Baristas at a Starbucks in Bucktown voted nearly unanimously to unionize Tuesday, making their store the fourth unionized Starbucks in Chicago.
Workers at the Starbucks at 2101 W. Armitage Ave. voted 15-1 to unionize with Starbucks Workers United, the Service Employees International Union affiliate representing Starbucks employees. The vote count was conducted Tuesday morning on Zoom by the National Labor Relations Board.Baristas at a Starbucks in Bucktown voted to unionize.
“I’m feeling ecstatic,” said Nicole Deming, a shift supervisor at the Bucktown store and a member of its organizing committee. Deming has worked at the Bucktown Starbucks since the beginning of the year; she was drawn to Starbucks in part by its reputation for providing employees with benefits like health care. But she said when baristas at her store filed for a union election in March, she found herself losing hours and scrambling to pick up shifts to work the number of hours needed to keep those benefits. Now, she’d like to see guaranteed hours enshrined in a collective bargaining agreement.