A Starbucks in Indio became the latest to unionize last week, joining a growing number of the coffee chain's stores across the country doing so since 2021. The Indio Starbucks is the second in the Coachella Valley and 25th in California to form a union, organizers say.

On Thursday, workers at the Starbucks at Monroe Street and Highway 111 won a unionizing vote 17 to 5 after first filing for unionization in early April.

A shift supervisor at the Indio Starbucks, Isaiah Ruiz, said he and his co-workers share many of the same concerns as employees at other other unionized stores — the members plan to propose an hourly $20 minimum wage and upping their break time from 10 to 15 minutes — but also some specific to the Indio location.

"They had us working with sewage (problems) for a good two to three weeks ... Customers were complaining about the smell. We spoke to our district manager so many times, and our manager at the time, too, to say, 'Hey, we need to close down. It's really bad.' And he didn't, he just kept us open," Ruiz said.

He described dirty and smelly sewage water coming out of the store's drains. A Starbucks spokesperson did not respond to emailed questions about that issue.

Ruiz added that ahead of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which happens in Indio and is a busy time for the coffee shop, supervisor roles were cut, adding to the stress of festival season.

"We're a pretty high volume store ... And, a week before Coachella, we're told we need to figure it out, like, two people need to get demoted," he said.

The company spokesperson said: "Partner work schedules are published on a regular, rolling basis three weeks in advance and are built based on recorded partner availability and the unique operational needs of each store. ... To support the expected increase in customer traffic during the Coachella festival, additional hours and staffing — including management resources — were added to the schedule."

Ahead of the vote, Ruiz said, customers showed support for the union drive.

On May 20, workers held a "Sip-In" in which they encouraged customers to use phrases like "Union Strong" and "Solidarity" in place of a name for their drink orders.

"(Customers) had posters and signs to show support inside our lobby. We were just hoping to show management and upper management, especially, that we have community support, we have partner support, for them to lay off trying to union bust our partners," Ruiz said.

In 2022, the La Quinta Starbucks on the corner of Highway 111 and Jefferson Street became the first in the Coachella Valley to organize a labor union.

More: Photos: Starbucks workers hold one-day strike in La Quinta

As of Thursday, a tracker on the union website A More Perfect Union showed 418 Starbucks stores across the United States stores had filed for union elections, and 318 of those have successfully unionized.

But despite a surge in unionizing efforts at corporate chain locations including Starbucks, Amazon warehouses, and Trader Joe's, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released shows that the number of U.S. workers in unions is still on the decline. A report from NPR said that last year, the union membership rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 10.1%. It's the lowest on record and the second year in a row that the union rate has fallen.

In the 1950s, NPR reported, almost a third of American workers were union members.

Eliana Perez covers the eastern Coachella Valley. Reach her at eliana.perez@thedesertsun.com or on Twitter @ElianaPress.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Indio Starbucks becomes second in Coachella Valley to unionize