Kansas City Starbucks baristas win union

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Kansas City, MO — Starbucks workers continue to win union organizing victories in stores across the country, and today workers at the 41st & Main Street store overwhelmingly voted to join Starbucks Workers United. With a vote of 18-13, partners at 41st & Main Street became the 11th Starbucks location in Missouri to join Starbucks Workers United in one of the most rapidly growing organizing campaigns in modern history.

“Now that our store has won the election, I’m hoping things change for the better – things like barista wages, staffing, healthcare, reinstatement of benefits like digital tips and an overall improvement for partner and customer piece of mind.” said Kali Shepard-White, who has worked for two years at Starbucks.

“If we’re going to set our souls on the shrine of capital, we deserve a life of plenty, or at least enough to get by,” added Shepard-White. “I’ve always had Labor as one of my core tenets. It’s what makes the world go round. It’s the backbone of the world, and we deserve to be taken care of. Discrepancies in Labor lead to further social and economic inequalities, like the rising cost-of-living. These are things we can fix and uphold starting in the workplace, and we have more power united together than divided by corporate greed.”

The 41st & Main Street partners join a quickly expanding nationwide movement of over 9,000 baristas organizing together for justice, fighting for improvements on core issues including respect, living wages, racial and gender equity, and fair scheduling. The historic organizing campaign, one of the most successful in decades, hinges on peer-to-peer organizing led by workers, for workers – and has won election after election in stores nationwide.