Workers at a local Starbucks staged a half-day strike early Wednesday to protest what they said was the company’s unsupportive handling of Pride Month and its foot-dragging on negotiating a contract.
Because strikers at the Ansley Mall store included the supervisor who typically unlocks the door, the Starbucks was closed from its usual 6 a.m. opening until about 10 a.m., when a manager arrived.
Workers did not picket the store, instead gathering with supporters on a nearby sidewalk to wave placards, chant and cheer.
The action is linked to similar, brief strikes by union-affiliated workers at about 150 other Starbucks stores around the country and was intended to keep public pressure on the Seattle-based coffee giant, while also exacting some financial pain.
“Morning is usually our crazy time,” said Amanda Marks-Rivera, a shift supervisor, an 11-year Starbucks employee. “We usually do $3,000 to $5,000 in business by 11.”
While workers are frustrated by the molasses-like pace of contract talks, the trigger for the strike was Pride Month, a celebration of gay, lesbian and trans people.
“Starbucks acts like they care about LGBTQ rights and they care about workers, but when it comes down to it, they are not real,” said Marks-Rivera. “And we object to the performative progressiveness.”
In previous years, Starbucks enthusiastically supported the event, giving workers time and money to decorate stores. The company this year provided no support for the in-store celebrations and discouraged workers from being involved, she said.
A number of staffers at the store — as well as many customers — are members of the LGBTQ community, workers said.
Eve Curran, a trans person who has worked in the Ansley Starbucks as a barista for more than a year, said the company had significantly reduced benefits for gender-affirming care, one of the enticements that brought Curran to the job.
Starbucks has about 400 stores in Georgia. Only a handful have thus far voted in favor of unionization. Nationally about 350 stores have voted to unionize, but none yet have contracts.
Federal law requires an employer to bargain in good faith with representatives of their employees following a legitimate vote to unionize.
Workers at the Ansley Mall Starbucks voted a year ago to unionize. Since then, two negotiating sessions were scheduled, according to Marks-Rivera. Once, company representatives did not show up, and a second ended without progress because the company objected to one of the workers attending via a Zoom link, she said.
In a statement, a Starbucks spokeswoman denied the union’s contentions about both the negotiations and Pride Month.
The company raised a Pride flag at its headquarters, continues to support gay rights and has not pulled any Pride merchandise from its stores, she said.
To negotiate, company representatives went to a meeting in December with the Ansley Mall store, as well as a meeting with workers at the Howell Mill store which has also voted to unionize, she said.
The union is to blame for the failure to make progress, she said. “Workers United refused to bargain at those sessions without unilateral preconditions and has refused to engage with the company to schedule additional contract bargaining sessions.”
The company also said Starbucks has made no changes in its own policies regarding trans care. But in some cases, insurance companies might shift some procedures between “core” and “supplemental” coverage, the company said.
As it happens, Ansley Mall was the scene of an incident that helped galvanize the gay rights moment in Atlanta.
Six weeks after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, a police raid at the Ansley Mall Mini Cinema stopped a showing of Andy Warhol’s “Lonesome Cowboys,” a satire that featured gay sex scenes. Police arrested the theater manager and photographed members of the audience.
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