KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Baristas at the Starbucks coffee shop at 41st Street and Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri, learned this week they won their unionization vote.
Of the 31 votes, 18 employees voted to unionize compared to 13 employees who voted against.
The Starbucks location is the 11th in Missouri to unionize. Employees at several Starbucks locations on both sides of the state line have voted in recent years to unionize.
“Now that our store has won the election, I’m hoping things change for the better — things like barista wages, staffing, health care, reinstatement of benefits like digital tips and an overall improvement for partner and customer piece of mind,” employee Kali Shepard-White said in a release announcing the voting results. “If we’re going to set our souls on the shrine of capital, we deserve a life of plenty, or at least enough to get by.”
On Friday, Sara Kelly, Starbucks executive vice president and chief partner officer, sent an e-mail dated Dec. 8 to Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.
“For months now, Starbucks and Workers United have been at an impasse over how to conduct collective bargaining,” Kelly wrote. “I am writing in the hope to change that situation and to reaffirm our commitment to the collective bargaining process with the goal of reaching agreements in reasonable time frames.”
Kelly proposed in the letter that bargaining resumes with a “representative” set of stores starting in January 2024.
“We are sincere in this proposal and hope that we can begin the bargaining process that will allow Starbucks and the union to best prioritize our partners,” Kelly wrote.
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