Starbucks employees at the Dickson City location agreed to unionize, according to the labor union representing them.
Employees at the store voted 13-3 to join Starbucks Workers United, the union announced in a news release Friday.
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Union officials said the Dickson City location joins a growing nationwide movement of more than 11,000 baristas working together to win workplace protections on core issues like living wages, respect, racial and gender equity, and fair scheduling and staffing. They added that Dickson City will join more than 600 locations in 45 states and the District of Columbia who have won their union rights. The store is located at 1152 Commerce Blvd.
“We, the baristas at Starbucks Dickson City, have scored a major victory this evening. We have decisively voted to become a union store. With this victory has come a step forward for us to have a voice. A voice for better staffing, better work conditions, and competitive wages, but mostly we have done this as a team devoted to the betterment of one another as well as our customers,” Missy Malinchak, a barista of two years, said in a news release.
Tunaja Riley, a barista for a year, was quoted in the release as stating: “I voted to join the union because for too long Starbucks has not taken their partners’ health concerns seriously. Starbucks Workers United members are fighting to make Starbucks a safer workplace where we have a say in our working conditions.”
The store is the first in Scranton area and the 45th store in Pennsylvania to unionize, according to the union. It is the second in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area to have workers unionize. In the spring, employees at the Kidder Street store in Wilkes-Barre voted 15-1 to join Starbucks Workers United.
A Starbucks spokesperson provided the following statement in response to the Dickson City election: “At Starbucks, our success starts and ends with our partners (employees). 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 vote comes as Starbucks and Workers United’s fight for fair contracts has made headlines across the country. In December, the union held a strike that closed 59 stores across the country, according to The Associated Press. Workers protested a lack of progress in contract negotiations with the company.
Ahead of a Starbucks shareholders meeting in March, baristas organized more than 100 actions across the country, including strikes, community support actions called “sip-ins” and rallies. In April, baristas at dozens of locations held a work stoppage to call out the coffee giant for allegedly using union busting tactics.
At actions in Chicago and Pittsburgh, 16 people were arrested after engaging in peaceful civil disobedience. At another strike earlier this year in Brooklyn, union baristas walked out alongside elected officials and community allies, several of whom were arrested for engaging in peaceful civil disobedience to protest what they alleged was Starbucks’ failure to bargain with workers over the closure or heed their demands to finalize fair contracts.
Last month, more than 2,000 Starbucks baristas at 120 stores across the country went on strike to protest new limits Starbucks put on what baristas can wear under their green aprons. The dress code requires employees at company-operated and -licensed stores in the United States and Canada to wear a solid black shirt and khaki, black or blue denim bottoms. Baristas could wear a broader range of dark colors and patterned shirts under the previous dress code.