The Washington Post - USA (2022-02-20)

A18 EZ RE K THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022

through her Rhodes in a year —

instead of the normal two — and

returned to Buffalo, where she

landed the Starbucks job.

“Just because you’re working

there doesn’t mean I’m going to

try to organize it,” Bensinger

recalled telling her. Taking on

Starbucks was a massive project

that could quickly consume the

resources of the tiny Upstate New

York union office where the 71-

year-old organizer was working.

By late July, Brisack felt she

had proved herself a reliable

worker. A labor shortage was

putting pressure on baristas

across Buffalo. “It’s now or never,”

she recalled thinking. She invited

a friend from her store over to

crochet. A bag of yarn sat on the

table. Brisack mixed some Old-

Fashioneds.

Before they started, she told

her friend, Cassie Fleischer, 25,

that she had a question that she

had been wanting to ask her: one

that could put their jobs at risk

and, for the moment, had to

remain secret. Brisack tapped her

finger nervously against her

glass. She could feel her heart

beating in her chest.

“How do you feel about orga-

nizing a union at Starbucks?” she

asked. She had picked Fleischer

for this first conversation be-

cause she knew she could trust

her and because she had noticed

that her friend had shared mes-

sages on Facebook about the

impossibility of surviving on the

minimum wage.

“Is that even possible?” Fleis-

cher replied. “Starbucks is so

huge.”

Brisack began speaking of the

need for better pay, more gener-

ous benefits, more consistent

scheduling and a fairer promo-

tion system. Fleischer, who had

been with Starbucks for almost

five years, felt a bit ambushed

and confused.

“So, do you want to learn how

to crochet?” she finally interrupt-

ed.

Fleischer had barely made it

home that evening when her

phone pinged with a 500-word

text message.

“Thank you so much for the

crochet lesson and your patience

with me!” Brisack wrote. “I think

unionizing will mean that we will

have our own voice and real

power. ... Right now, Starbucks

has all the power and ultimately

is supposed to hold themselves

accountable. If we had a union,

we would be able to hold them

accountable and they would have

to recognize us as equals.”

In the days that followed, Bri-

sack began contacting other

baristas at her store and the 19

other Starbucks locations in Buf-

falo. Secrecy was paramount. In

2019, Starbucks had fired two

Philadelphia baristas who were

trying to unionize their stores,

killing the effort before it had

even started and drawing a re-

buke from a National Labor Rela-

own votes, just like the one in
Buffalo. Congratulations were
pouring in from the likes of Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alex-
andria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
and former labor secretary Rob-
ert Reich, who called their win “a
watershed for the biggest coffee
seller in the world” and “a small
step on the long trail toward
rebalancing such power in Amer-
ica.”
With the virus tearing through
their workforce, the baristas
were ready to make their de-
mands. Michelle Eisen, an 11-year
veteran of the company, called
their requests the “bare mini-
mum” Starbucks could do to keep
them safe. Starbucks executives
countered that the measures in
place at their store and all of the
others in the massive chain ex-
ceeded the recommendations of
the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. They weren’t go-
ing to treat Elmwood differently.
So on a Wednesday morning in
early January, just hours after
another worker from the store
fell ill, the Elmwood baristas
decided to go on strike. There
were a few whispered conversa-
tions as the baristas checked to
make sure everyone was on
board. A 24-year-old barista
named Jaz Brisack, who had been
off that morning, rushed in to
pick up a shift so that she could
walk out with her co-workers.
A little before 8:30 a.m., they
strode quietly past the store’s
glass pastry case, boxes of vanilla
bean powder and an industrial-
size ice machine to the storage
room where an unsuspecting
manager was working.
“Are you all okay?” she asked.
“We’re really not,” Eisen re-
plied.
The baristas were taking off
their green aprons. Eisen was
listing the names of the workers
from the store who had recently
fallen ill and laying out the rea-
soning behind the walkout.
“Is there anything I can do?”
the manager asked.
“It’s really not on you,” Eisen
replied. “We had a conversation
with corporate yesterday. These
things could’ve been resolved,
and they said that this was ‘ad-
equate,’ and it’s not.” She turned
to leave, and the other workers,
who were putting on their hats,
coats, scarves and backpacks, fol-
lowed her. A pop song was play-
ing on the coffee shop’s sound
system.
“Please clock out!” the manag-
er called out to them as if it were
just another day at work.
“No, let’s go! Don’t clock out,”
Eisen told the baristas who didn’t
break stride as they stepped onto
the sidewalk, where they would
eventually start a picket line and
learn just how much they would
be able to shift the balance of
power inside one of America’s
largest corporations.

A

big reason baristas were
standing outside on that
frigid Buffalo morning was
because a year earlier, Brisack,
fresh off a Rhodes scholarship,
had walked into the Elmwood
Starbucks and applied for a job.
For the next eight months, she
learned to froth lattes and blend
Frappuccinos. She rose before
sunrise to help open her store
and picked up shifts at other
Buffalo Starbucks locations
where she met other baristas who
told her about their lives, frustra-
tions and concerns with the com-
pany. And she waited.
Brisack had been working
toward this moment since she
was a home-schooled teenager in
Alcoa, Tenn., and read a speech
delivered by the legendary Amer-
ican socialist Eugene Debs that
hit her with the power of a
revelation.
“While there is a lower class, I
am in it, and while there is a
criminal element, I am of it, and
while there is a soul in prison, I
am not free,” Debs told a jury that
was about to convict him of
inciting resistance to the draft
during World War I.
“It was so radical,” Brisack
said. “So in your face.”
Debs’s words sparked an ob-
session with the great labor bat-
tles of the early 1900s — violent
tales of avarice, betrayal and sac-
rifice — and propelled her to a
full scholarship at the University
of Mississippi, a part-time job on
a failed campaign to unionize a
Nissan plant and, finally, a
Rhodes scholarship. She was the
first woman in University of Mis-
sissippi history to win the cov-
eted prize.
The summer before Brisack
left for Britain, Richard Bensing-
er, a lead organizer on the Nissan
campaign, invited her to come to
Buffalo, where he was working on
several campaigns, including one
to organize a small, locally owned
coffee chain.
Brisack raced unhappily

STARBUCKS FROM A1 tions Board judge who ruled the
company had violated the work-
ers’ rights.
Brisack focused her initial
search on baristas who had
championed liberal causes on a
group chat that Starbucks’s Buf-
falo employees used to promote
events or find fill-ins when they
couldn’t work their normal shifts.
“Just wanted to see if you’re
available to meet up soon to talk
about activism in Buffalo,” she
wrote to a barista who earlier in
the year had organized a demon-
stration against sexual assault at
a local college. One of the five
protesters there was Brisack.
A few days later, Brisack and
another early union supporter
raced out to a nightclub to track
down two baristas who moon-
lighted as drag queen perform-
ers. She finally caught up with
them around 3 a.m., pitched
them on the union and then
dashed home to grab some food
before starting her 5 a.m. shift.
Often one pro-union barista
led Brisack to others. Most of the
people with whom she met were
in their mid-20s; many were the
first in their families to attend
college and were saddled with
five- and six-figure student loan
debts. Some had parents who had
struggled with addiction or had
served time in prison.
Brisack introduced as many as
she could to Bensinger. She want-
ed to show the baristas that she
had a real union backing her, and
she wanted to convince Bensing-
er that they could win.
Among the last people Brisack
contacted was Eisen, the 11-year
Starbucks veteran from her Elm-
wood store. Brisack didn’t know
Eisen well; they typically worked
different days. And Eisen’s long
history with the company sug-
gested that she might not support
the big changes that a union
could bring.
But the pandemic had changed
Eisen’s view of Starbucks, which
had thrived by selling normalcy.
Even if the world was upside
down, Eisen’s regulars could still
count on their caramel macchia-
to.
Eisen’s life, though, felt any-
thing but normal. She also
worked as a stage manager for a
local theater and depended on
Starbucks for health insurance.
When the pandemic struck, her
theater shut down and Starbucks
became her full-time job. She was
making a little less than $16 an
hour, $1 an hour more than the
minimum wage for New York
state fast-food workers and bare-
ly enough to pay her bills. The
stress of it all had taken a toll on
her mental health.
Brisack took her to meet Bens-
inger. At 38, Eisen was older than
most of the other baristas, even-
keeled and smart. Younger work-
ers often turned to her for career
and life advice. Bensinger quickly
pegged her as just the sort of
person the union needed to take a
high-profile leadership role once
the campaign launched.
“How public are you willing to
be?” he asked Eisen.
“As public as you need me to
be,” she replied.
In late August, 49 baristas
from across Buffalo sent a letter
to Starbucks’s chief executive in
Seattle informing him that they
were seeking to form a union. To
petition the NLRB for a vote, a
store needed at least 30 percent
of the workers to sign union
cards. The union decided to start
by requesting votes at three Buf-
falo-area Starbucks locations
where a large majority of baristas
had signed cards, knowing that a
strong anti-union campaign from
Starbucks would persuade some
of the early signers to change
sides.
Among the most pro-union
stores was Elmwood.

A

fter her initial, awkward

conversation with Brisack,

Fleischer had tried to for-

get about the union drive. She

waited four days before she re-

sponded to Brisack’s long text,

writing back that making de-

mands of the company felt disloy-

al and “wrong.” Three weeks later

when the campaign went public,

she declined to sign a union card.

To Fleischer, it seemed as if

everyone had a hidden agenda.

She had trained Brisack to be a

barista and recalled her during

those early days as earnest, eager

to learn and prone to apologizing

far too much. Fleischer hadn’t

been able to find her new friend

on Facebook, so she had googled

her and discovered that Brisack

had won a prestigious scholar-

ship in Britain. Fleischer had

never heard of the Rhodes schol-

arship, but her mother was famil-

iar with it. “Oh, my God, your

friend is smart as s---,” Fleischer’s

mother had said.

Fleischer initially assumed that

Brisack was working as a barista

because she needed a break. Now

she wondered whether Brisack

‘They can’t do this and be the company they say they are.’

PHOTOS BY LIBBY MARCH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Jaz Brisack first suggested a union to colleague Cassie Fleischer, seen in her Buffalo apartment and in a

vehicle. F leischer was initially suspicious of Brisack and the company, but an address by company

founder Howard Schultz to workers left her feeling “scolded.” She eventually threw in with the union.

The Starbucks Workers United organizing office in Buffalo last month. After a Starbucks store in Buffalo unionized, a grass-roots

movement spread via Instagram and Twitter and had grown by mid-February to 78 stores nationwide petitioning for union elections.

“If we’re not going

to walk out over our

health and well-

being, then there’s

not anything worth

walking out for.”

Michelle Eisen, an 11-year

Starbucks veteran, responding

to a colleague who was unsure

whether the newly unionized

employees should go on strike

over pandemic concerns