Hampton location makes 11th Starbucks in Pittsburgh area to unionize

Starbucks baristas in Hampton voted 15-0 Thursday to join Workers United Pennsylvania Joint Board, an affiliate of Services Employees International Unit, for representation in collective bargaining.

The store is located in the Hampton Shoppes strip mall at 4655 Route 8 in Hampton. The union will cover about 31 full-time and part-time baristas.

The Hampton store is the 11th Starbucks in the Pittsburgh area to unionize with Workers United, landing the city in the top three metropolitan areas with the highest number of unionized Starbucks in the country, said Philip Halin, an organizer with Workers United in Philadelphia.

More than 230 Starbucks stores have unionized nationally within the last year, he said.

“This is a new generation of labor that is embracing the movement in a place that has always been a union town,” Halin said. “It’s like a new generation picking up the mantle, which is great to see.”

In the Pittsburgh area, most of the Starbucks workers who are unionized are in their 20s and 30s.

“I’m super excited,” said Maggie Kissell, 28, of Hyde Park, a barista for 8 years and one of the organizers of the union at the Hampton Starbucks. “Initially, it was intimidating, but there was tons of support from my store and the other stores.”

The main reasons the Hampton Starbucks workers sought union representation were wage issues and a lack of respect for seniority and experience, Halin and Kissell said.

Additionally, Kissell said another issue was slashed hours during the pandemic.

Although Starbucks baristas are joining unions in Pittsburgh and beyond, the coffeemaker’s management has not come to the table to bargain over wages and benefits, Halin said.

“We have not heard anything back from management as we have sent multiple letters,” Halin said. “That is why the National Labor Board (NLRB) is filing charges,” he said.

The NLRB filed a complaint this week charging Starbucks with illegally withholding raises from union workers, according to an Aug. 24 Washington Post story. The NLRB is seeking back pay and benefits for union workers.

A Starbucks spokesperson said Thursday, “As we’ve said throughout, we will respect the NLRB’s process and bargain in good faith with the stores that chose to be represented by Workers United. We hope the union does the same.”

According to the Washington Post, Starbucks’ interim CEO Howard Schultz tried to stem unionization in May when he announced pay raises, and more training hours at the coffeemaker’s more than 10,000 corporate-owned stores. But that only applied to non-unionized workers, according to the Post.

The NLRB board charged that Starbucks’ denial of raises and certain benefits was “intended to discourage union organizing,” according to the post article.

However, Starbucks claimed in a press release that, once a store unionize, changes to benefits cannot occur without good faith collective bargaining. Workers will still have access to all of their benefits that were in place when they filed the petition to unionize.

But any changes to wages, benefits and working conditions that Starbucks established after that time would not apply to union employees and would have to be bargained, according to Starbucks’ press release.

The problem is, at least locally, “Starbucks has not come to the table,” Halin said.

Other Starbucks sites where workers have unionized include Bloomfield, East Carson Street, Pittsburgh’s East Side, Penn Center East, Peters Township, and McKnight Road southbound.