Columbia Starbucks workers demand better treatment as strike hits 3rd day

Sunscreen is their warpaint and “No scab coffee” is one of their chants.

Unionizing workers at the Starbucks on Millwood Avenue in Columbia were on their third day of a strike Friday as they demand better working conditions and fairer wages, and as they oppose what they allege is the company’s anti-union campaign, according to workers who held signs and chanted through a megaphone along the commercial stretch of road Friday morning.

“It’s been hard and it’s been hot but we’re out here,” said Sophie Ryan, 22, a 2021 University of South Carolina graduate and one of the striking workers who has been with the Millwood Starbucks since it opened a little more than a year ago.

The State has reached to Starbucks.

Friday, as striking workers stood in the blazing sun, community support for the workers was obvious. Bystanders and community organizers came to join the protest, brought them water and offered words of support.

The strike began Wednesday, a little less than a month after workers at the store began the federal process to unionize. The Millwood Starbucks workers union would be part of the national Workers United service industry workers union. The vote to unionized is expected to be completed and tallied by the end of May or early June.

Unionizing received the vast majority of support by the store’s workers, and all the current employees of the store are on strike, Ryan said.

Starbucks management has brought in workers from other nearby stores to work the drive-thru. The strike has caused the cafe to be shuttered and outdoor seating to be packed away.

Since August, hundreds of Starbucks locations in the United States have filed petitions with the federal government to be unionized, NPR reported. As of May 1, at least 40 Starbucks have unionized, a “remarkable” number at a “stunning speed,” NPR said.

The unionization effort at the Millwood Starbuck has also gone “incredibly fast,” Ryan said.

Starbucks will say its stores are a great place to work, Ryan said. “If they were great we wouldn’t be out here. And if they were great they could do better.”

‘Discrimination and retaliation’

Workers have faced discrimination, Ryan said. They want better benefits, better sick leave and more autonomy over their hours and working conditions. But much of their strike is about anti-union tactics that Starbucks’ management has used since the workers began union talks about three months ago, according to Ryan.

Since Starbucks management learned that workers were organizing, workers have been denied promotions, threatened with benefit reductions and disciplinary write-ups, and faced unfair reprimands, according to the striking workers.

Ryan is taking a year off before going to graduate school and hoped to transfer to a store in North Carolina to spend that year near family.

Ryan said that transfer was denied, but has no doubt it was part of the “discrimination and retaliation” workers have faced since beginning their union drive. Ryan was told by a manager that he wanted to “stop the spread.”

Another employee who was up for a promotion was asked if she was an “instigator” and then didn’t get the promotion, according to Ryan and other workers.

With sunscreen visible on her face, Sarah Grace shouted into a megaphone “Union busting must go” and “Workers rights are human rights.”

The 20-year-old has worked with Starbucks for two years, she said. She’s married and is the income provider while her husband is in school. Starbucks needs to pay more, she said.

“We work hard . . . We love our jobs,” she said. She wants to keep working at Starbucks but the wages have to increase.

“I see the profit they come into,” she said. “They have every ability to give us what we deserve.”

The typical image of a union campaign is that it pits workers against managers. But at the Millwood Starbucks one of the rallying calls was the unfair firing of a manager on Wednesday night, the workers said.

The manager supported the workers unionizing, according to workers. Grace called the manager “inspiring” and the reason workers wanted to make the store the best it could be. The workers said they were sure that the manager was fired for supporting their union.

“She just wanted us to be treated fairly and unionization was a push for fair treatment,” Ryan said.

Support

A man in a black car drove by the striking workers Friday, slowed and honked as he put his fist out the window in support.

“There’s our best friend,” one of the workers said. “I love him.”

The workers have gotten to know some of the cars of frequent honkers.

Other bystanders came to the Starbucks, saw the striking workers and the closed dining room and left. One man brought the striking workers water and Popsicles. At least one person who didn’t work at the store joined the rally.

U.S. Senate candidate and long-time Columbia community organizer Catherine Fleming Bruce stopped by to encourage the workers to keep up the strike and their unionization effort.

“Y’all need the protections,” Bruce, a Democrat, she told the workers.

Community organizer Virginia Sanders, who has worked for years in Lower Richland, also arrived at the strike and supported the workers.

“People are out there who fully support you,” she told the workers. “Don’t give up.”

Ryan said that made them tear up.

“This whole process we’ve started is to keep this community we’ve started at this store,” Ryan said. “We love our regulars, we love our customers, we love each other. We’re a great team.”

But the way workers are being unfairly treated since declaring that they were unionizing is changing that positive environment.

“It’s just sad,” Ryan said.