Starbucks Workers Push To Unionize At Cherry Hill Shop

Update, 2:45 p.m. Monday: This article now contains a response from a Starbucks spokesperson.

CHERRY HILL, NJ — Employees at Starbucks in Cherry Hill joined the coffee-chain workforce's widespread push to unionize. Staff plan to hold a union election May 31, they announced Monday in a letter to the company.

The unionization push comes from Starbucks on 600 Route 38. Four other locations in New Jersey are among the 308 Starbucks shops that have unionized in recent years under Starbucks Workers United, the union says.

Fifteen employees at the Cherry Hill location signed a letter announcing intentions to unionize. Their reduced hours and consistent understaffing have translated to unsatisfactory customer experiences, the employees claim.

"Stressed and exhausted partners are just as bad as stressed and underemployed ones--and somehow, we're both," the letter says.

Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize in late 2021, making it the only unionized shop among the chain's 9,000 stores at the time. Since then, hundreds of locations have voted to unionize. Resistance from corporate has sometimes resulted in strikes and hundreds of federal complaints of union busting.

The Cherry Hill employees claimed that their hours have been cut over the course of at least several months, resulting in an understaffed shop. The store's full-time workers have struggled to crack 30 hours per week and often need to spend their off days waiting by the phone for shifts at other locations to open up so they can make ends meet, the letter says.

Cherry Hill staff demanded formal recognition of the union as the exclusive bargaining agent for all permanent full-time and part-time employees — excluding store managers, assistant managers and shift supervisors.

"The business model has been on a steady decline for years, and this is our rock bottom," the Cherry Hill workers wrote. "We shouldn't have to 'earn' an extra body on the floor, when there are only two baristas responsible for the drive thru, warming, front register, deliveries, mobile orders, cafe/customer issues, cleaning, and support."

A spokesperson for says that, in the past year, Starbucks has announced "nearly $1 billion in partner-focused investments, which have been implemented broadly, where allowed by law," including raising the average partner wage to $17.50, increasing sick-time accrual and implementing a student loan-debt program. (Starbucks Corp. is worth nearly $121 billion — an increase of nearly $40 billion from June 13, which marked the corporation's lowest value since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic took root.)

"We're aware that a subset of partners feel differently, and we respect their right to organize and to engage in lawful union activities," the spokesperson said. "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."

But many of the chain's unionized workforces have felt differently.

Staff at four Starbucks locations in New Jersey have voted to unionize since April 2022 — shops in Hopewell, Hamilton, Summit and Montclair. In March, Sens. Cory Booker and Bob Menendez (both D-NJ) urged Starbucks and CEO Howard Schultz to negotiate in "good faith" with the workers, as required by the National Labor Relations Act.

The corporation left the stores waiting six to 10 months to form their first collective bargaining agreement, the senators wrote in March. Read more: NJ Senators Urge Starbucks To Speed Up Talks With 4 Unionized Stores

Requests from staff at the unionized New Jersey shops have included:

• pay increases for the augmentation of their responsibilities due to the pandemic
• higher quality training
• more consistent scheduling
• health and safety improvements
• protection of benefits for part-time workers

Unionized Starbucks employees and federal labor regulators have repeatedly accused the corporation of illegal union busting. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued more than 500 open or settled unfair-labor-practice charges against Starbucks as of March, accusing the chain of retaliatory firings, discriminatorily withholding benefits, interrogating workers, and failing to bargain in good faith.