Employees at another North Texas Starbucks voted to unionize last week, following a nationwide trend.
The Pipeline 820 Starbucks in Hurst, located at 1324 West Pipeline Road, joined 21 of the franchise’s locations in Texas and more than 440 of the franchise’s locations nationally who have unionized with Starbucks Workers United in the past three years, per a news release.
The vote was 11-1 and 100% of employees at the store participated in the vote, according to the release. A lot of the outcome came down to “safety reasons” and “work-life balance”, according to Illyana Morales, an employee at the store and member of the union.
“We just need more people on shift instead of us being cut back so much as we have,” Morales said.
Starbucks Workers United consists of about 10,000 baristas organizing together to “win a first contract” that would give them “justice at work, including protections on core issues including respect, living wages, racial and gender equity, and fair scheduling,” the news release stated.
The Pipeline 820 store had been in talks with members of the union over the last few months. Morales was concerned because they had “heard about the route Starbucks has taken with partners who voiced their opinions.”
Starbucks has been accused of threatening union workers in Texas cities in the past. The company fired a worker at its Dallas Mockingbird Station store in 2022, which employees at the time said was a reaction against their efforts to unionize.
In February, Starbucks agreed with Starbucks Workers United to begin discussions on bargaining agreements. The parties are still in talks.
Morales said they enjoy — and have continued — working at Starbucks because they and their co-workers can “create the environment” in their store.
“Before I came to Starbucks, I had previously been a barista with other companies,” they said. “I like the coffee, I liked what Starbucks said they stood for, community and all that — for me staying with Starbucks, it really has come down to the immediate people that I’ve been working with.”
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