Eric Murphy
A woman walks by a Starbucks location.
Workers at the State Street coffee shop say their union effort was well received by coworkers.
Baristas at a second downtown Madison Starbucks location have voted to form a union.
The decisive 20-2 vote took place today at the federal courthouse on North Henry Street, about a 10-minute walk from the store’s location at 661 State St.
“It means a lot to me that we’re able to move forward,” says Jack Savin, a shift supervisor and union leader at the store. “It’s not against Starbucks, it’s for Starbucks to make it better… to be more centered around its employees.” Low-level supervisors without the power to hire and fire were eligible to vote in the election and be members of the union.
Workers say that their union pitch was well received by coworkers and that staff from the Capitol Square location, which voted to unionize in June 2022, and other pro-union Madisonians offered support to the campaign.
“I’m just super thankful for Madison as a community. If you were anywhere else in Wisconsin it might not be as smooth,” says Savin.
Savin, Abby Marcus, a barista, and Matt Cartwright, another shift supervisor, were the early leaders organizing the effort at the State Street location. Marcus reached out to Evan McKenzie, a worker she knew at the Capitol Square Starbucks location, to find out more about their campaign.
At first, the three were just curious. “After the first meeting, though, we were like, ‘yeah, no, we gotta do this,’” says Marcus with a laugh.
“Evan was a huge part of our process,” adds Savin. “We’ve thought about unionizing in the past, but we didn’t know where to start.”
Cartwright says one of the biggest obstacles of the campaign was that many of the store’s younger staffers did not know what a union was or what it would do for them. “Once they found out,” says Cartwright, “they were on board.” None of the three union leaders themselves are older than 24.
“When our store unionized at Capitol Square over a year ago, we knew that this [effort to organize Starbucks] was going to be something that involved a lot of the city and a lot of the young people in the city,” says McKenzie. “This is the little guys actually winning for once, and I think that’s going to resonate with a lot of other coffee shops in Madison and a lot of young people in Madison.”
In response to a request for comment, Starbucks said in a statement that “At those stores where our partners have chosen to petition for a union representation election, our focus is to ensure that they can trust the process is fair and their voice is heard."
The two unionized stores in Madison are among six Starbucks locations that have formed a union in Wisconsin since 2022. There are now also union stores in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Appleton and Plover, while a store in Fitchburg voted against forming a union last summer. The State Street workers, organizing under the banner of Starbucks Workers United, will join a regional organization that is part of Service Employees International Union. More than 400 Starbucks stores nationwide have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election since December 2021.
Workers at the State Street store petitioned the NLRB for an election in April. Conditions for union elections, including when and where to vote and whether to hold the election in-person or by mail, are mutually agreed to by the company and the union.
[Editor's note: This story was updated to include the name of the union employees are joining.]
