09-05-2025
Huntsville Starbucks headed for union vote
A barista making coffee. A group of Strabucks employees have organized a union drive at a shop in Huntsville. The union election is scheduled for Monday. (Getty Images)
A group of LGBTQ+ baristas is working to unionize a Starbucks in Huntsville for what they hope will help create a more fair and equitable workplace for everyone.
If successful, the store on Memorial Parkway would be the third organized Starbucks outlet in Alabama, after stores in Scottsboro and Birmingham. The organizing team wants to join Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), the union that represents over 570 union Starbucks stores, out of about 15,000 outlets in total.
Questions at the Huntsville Starbucks were directed to a corporate media line. Messages sent by phone and email seeking comment were left with Starbucks.
Huntsville union organizing team members Briar Wolf and Nox Ashes were initially drawn to Starbucks because of its long-standing reputation as an inclusive and supportive workplace, especially for LGBTQ+ employees.
'Starbucks is the place where queer people land and where trans people land because they've had a reputation for a long time as being a friendly place to work,' she said. 'You know, there's the joke about the whole blue hair, they/them baristas making the best coffee and all that. Starbucks had presented themselves as this, this paragon of acceptance for queer and trans people to be able to work there.'
Wolf was also attracted by the company's benefits, including tuition reimbursement for a first-time bachelor's degree through Arizona State University and the company's health insurance plan. In 2018, Starbucks introduced a supplemental insurance plan that covered gender-affirming procedures like electrolysis, facial feminization, and other related health care, many with no co-pays or deductibles. The company provides travel reimbursements for gender-affirming care.
But now, she said, that support has been slowly eroded. Fast Company reported in 2022 that many of the procedures covered by the supplemental plan were moved to a primary plan, which can include co-pays and in-network and out-of-network doctors.
'For one of the surgeries that I plan to have, to get a doctor that is even on WPATH's (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) recommended list, I'm going to have to go to San Francisco,' she said. 'They used to pay for travel, but now they only pay for a certain amount of travel, and only if it's approved, and only if there's not an in-network doctor within driving range. They've chipped away at little bits and pieces of it.'
Starbucks said its benefits package has not changed. In a letter to the union sent in 2023, May Jensen, a Starbucks vice president, wrote that individual state policies led to shifts in coverage.
'Whether specific same-sex and gender affirming care, services, and procedures are covered as part of the Company's core health insurance plan or its additional wrap plan depends upon the state law applicable to the Company's plans and, more specifically, whether the care, services, and procedures are required to be part of Starbucks core health insurance plan offerings,' the letter said.
SBWU bargaining delegate and Birmingham barista Naomi Wilson, whose Starbucks store is unionized, is part of the team drafting and negotiating SBWU's first collective bargaining agreement with Starbucks, as well as an active member of the union's Trans Rights Action Committee (TRAC).
'One of the biggest things that we want is the reinstatement of the trans health care supplemental plan that they took away in 2023,' Wilson said. 'Everybody is like, yeah, we're getting that. I haven't seen anybody say that, 'no, that's too much.' Everyone in our union says we are going to get that.'
Another key issue driving Huntsville's union effort are allegations from Wolf and Ashes of workplace discrimination against transgender workers. They say coworkers are misgendered by management, and despite multiple corrections every day, it continues without response. Starbucks refers to employees as 'partners.'
'At some point, it really does become malicious, and partners who were more outspoken about the way things were being run were being misgendered very frequently and sort of pointedly,' Ashes said.
The baristas say that logistical issues also plague this location. On Starbucks' website, the Memorial Parkway location is supposed to close at 6 p.m., but the baristas say it regularly closes at 2 p.m. because of staffing issues. Wolf said workers who are scheduled for those shifts have to use PTO to make up the hours.
Ashes said turnover in the store, which left everyone 'fed up,' also contributed to the union push.
'I just didn't feel safe anymore,' she said. 'Suddenly my job security did not exist.'
Despite concerns about risking her job, benefits and education, Wolf began organizing just three weeks into the role.
'I decided to go ahead with it, because it's just the right thing to do,' she said. 'Showing people that folks look down on and consider unskilled labor, whatever that is, because all the labor is skilled labor, that they do have power and that they can organize. (…) My life's mission is to organize and empower marginalized people and people who work at Starbucks, people who work at whatever fast food places, they're marginalized people. People look down on them.'
The organizing team recently filed for a union vote, which grants them legal protections against retaliatory firings. If they are fired during this period, they can file charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
Ashes said she hopes a union will give them guaranteed hours, proper staffing and power for workers.
'We're having p.m. workers who have been working p.m. for a year plus, sometimes several years are now being forced to work a.m. because they're being told that their hours don't exist anymore,' Ashes said. 'The power to take all of those issues and say, this needs to be fixed, and if you don't fix it, your store is not going to run. We need to be respected. We were hired to work this. We can work this. We desire to work, but you need to let us and support us'
Wilson has worked at the unionized Birmingham Starbucks location for a year and a half. She said she has greater job security but that the union has led to greater scrutiny from the company.
'People are scared to say the word 'union,'' Wilson said. 'It was dark. It was like saying the word 'union' was like a bad word in our store.'
But Wilson said the union gave her a heightened sense of responsibility in her workplace and a stronger community.
'By participating, you actually give people a fighting chance to have a good workplace, a stable workplace,' she said. 'And by burying your hand in the sand, you're leaving everyone vulnerable to like, harassment, firings.'
In a report released in January, the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, cited Starbucks as engaging in union busting, citing 771 open or settled unfair labor practice tactics before regional offices of the federal National Labor Relations Board through February 2024.
Workers at the Huntsville location are starting to report documents on unions are being hung up around the store. They report that two documents were hung up in their store recently, including one listing ten negative things about joining a union.
Local labor organizations have expressed support for the Huntsville Starbucks, including the North Alabama Democratic Socialists of America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and The North Alabama Area Labor Council.
'Starbucks workers in Huntsville have realized what more than 10,000 Starbucks workers across the country have realized — that a voice on the job is important, and that they do deserve it,' said Jacob Morrison, president of the North Alabama Area Labor Council.
The union election is scheduled for May 12.
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