With reporting by Megan Matti, UW News Lab/Special to CHS

The national effort to unionize Starbucks rooted here in Kshama Sawant’s District 3 and on Capitol Hill poured into the neighborhood’s Cal Anderson Park and onto Broadway Saturday. Meanwhile, the Socialist Alternative leader has shifted fully from recent thrusts around rent control and affordability in the city after her defeat of a recall effort and is making a new full court press against two of the nation’s largest employers that just happen to be headquartered in her home city.

Saturday, a crowd of people carrying red picket signs and banners and wearing shirts proclaiming their status as Starbucks workers gathered. Organizers said the rally was held to celebrate the first Seattle Starbucks to successfully unionize as well as a growing national labor movement.

“We are in the midst of a wave of unionization across the country,” said Bia Lacombe, a community organizer with District 3 representative Sawant’s office, as the rally began.

Over the weekend, Sawant announced she is donating $20,000 to support labor organizing efforts at another Seattle corporate giant — Amazon. Her office says the councilmember and organizers jetted to New York following Saturday’s Cal Anderson rally to support Amazon labor organizing efforts there.

In Seattle, the unionization of the Capitol Hill Starbucks Reserve Roastery was announced on Thursday. Sydney Durkin, a shift manager and one of the key organizers for the unionization of the first Capitol Hill location, located at Broadway and Denny, had high hopes going into Saturday’s rally.

“The rally is really to continue to build momentum and boost morale,” Durkin said, “to continue to increase visibility and increase pressure on Starbucks itself by just saying, ‘Hey, we’re out in the streets. We’re really passionate about this, we have a lot of people behind us, and we see what’s going on and we’re involved and we are going to hold you accountable.’”

The momentum from the Seattle union successes will be crucial to continuing the number of union wins across the country, Durkin and others believe.

The Roastery and Denny and Broadway store workers will now be represented by Starbucks Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, and will collectively bargain over pay and working conditions. The workers will also, of course, be subject to union dues. Negotiations on a new contract could end up a protracted battle.

Previous attempts to unionize Starbucks were stalled by lengthy processes with the National Labor Relations Board, which has the power to approve or reject employee movements to collectively bargain. These negotiation periods can be up to a year long.

“What was really crucial there was losing the momentum because they didn’t issue the ruling until a year after she’d been fired and by that point, all the momentum of a union drive had fizzled out,” said Eulie Mathieu, a member of Socialist Alternative, the political organization Sawant leads. “So even though she won her case, Starbucks won the union.”

Organizers said they hoped the rally on Saturday would harness the momentum that locations across the country are currently using to unionize. To prevent the failures of union organizers in 2008 and 2010, labor organizers are hard at work trying to translate the Starbucks successes to other workers nationwide.

Jake Grumbach, a professor of political science and labor studies at the University of Washington, says that the successes of stores like the one on Denny and Broadway can be impactful for the rest of the country.

“Social movements, including and especially the labor movement, can be contagious,” Grumbach said. “A few early victories can produce new enthusiasm and hope that winning is possible, which then builds into more action.”

A portion of Councilmember Sawant’s “solidarity fund” was used for the rally as well as to fly in and support workers who have been fired from other locations due to unionizing efforts. The fund also paid travel expenses for some workers.

Katie McCoy, a Starbucks worker in Marysville which unionized after a three-day strike over claims of unfair working conditions and understaffing, talked about the conditions that she faced at her location before unionizing.

“Corporate did not care about the conditions at our store,” McCoy said. “We worked through our second rat infestation in a year because we weren’t given enough labor from corporate to schedule enough people to keep up with the store’s regular cleaning. I would work doubles, miss breaks, and come home covered in rashes from working in the store’s conditions.”

Other workers, including two of the “Memphis Seven” –– seven workers in a Memphis Starbucks who all were fired over recent unionization efforts –– were also part of the rally and march.

One major demand repeated Saturday is for a liveable wage as the cost of living continues to climb. The unions represented at the Cal Anderson Park rally on Saturday and at a Starbucks strike a week ago at Fifth Avenue and Pike Street are asking for a starting wage of $20 an hour, from the current $15 minimum wage.

Looking to the future, attendees at the protest want to keep visibility as high as it is right now and continue to push for the demands of the union. Starbucks Workers United, along with Councilmember Kshama Sawant and members of Socialist Alternative, hope to start a National Day of Action for Starbucks and Amazon workers.

“It would be a productive National Day of Action, especially against Starbucks’ union-busting,” said Nshan Burns, a member of labor group Socialist Alternative. “They’re firing workers all over the country that are in their stores, organizing committees. They fired the Memphis Seven. And rallies are a very effective tool to keep people engaged.”

According to Durkin, the current real gains of the movement are made through bargaining processes behind the scenes that can take months. However, she hopes that the momentum stays high despite the lengthiness of the bargaining process.

“My hopes are that this movement continues to grow and that we continue to build strong coalitions within the union to fight concretely for what we want,” Durkin said.

The University of Washington News Lab gives advanced journalism students an opportunity to build a dynamic clip portfolio by reporting for any of 70 client news outlets in the greater Seattle area. CHS is proud to work with young journalists and feature their work. You can learn more here.

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