Local Starbucks workers held a rally today to support their fight to unionize. Union members, local politicians and people from the Eugene community showed up to support those efforts.
Employees at the East 29th and Willamette Starbucks have been discussing unionizing since December 2021, when a store in Buffalo, New York became the first Starbucks to unionize.
A crowd of people gathered in front of the East 29th and Willamette store, holding signs with messages including “Eugene is a union town” and “Solidarity workers unite.”
“I just want to say how proud I am in my store,” Rez Alexander, a supervisor at that Starbucks, said. “Just how much pride I have in my community for showing up and supporting us and how thankful I am to have such a great team at the store.”
Bex Littleton, an employee at the store, said the unionization effort has brought the location’s workers closer together. “We feel like we’re working toward something important,” they said. “And the whole city has been pretty supportive.”
Mel Keller, the president of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation at the University of Oregon, was among those in the crowd. She estimated that 15 GTFF members made it out to the rally.
“I think it’s so important to show labor solidarity across industries,” Keller said. “Oftentimes we’re siloed into where we work. Employees are considered different, whether they’re in different workplaces, but we’re all workers, and we’re all being oppressed by the system. And it’s important for us to have that solidarity.”
GTFF held two rallies of its own last week — one to support its COVID-19 demands and one to allow the broader UO community to speak about COVID-19 concerns.
“The pandemic has really opened a lot of people’s eyes to the ways that they are being hurt and harmed by their workspace,” Keller said. She said GTFF is pushing for safe working conditions for its members.
“And we understand that the things that we’re facing are not specific to higher education or to education in general,” she said. “They’re things that are impacting workspaces across the country, including Starbucks.”
Employees will participate in a legal hearing regarding unionization on Jan. 28 at 9 a.m.
