Monday, January 20, 2025
About a dozen employees of the Lynbrook Starbucks, members of Starbucks Workers United, returned to work on Dec. 29 after taking part in a national five-day strike — but many members of the employee-led union say their appetite for negotiating higher pay and more stable work environments at the coffee company remain strong.
Liv Ryan, a shift lead at the 839 Sunrise Highway location and a marketing delegate for the Starbucks union, said that the organization has played pivotal roles in pay and workplace management since the store voted to unionize last February.
Ryan, a 26-year-old Valley Stream resident and a five-year Starbucks employee who began organizing for the union in 2020, said that accounts of previous management’s racially charged discipline and pay discrepancies at the Lynbrook store motivated her and other members of the staff to advocate for better conditions.
“The change after we unionized was significant,” Ryan said. “We went from having a really bad manager, who didn’t care about any worker, to now having a better manager who doesn’t target people for being pro-union.”
One event last year marked a turning point at which Ryan and others decided to go on strike. In February, when both a white employee and a Black employee wore union T-shirts underneath their jackets, the manager at the time called out only the Black employee, telling the employee to take it off, Ryan recounted.
“That day was crazy,” she said, adding, of the manager, “She kicked us out of the store mid-shift.”
Because Ryan is a union member, she was paid for the entire shift. But, Ryan said the union can make up for workers’ rights laws that Long Island municipalities lack: like New York City’s Fair Work Week, which guarantees weekly hours.
“Long Island, compared to the rest of New York state, is a sad, sad worker’s hell,” she said.
Despite Starbucks’ public claims of a $3 billion investment in what it calls the “Partner Experience” over the past three years, including competitive pay and benefits, Ryan said she believes the company’s promises to its employees, who are known as partners, fall short. While its pay and benefits package — which includes health care and a 401(k) — are considered competitive in the fast-food industry, Ryan argues that the conditions tied to those benefits, such as strict eligibility requirements and the practice of reducing employees’ hours, are often used to prevent them from actually receiving them.
Since 2023, Ryan has made about $23 an hour as a shift supervisor.
She described the toll her job has taken on her body — that after five years of working on her feet, she suffers from sciatica and tendinitis. “Because of the shaking, my elbows and my right leg always hurt at the end of the day,” she said.
As of last May 2024, seven Starbucks locations on Long Island had voted to join the union.
During the strike last month, more than 300 stores in 43 states shut down, as employees protested what they called the company’s failure to present an acceptable economic package during contract negotiations.
About a dozen workers gathered at the Starbucks in the Gallery at Westbury Plaza, on Old Country in Garden City, on Dec. 22, two days before the work action began. They chanted “No Contract, No Coffee!” and held signs reading, “Starbucks Customers Support Workers Rights to Unionize.”
Sara Kelly, executive vice president and chief partner officer at Starbucks Corporate Headquarters in Seattle, emphasized that the vast majority of the company’s stores remained open and continued serving customers during the December strike.
“We are ready to continue negotiations when the union comes back to the bargaining table,” she stated in a press release.
Starbucks pays an average of over $18 per hour, Kelly said, with benefits such as health care, free college tuition, paid family leave and company stock grants — benefits she said no other retailer matches.
According to Kelly, employees who work at least 20 hours a week earn an average of $30 an hour when benefits are factored in.
Kelly also addressed Starbucks Workers United’s proposal for a 64 percent increase in the company’s starting wage, from around $17.50 per hour to $28.70, calling it unsustainable given Starbucks’ continuous investments in its benefits package.
“These proposals are not sustainable, especially when the investments we continually make to our total benefits package are the hallmarks of what differentiates us as an employer,” she said.
As negotiations between Starbucks and the union continue, Ryan and her Lynbrook coworkers have said they want to go back to the drawing board and ask for better compensation and working conditions.
“Starbucks has lost its way,” Ryan said, noting the disparity between the pay of frontline workers and the compensation of the company’s corporate executives. “It’s frustrating, because we’re the ones doing all the labor, but the company makes most of the profit.”
