A Seaside Starbucks is the first in Monterey County to join a growing nationwide unionization trend.

What would you do to create a better workplace for yourself and your coworkers? Liona Averill, a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in Seaside, is answering that question by working to unionize her store. She is joining a fast-moving, nationwide movement.

“I’ve been at this company for a while and I love my customers and I love my employees and Starbucks is making it difficult to take care of them,” Averill says. It’s not just better pay workers are asking for, Averill says, but better overall quality of life. The store is understaffed and employees are overworked, she says, which leads to longer wait times and decreased customer satisfaction. Because of a company policy to assign worker hours based on how fast orders are fulfilled, she says, these factors build on one another. Averill wants Starbucks at the corporate level to better understand the reality of Starbucks on the ground, and the way to do that, as she sees it, is to unionize.

For its part, Starbucks maintains that unionization is unnecessary. “We are listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country,” a Starbucks spokesperson tells the Weekly in an emailed statement. “From the beginning, we’ve been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us, and that conviction has not changed. We remain committed to our partners and will continue to work together, side-by-side, to make Starbucks a company that works for everyone.”

On a national level, the unionization of Starbucks workers started in December 2021 in Buffalo, New York. Since then, over 250 of Starbucks’ 9,000 nationwide locations have won a union election – a remarkable acceleration. Now, the Fremont Boulevard and Phoenix Avenue shop is the first in Monterey County to join the trend.

Averill has worked for Starbucks for about five years, and at this store for over four. She says the idea of unionizing became salient during the Covid-19 shutdown and the back-to-work turmoil that followed: “We had people who were scared, were losing family members, who were scared to go back to work – and corporate never checked on us.” Soon after the first stores started unionizing, though, she says Starbucks corporate called a mandatory check-in meeting. It felt reactionary: “To me, that was Starbucks telling us they cared, but they didn’t show us they cared,” she says.

To start the process, Averill first contacted Starbucks Workers United, the national worker-led unionizing effort. They advised her that, in order to call for an election, she’d need to gather the support of at least 30 percent of the store’s employees. Averill says Fremont and Phoenix got to that threshold “pretty quickly” – she declines to share exactly how many of the store’s 23 employees filed unionization cards, but says the number is “well over half.”

On Oct. 6, a Workers United lawyer filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board.

Now, the store is waiting for the election, scheduled for Nov. 18. It’s a vulnerable time – one when corporate-level Starbucks may try to convince workers to change their minds. (Starbucks has, for example, announced new benefits for non-union stores in what organizers see as an effort to get workers to doubt the value of unionizing.) Averill says Fremont and Phoenix hasn’t seen much impact of their move toward unionization, yet. “We do expect some action, but at this point we don’t know what to expect,” she says.

If the store wins its union election (about 80 percent of stores that have filed have), pay and benefits will be frozen pending further negotiation. In many ways, that’s when the real work begins. According to Workers United, just three of the over 250 unionized stores have sat down for a first bargaining session with the company.

Nevertheless, Averill is committed. “I kind of brought this to the store, and I think a lot of people look to me to answer their questions,” she says. “I want to show them I’m really confident in what I’m doing and I know this is what’s right for us.”