When Starbucks barista Elijah Wittmeyer-Balthazar decided to start a union campaign at his Fayetteville store for the third time, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. The barista would have to contend with the usual challenges of union organizing: a fear of being retaliated against and the stigma around speaking out about labor concerns. But he also faced a more daunting challenge — of how to form a union in the least-unionized state in the country.
Against these odds, the Starbucks Coffee on Ramsey Street became the first Starbucks in Fayetteville to unionize on June 16, when workers voted 12-0 to join Starbucks United Workers. It also became the sixth Starbucks in the state to unionize; various databases count more than 400 locations of the coffee chain in North Carolina.
Wittmeyer-Balthazar led the union campaign. He told CityView he did so because he and his co-workers felt they were being underpaid while being pushed to do more work without being compensated for it. He and other employees said baristas at their store make $15 an hour. The company pays baristas on average $19 an hour, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, workers at the Ramsey Street Starbucks said they deal with challenges on a regular basis ranging from being short-staffed to experiencing mistreatment by customers to facing security concerns.
“It really started with people being overworked,” Wittmeyer-Balthazar said. “And from there, we just started discussing, like, how could things be better? What do we want for our workplace? Because, you work a lot of hours, but then you get your paycheck and it’s so small you can’t do anything with it, so you end up wanting more. And then we were like, we should unionize.”
The Fayetteville store is not the only one where employees are looking to address their concerns via a union. A Starbucks in Chapel Hill is also working to unionize, which if successful would create seven stores to join Starbucks Workers United in the state. There are more than 570 union stores in the country, according to the union.
Workers in North Carolina face specific challenges with unionizing because it is a right-to-work state, preventing employers and unions from requiring workers to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment; public employees are also legally prohibited from collective bargaining, a fundamental principle of unions.
While unionization and labor rights organizing gained considerable momentum in other regions in the post-pandemic years, the South’s labor movement has remained largely stagnant due to a combination of anti-union factors in the region. This includes restrictive laws, aggressive anti-union campaigns by employers and a historical lack of strong governmental support for collective bargaining.
How did the Fayetteville union campaign succeed?
One of the most difficult challenges for Wittmeyer-Balthazar was breaking through decades of anti-union rhetoric that has been deeply ingrained in a country with a long history of anti-union labor laws and intimidation efforts by large corporations like Amazon. Starbucks has in the past launched its own aggressive campaign against the unions at its stores across the country, including implementing illegal union-busting tactics and attempting to withhold benefits from unionized workers.
“We have to understand that we come from a society where that anti-union propaganda is built into the system,” Wittmeyer-Balthazar said. In order to break through, he said he focused on addressing each individual’s concerns about their work and found success by tapping into existing feelings of frustration among his co-workers. He said 15 of the store’s 21 employees were in favor of the union, though only 12 were able to make it to the vote.
“People already have those feelings — you just have to agitate around them and you have to mobilize them,” he said. “Because when you talk to people, they already will feel exploited, most of the time, they’ll feel that way. Most of the time they’ll be like, ‘Oh, these wages aren’t enough.’ So your next step is you kind of have to just keep talking about it.”
Wittmeyer-Balthazar said he received assistance from a representative with the union of Starbucks employees, Starbucks Workers Union, who helped organize employees by initiating discussions about their current concerns about the workplace.
“We wouldn’t bring up unionization immediately because oftentimes people get scared of unionizing because they fear retaliation and losing their job and things like that,” he said. “So we would talk to them about what their issues are, because at the end of the day, when we unionize, it’s because our needs as working people are not being met. So the only way we can rectify that with our union is if we actually talk to people and understand what their needs are.”
Payton Thomas, an employee of the Starbucks store who supported its union drive, said he came around to the idea when considering the challenges he faces on a daily basis as a barista and the compensation he receives for it.
“So every time I would go into work, every time a customer would disrespect me … I have to ask myself, is work that I’m doing worth my salary?” Thomas said. “But that’s the question that always plays in my head every time I go into work.”
In a statement to CityView, a Starbucks spokesperson said the company respects the union’s choices. The spokesperson also spoke to unionizing workers’ wage concerns.
“We respect our partners right to choose, through a fair and democratic process, to be represented by a union or not to be represented by a union, and will continue to work together to make Starbucks the best job in retail,” the spokesperson said. “Hourly partners receive pay above industry average and best-in-class benefits, together worth an average of $30 per hour for those who work at least 20 hours per week. Starbucks is dedicated to partner-centric scheduling and providing partners with hours that align with their individual needs and preferences is a top priority.”
A job posting for a barista, on June 11, for the Ramsey Street Starbucks shows a pay of $15.25 to $17.31 an hour for a barista. Other postings for Fayetteville locations show the same pay range for baristas.
The bargaining table
Starbucks Workers United is in the process of bargaining for a contract that would apply to all unionized stores. A union contract, or collective bargaining agreement, is a negotiated document between workers and Starbucks executives that outlines pay, benefits, policies and working conditions.
In a statement on April 25, Starbucks expressed dissatisfaction with the union’s rejection of a proposed collective bargaining agreement, but said it was hopeful to continue discussions to finalize a contract.
“Starbucks remains optimistic that, through productive compromise and respectful dialogue, we can finalize a contract that is fair and equitable,” the statement said. “A strong and successful Starbucks is in the interest of every partner.”
Though a vote has taken place at the Fayetteville store and it has been unionized according to a majority vote, workers will still get to decide whether they want to join by paying dues, Wittmeyer-Balthazar said. He and Thomas are optimistic about Starbucks Workers United’s contract negotiations.
“That contract, once it has been agreed upon by both Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United, then applies to every single unionized store,” he said. “So everything that we fight for in there applies for us. We’re fighting for higher wages [and] when we get higher wages, that applies to every unionized store. And then after that, each store individually starts from the position of that contract when bargaining for individual needs.”
Labor organizing in the South
Wittmeyer-Balthazar has one theory about why union efforts in North Carolina and the South have been stifled.
“The South has very high poverty rates, high unemployment,” he said. “We have less education than in other states. And when people are so deep into struggle and they’re so burnt out just from trying to make it to the next day of their existence, it becomes really hard for them to then expend the extra energy to fight for unions.”
Wittmeyer-Balthazar advocated for a sense of “revolutionary optimism,” in which workers focus on the benefits of a union for themselves like job security and being able to speak up about issues they face. He encourages people to ask themselves why corporations have fought to suppress union drives.
“We are the ones who do all the work,” he said. “We do all the cleaning. We handle the registers. And if we want to shut all this down until our needs are met, we will absolutely do that.”
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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