? In other words, what were the problems that were substantial enough that guided you to want to start a union to address them?
15:24 Speaker 05 For me, it was a lack of accountability for management, a lack of accountability through the company as a whole later on, as I began to learn more and more things. But really, it came down to the actions of my manager, a lot of the time. He's no longer with the company. But it was right when I started at Camp Road.
15:47 Speaker 05 I transferred from another location in Buffalo, from McKinley location and came to Camp Road as it opened up. And we had a lot of new hires coming in. They were bright, prospective people. And I was really excited to work with them. And as we know, there is the stereotype of the gay barista. And I think Starbucks kind of loves it because we just, they flock, we flock to Starbucks to work because it's seen as a progressively valued company. And it seems like a safe place to work that you might not get otherwise. So we had a lot of openly gay partners, openly trans partners that came into my store to work. And they were amazing people. I love talking to them. I love their work ethic.
16:31 Speaker 05 They were going to be great. I remember thinking to myself, these are going to be amazing people on the floor. Once they get those drinks down, they are going to do amazing stuff. And as time went on, over a period of two or three months at my location, I saw all of them forced out in one way or another, one by one. Partners were being outed on the floor by management, where I would have no idea that someone was trans or I wouldn't know their gender identity. Because what's, what's at my business? And they would go and say it outright. There was a partner at my location and she didn't have access to a vehicle. Starbucks has benefits for rideshare and stuff, but it's not comprehensive coverage to get you to work from nine to five.
17:15 Speaker 05 So she would rely on rides from friends, but she was quick. She was smart. I thought if anyone was going to really excel, it was going to be her. And I came into work one day expecting to see her on my shift and asked my fellow shift supervisors, like, hey, why isn't she in? And they told me that my manager had fired her. And that just left me a little bit flabbergasted. I was like, what do you mean? He fired her? She was doing great. I'm not understanding. And the reason he fired her was because she was a couple minutes late. Two to five minutes late coming into her shift, despite him knowing that she relies on other folks to get rides, that she was trying her best. She was doing amazing.
18:00 Speaker 05 And I've seen people late far more, far more often than this scenario. And she was just gone. And she was so excited to use the healthcare benefits that Starbucks provides, because it's gender inclusive healthcare, so that she could actually begin hormone replacement therapy. She could look into surgery if she so wished. And she was just so optimistic. And she was so happy to be working for Starbucks. And it was just gone in a snap. And I saw this same trend repeat over and over again. And I just didn't know what to do. I was angry. I was frustrated because this isn't what, this isn't what I signed up for. This isn't what I expected this to be like. But I didn't know how to change it.
18:45 Speaker 05 So I was just sort of left frustrated.
18:48 Alec Baldwin? And you think that they targeted her because she was trans?
18:51 Speaker 05 I do think so. I do think my manager targeted her because she was trans.
18:56 Alec Baldwin? Other than the firing itself, he was the one that made comments in front of other people publicly about her gender?
19:03 Speaker 05 Yes.
19:04 Alec Baldwin? Well, when you say that, I mean, regardless of one's view of transgenderism and companies being asked to pay for hormone injections and surgeries and so forth like that. I mean, people are entitled to a certain amount of privacy and dignity in the workplace. How did everybody else react? Because what I'm getting to is, when does the moment come for the unionization thing, where it dawns on you and you start to enlist people? Or was there a group thing where there were a bunch of people where you were all talking to each other going, this has got to change?
19:35 Speaker 05 Yeah. I wish I had an easy answer in the sense that there was that sort of like click and boom moment. For me, it was a lot of situations like this where partners' privacy wasn't being respected, where workers that have been with the company for 17 years were making within a dollar what I was making coming in at two years. So at that point, when the unionization effort kicked off, I was already ready to make something happen. I wanted change. I just didn't know that options like unionization existed for a Starbucks location. Until one of my fellow coworkers texted me and said, hey, can we talk about work stuff, but we can't do it at work?
20:14 Speaker 06 Right.
20:15 Speaker 05 And I was a little bit confused. It's like, why? What could we possibly need to talk about work outside of work? I'm not following. And he said, please, like, can you meet me at Spot Coffee? I had no idea that I would walk into Spot Coffee and be asked how I felt about unionizing Starbucks. That one trip to a coffee shop changed my life.
20:41 Alec Baldwin? Activist Gianna Reeve. If you appreciate conversations about the labor movement, check out my episode with former California Assemblyperson and head of the California Labor Federation, Lorena Gonzalez.
20:54 Speaker 07 My favorite part of the story is having to go to then-Governor Jerry Brown. I mean, I'm like, oh, God, I gotta talk to him about cheerleaders. We were at a dinner together and I said, Governor, when you have a chance, I want to talk to you about this bill I'm working on. It has to do with professional cheerleaders. And he said, I was a cheerleader? And I was like, are you kidding me? He apparently-
21:15 Alec Baldwin? As luck would have it.
21:16 Speaker 07 He was a cheerleader in college or high school. And so I was like, oh, I think I'm gonna get this one. But we did. I'm very proud of that.
21:24 Alec Baldwin? To hear more of my conversation with Lorena Gonzalez, go to hearsthething.org. After the break, Gianna Reeve shares some of the conditions that led to the unionizing effort at Starbucks.
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24:25 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Union organizer Gianna Reeve was a shift supervisor at the Camp Road Starbucks in the Buffalo area of upstate New York when her location filed the petition to unionize in 2021. A simple meeting with one of her coworkers would change the course of Gianna's life.
24:49 Speaker 05 He told me about the first union meeting that was going to have partners from all the different locations in Buffalo come together and talk and see if this was a movement with legs, basically. So going to this meeting before this, I was sort of entrenched in Camp Road in that I didn't really go to other store locations. I didn't really pick up shifts there. I was really focused on just doing my job at Camp Road, doing it well. And I didn't have a lot of conversations with workers outside of my store. So going into this meeting and hearing a lot of the same problems existing at these other store locations in Buffalo, that I think is what I would describe as like that click for me,
25:32 Speaker 05 that this isn't just a Camp Road issue. This is a Starbucks issue and this needs to be addressed. When you have a half dozen baristas in a circle, all talking to each other and going, wait, wait, your store has WASPs too? Yeah, my partner just got sent to the ER because she was stung on the floor. And conversations like that of like, oh, did they take away your non-slip floor mats? My store doesn't even have non-slip floor mats. My store has carpet in the back room. And just continuous stories just bouncing off each other of all of these things that haven't been addressed over the years they've been at Starbucks. It was just mind boggling how similar our stories were.
26:12 Alec Baldwin? So when you mentioned the carpeting versus the non-slip thing, I mean, I only want to focus on that to say. So there were places, there were Starbucks that were making the necessary changes to protect their customers and their workers and some that weren't. And was not, was every Starbucks derelict in these kinds of modifications? Or were some better than others?
26:32 Speaker 05 Some were definitely better than others. A lot of store locations are older and that they haven't had remodels or improvements in years. It's kind of like if you had 10 different things and you said, pick three or four
26:45 Alec Baldwin? Sure.
26:45 Speaker 05 out of these 10. I think every Starbucks would be able to pick three or four things. If I could sit here and make a list of either structural, safety, employment, or labor issues that they're having on the floor. And They would be able to do so. For me, it was seeing a lot of problems with labor cuts, with staffing, with wages, with health and safety, with management accountability. And for others, it was something maybe like health and safety in the sense that carpeting in the back room is an absolute no for a food service job. I've never heard of anything like that before. There was a point when management had come in, over 100 corporate officials had come
27:27 Speaker 05 into Buffalo, and they were asking workers, you know, what can we do to make things better for you here? We really dropped the ball on Buffalo. What can we do? And for Camp Road, a lot of it was our floors. We were a brand new store. They weren't made to handle the salt that was coming in from the snow. And they were wearing down. We had, our grout was just being eaten away, and that creates problems with fruit flies. So our store was just covered, covered in fruit flies. It was disgusting. No one wanted to work like that. No one wanted to serve food and drink like that. So
28:00 Alec Baldwin? Interesting.
28:01 Speaker 05 At some point, management said, we got you. No worries. We'll take care of this. And they had a crew come in after close in the, in the middle of the night and try and refinish our floors. What they did was they sanded away the sealant on the tile and made it porous. They essentially ruined our store's floor tiling. And it was just, the problem became even worse. It was exacerbated by this action. And to me, that really, it sounds funny to say. It's a little bit of an overall theme with Starbucks's attempts at either helping in quotations or union busting and saying, okay, we're here. We're listening.
28:41 Alec Baldwin? Making the workspace healthier for the, for the workers and the customers, yeah.
28:45 Speaker 05 Yeah. Let's, let's make it healthier for you. What can we do to make it healthy? And then us saying something and then being like, hurt, you got it. But then taking actions that don't inherently help the problem or they make the problem worse.
28:58 Alec Baldwin? Do you find that that's a theme that the company didn't rely enough on the workforce to? Glean information of what was best for those locations.
29:09 Speaker 05 Absolutely. I mean, everything I'm talking about and all of these problems that are existing in my store and now nationally on this level we're talking about, all of this could have been solved by a seat at the table. On Starbucks's Board of Directors, they have two honorary empty seats. One is for, I believe, customers and the other is for all of the baristas and workers with the company.
29:30 Alec Baldwin? They've never filled those seats?
29:32 Speaker 05 Yes. Why aren't those seats filled? Because if those seats were filled, I think this company could be so much better. Starbucks workers want this company to be that human, worker-driven company that wants to spark change, positive change. We want to see that happen. That's why we're all here. That's all why we sort of were interested in the company in the first place. That's why we applied.
29:53 Alec Baldwin? When does the word "strike," when does the word "union," when does that enter the conversation? And the person you were with at the other coffee shop who said, "I need to talk to you about work outside of work," where does it go from there?
30:05 Speaker 05 That goes into that first meeting we had with other Starbucks partners from other locations in Buffalo. Not just from the first three, but from all of them. And then, very rapidly after that, we're, right now, the timeline is August of 2021. And we're going forward and we're saying, "Yeah, we, we need this to happen." So, the next step in the organizing process is going to be signing union cards and talking to each worker on the floor through one-on-one conversations. And there is this beautiful one-week window where we could talk without restriction, and we could discuss, and we could brainstorm, and we could imagine what this company could look like if all of our voices were put into
30:48 Speaker 05 it, and we could really make a difference. So, we got, I believe, between 66% and 70% cards signed at Camp Road in a matter of a couple days. And we filed for union election. So, there was that great one-week window where a lot of movement was happening, a lot of progress. We had a lot of momentum. And then, at the end of that week window, it started to shift. We put out a letter from all of the workers that initially went to the meeting. About our intent to organize because it's generally good practice and it signifies your attempt to organize to the company so that you're protected legally.
31:33 Speaker 05 It's funny, the more public you are about your intent to organize, the more protected you are from a legal standpoint because the company can't argue that they didn't know. It is retaliation if they try to terminate you or reprimand you at that point. So they got our letter, we had our amazing week, and then we started to see people from Starbucks corporate flood into Buffalo. I think we've counted over 100 different names.
32:03 Alec Baldwin? To do what?
32:05 Speaker 05 To surveil and to intimidate and to influence.
32:11 Alec Baldwin? And to look for grounds to terminate you?
32:13 Speaker 05 Yes, absolutely.
32:15 Alec Baldwin? How many of the people that were perceived, whether they signed any paperwork or whether they were completely, fully expressing their support of the unionization publicly, how many of your fellow workers there were terminated since the commencement of the union organizing?
32:33 Speaker 05 Termination, I can't say exactly a number. They did terminate one of our, my friend that I met in the coffee shop, Will. They terminated Will for wearing a suicide awareness pin. So prior to the corporate members coming into Starbucks Buffalo locations and staying there for months, might I add, they had changed Starbucks policy to that you can no longer wear non-Starbucks affiliated pins unless it's a labor pin. This was a direct dig at us wearing our union pins on the floor. So now we were no longer allowed to wear them.
33:10 Speaker 05 Unfortunately, at my location, we had a partner pass away by suicide and we all got these pins. One of our partners got these pins that say, "You are not alone," and it has like the number for the, one of the suicide foundations on it. And we asked and asked and asked if we could wear these on the floor, if they could just make one exception because we lost someone that we all loved. And they said, "Sorry, but no, we don't care. We're not, you're not going to get an exception for this. You're not wearing it." Ignorant of the fact that even making this policy change was illegal in the sense that they cannot change conditions in the store location, the rules that exist when
33:53 Speaker 05 you file for union election have to be the same throughout the union election. So they've made this change and now they've said, we are not going to make this exception.
34:02 Alec Baldwin? So they moved the goalpost in order to find a way to fire people?
34:05 Speaker 05 Absolutely. That was a change of our, it's called laboratory conditions. That was a change of our laboratory conditions. So that shouldn't have happened in the first place. And to not display the empathy that's typically so embedded in the ethos at this company and saying, like, can we at least wear pins to honor our partner that's passed away? The partner that everybody loved them before. Can we at least have that, even for a week, for a day? No leeway was given.
34:36 Alec Baldwin? Organizer Gianna Reeves. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Gianna Reeves shares the public's reaction to Starbucks workers striking.
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37:42 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Starbucks union organizer Gianna Reeves attended a meeting in Buffalo with then CEO Howard Schultz and other members of Starbucks leadership in late 2021. She would end the meeting confronting Schultz about the company's labor-busting practices. I was curious how such an unorthodox meeting came together in the first place.
38:10 Speaker 05 The invite list was every partner in the Buffalo area. So if you're a barista, you are invited. They closed our store locations early to have us go to this meeting at a Hyatt Regency Hotel with a, as they put it, special guest. Some of us thought it might be Taylor Swift. Others among us were like, they're going to bring out Howard. They're going to try and bring out the big guns to convince us that what we're doing isn't the right move for the company.
38:37 Alec Baldwin? How many people were in that room, would you guess?
38:40 Speaker 05 Between 100 and 200. But the interesting part of that is that about a third of the people that were in the room were the corporate members that had been coming to the Starbucks locations for months at that point and surveilling and harassing and impeding on the flow of operations in these stores. They were there as well, wearing crisp, out-of-the-bag, green aprons, sitting and listening and just eating up this whole experience while there was another bunch that were just baristas from the Buffalo stores, wondering what the hell was going on.
39:16 Alec Baldwin? How long did the meeting last?
39:18 Speaker 05 The meeting lasted about an hour and a half. It was about a half an hour of the actual talks and everything and maybe about 10 minutes when Howard came out and spoke.
39:29 Alec Baldwin? So he was not in attendance for the whole meeting?
39:32 Speaker 05 No, he only came out for his speech and then promptly left.
39:36 Alec Baldwin? So he was actually interested in talking but not listening?
39:39 Speaker 05 Yes, he wanted to talk but not listen. And when, I believe, there was a little bit of tension in the room because as many as there were green apron extras, there were also people in the front row. I sat in the front row with another organizing partner from Sheridan Bailey's location named James. And we sat in the front row together because we had talked prior, a bunch of us, and said, wouldn't it be crazy if someone asked Howard Schultz, after he was done speaking, to sign our set of fair election principles, which provide us more protections. It provides union workers equal time. If they're going to have captive meetings with workers, we would be given essentially the same time.
40:20 Speaker 05 It would be a document saying that we're not going to threaten union workers anymore. We're extending an olive branch. So he said, wouldn't it be crazy if someone did this and someone asked? And for some reason, in my Stupid bravery or just impulse or adrenaline. I said, yeah, wouldn't it? And I took the paper and went and sat in the front row. And I listened to his whole speech so in depth. I also listened to the podcast episode he was on with you, Alec. And I noticed a lot of the same beats, the same story of this is the company that he wanted to be, that he modeled this after what his father didn't have. He wanted this to be a company that his father would be proud to work at.
41:02 Alec Baldwin? From the projects.
41:03 Speaker 05 Yes. As, as he often likes to say, he's, yes. And so going into that and just listening and hearing the same story now over and over again, now that I've heard it and wondering, wouldn't his father have wanted union membership for himself and wanted representation and protections at work? And during this Congress meeting with Howard, Senator Ed Markey brought this up. And he, that was another point in which Schultz bristled and became visibly annoyed or frustrated with this line of questioning, even though it's something that baristas have been thinking for a while now because you can't separate Howard from Starbucks.
41:46 Speaker 05 And this message and this idea is embedded into the company. And as we're looking for ways to make the company better by having a worker focus, you just can't help but think of that and wonder what, what's happened. And I think what's happened is that the workers don't have a voice and we need to see that shift.
42:06 Alec Baldwin? Schultz stepped down, correct?
42:07 Speaker 05 Yes, he, he's replaced. He's, it went from Howard to Kevin Johnson to Howard to now Laxman.
42:14 Alec Baldwin? Where is the effort now? Where's the unionization at Starbucks now?
42:18 Speaker 05 Right now, we are at over, I believe, 300 unionized locations and counting. We're filing petitions nearly every day. We are continuing to build power within these Starbucks locations and find baristas that are experiencing the same problems that we have because after Buffalo. And we won in Buffalo, just a monumental win.
42:42 Alec Baldwin? So the Buffalo location is unionized?
42:45 Speaker 05 Yes.
42:45 Alec Baldwin? And everybody that works there is in the union, everybody?
42:48 Speaker 05 Yes.
42:49 Alec Baldwin? What union are they affiliated with?
42:51 Speaker 05 We're affiliated with Workers United, so we are Starbucks Workers United affiliated with Workers United. We don't pay dues until we have a contract. And that's been kind of the sludging point. Starbucks has not really been bargaining in good faith with us. There have been times where we'd come to the table, we'd set up a meeting. It would be the barista's coming in and Starbucks' lawyers would show up for two minutes and then leave and gone. Nothing negotiated, nothing really discussed. And we've been seeing that sledge happen time and time again with these bargaining sessions that we've been trying to have. We have our non-economic proposals all ready to go. They're just not coming to the table.
43:30 Alec Baldwin? How can you compel them to sign the contract? What, how does that work?
43:33 Speaker 05 Well, I'm so glad you asked. That's going to come from building power within our consumer base. Consumers, you think that they would be jumping at the chance to sort of vote with their dollars and say, no, I can take a stand by not buying Starbucks. But the thing is, is that a lot of customers still don't know that this is happening within Starbucks locations. They don't realize that Starbucks has been putting on one of the most aggressive union busting campaigns in modern history. So a lot of the next steps are going to be educating consumers and moving forward and letting them know what's happening in these store locations. And saying like, are you going to not cross the picket line when you see us out on strike?
44:13 Speaker 05 And we've had large strikes where there's been over 100 locations on strike at any given point during some of the company's largest days of like Red Cup Day, you come in, you get a free red cup, you get your holiday drink and you go. We had strikes going at over 100 store locations across the country on days like that.
44:28 Alec Baldwin? And the strike entailed people just not working?
44:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, work stoppage.
44:31 Alec Baldwin? And there was just no service? People couldn't get a coffee? Wow.
44:34 Speaker 05 No, you cannot.
44:35 Alec Baldwin? What was the public's voice in that? What would people say to you while you were striking?
44:39 Speaker 05 There's always a couple of people that aren't too happy when they see a picket line for whatever reason or other. But a lot of the times it was customers being like, wow, I didn't know that. I had no idea. I'd been coming here for the past however long and I just had. No knowledge of this. I'll go to spot coffee or something instead. Or like we'd point them to one of the unionized coffee shops in Buffalo during points like that on strikes. A lot of people are enthusiastic and especially in the Buffalo area. Buffalo's a union town. We have higher union density than a lot of other locations across the country. So chances are that you are in a union or you know someone that's in a union or family member's in a union. So you see a picket line and you're not crossing that.
45:16 Alec Baldwin? Well, let me just say thank you so much for your courage and your intelligence. I mean, you really, really are somebody who you've obviously examined this from every angle and you've brought about what's important change because when I saw those people at the Manchester, Vermont Starbucks, I mean, working themselves, I mean, it was crazy. It was crazy. And when you sit there and say you'd like to have those conditions be improved, you're to be commended for what you've done. It's really, really, truly amazing.
45:47 Speaker 05 Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
45:53 Alec Baldwin? My thanks to Starbucks Workers United organizer, Gianna Reeve. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
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