Approximately two dozen University of California Riverside (UCR) Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) members gathered outside Hinderaker Hall chanting “F*** Starbucks,” “What’s Disgusting? Union Busting,” “People over Property” on Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. These YDSA members delivered a petition titled, Boot Starbucks from the University of California Riverside (UCR) campus, which has garnered over 780 signatures to Gerry Bomotti, the Vice Chancellor of Planning, Budget and Administration.
Following the petition delivery, UCR YDSA members joined Providing Opportunities, Dreams and Education in Riverside’s (PODER) protest against Regents decision on Regents Policy 4407: Policy on Equitable Student Employment Opportunities. For more information about this protest, turn to page three.
The petition was addressed to UCR Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox, Executive Director of Real Estate Services and Asset Management Thomas Toepfer and Vice Chancellor of Planning, Budget and Administration Gerry Bomotti. The petition called on Chancellor Wilcox and Executive Director Toepfer to “end UCR’s licensing agreement with Starbucks and invite a local or student-run business to replace Starbucks at Glen Mor.
YDSA’s goal was to present the petition to Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox. While this was the goal, the petition was instead delivered to Vice Chancellor Bomotti who agreed to respond to the student’s concerns within a week after the administration had the opportunity to “educate [themselves].
The day before UCR’s petition delivery, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) students, affiliated with the union-organizing group Starbucks Workers United (SWU), engaged in similar efforts on Tuesday, Jan. 30, delivering their own version of the petition that urged the administration to remove Starbucks from the UCLA campus.
The contractual agreement between UCR and Starbucks is set to expire in July 2025 according to Heidi Scribner, Associate Vice Chancellor for Auxiliary Services, and Marcus Van Fleet, Executive Director of Dining and Hospitality Services. They explained that discussions revolving around possible renegotiations do not begin until around nine months before the contract’s expiration date. Other on-campus Starbucks retailers, including Scotty’s, Emerbee’s, Ivan’s and Bytes, are contracted separately with Nestle; Nestle’s contract with UCR is set to expire in June 2025.
Motivations behind the campaign arose from Starbucks’ history, which the petition characterizes as consisting of “scorched-earth union-busting campaigns against its workers. Starbucks has committed ‘egregious and widespread’ violations of federal labor law, and a federal administrative law judge wrote that the company displayed ‘a general disregard for employees’ fundamental rights.”
YDSA hosted a teach-in on Thursday, Jan. 18, with guest speakers from UAW Local 2865, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299, Inland Empire (IE) Amazon Workers United and SWU to educate YDSA members and the general student population on unionizing.
In an interview with The Highlander, Travis Hiett, one of the speakers at the teach-in representing SWU, has been working at Starbucks for over eight years and shared their experience with Starbucks, communicating, “I have shadow shifts coming up where the store manager is going to do nothing but watch me for my shifts … I’ve also received a final written notice for having a Discord server with other workers at Starbucks to help them organize. [Starbucks] gave notice because there was profanity being used, and apparently, it’s my job to moderate when I’m off the clock, and apparently, people can’t say cuss words if they want to.”
Also interviewed was Naomi Martinez, a fellow member of Starbucks Workers United. Martinez explained why they thought that unions are important, especially in food service jobs, stating that they give workers “power.” Martinez elaborated, “When you organize your store, there becomes a legal demand for the corporation to come to us, and we come up to them on equal footing. They have to sit down with us and discuss policies and procedures they otherwise would never want because they don’t care … I think it gives [workers] a lot of power they wouldn’t have.”
Both Martinez and Hiett shared a common belief on the importance for unionizing, not only at Starbucks but in all fields of labor. According to Hiett, “Unionizing is more important than voting as far as engaging in your practice and trying to change your immediate environment. I think it’s a more powerful tool than voting because it enacts more change than voting in the duopoly that we currently have.”
Third-year psychology major Eren Whitfield, the social media manager for YDSA and the student lead for the UCR Students Against Starbucks campaign, cited two main reasons for the campaign, claiming, “Starbucks has engaged in some crazy union-busting practices over the past few years; they are the worst violators of federal labor laws in modern history.”
In a statement, Starbucks has claimed “there is no evidence Starbucks has, or has used, an “anti-union playbook.”
Concerning the petition delivery to Vice Chancellor Bomotti, Associate Vice Chancellor Scribner noted that the UCR administration will put out a response once they’ve reviewed it. Executive Director Van Fleet added, “I think we do [need] a little bit of time to digest the petition [and] decide what the next steps are.”
Executive Director Van Fleet noted that “we would take all things into consideration” on account of Starbucks’ alleged “union-busting” tactics when renegotiating contracts ensues.
Speaking on the AFSCME union on campus, Associate Vice Chancellor Scribner specified how “all non-management, full-time career staff” are associated with the aforementioned union, but students in dining are not in any union. “It’s our students that we hire, to provide support, as well as our full-time staff who are [unionized] … we support and recognize their union,” she said.
If there was ever a desire for undergraduate students to unionize, specifically in Dining Services, Associate Vice Chancellor Scribner said, “our campus employee labor relations group would take point on anything that [is] with the ‘Union-type’ activity because there are state and federal laws about how to unionize.” For employees in the AFSCME union, Scribner highlighted, “We honor those contracts, but they’re our staff … sometimes there [are] contracts that dictate certain things around pay or hours, and we ensure that we follow those.”
Ángel Rentería, Vice President of External Affairs in the Associated Students of the University of California, Riverside (ASUCR), addressed External’s support for YDSA’s petition to boot Starbucks from campus. He stated that External stands “strongly with our student workers and unions in general” and recalled their assistance with “encouraging folks to sign the petition” outside Glen Mor’s Starbucks at the start of the campaign.
VPEA Rentería offered insight into the logistics of UCR’s contract with Starbucks. He explains that “UCR [is] part of the UC system, [so] they do not have to follow basic California labor laws.” Rentería added that the UC has constitutional autonomy. According to a report from the California Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments, “the concept that the UC Regents have autonomy over the UC has remained relatively consistent since 1868” and that “Courts have held the Regents are exempt from statutes regulating the wages and benefits of workers, as they are internal affairs of the UC that do not come within any of the exceptions to the Regents’ constitutional immunity.”
Rentería poses the example of a bill passed in CA that illustrates safety labor practice laws, elaborating that “[the UC] does not have to follow [this] because of their constitutional autonomy, but it’s in their best interest to do so … the [state can] always withhold funding, or go ahead and just cut funding for the UC system.”
Rentería elaborated that due to the autonomy universities have, there “is no guarantee that [Starbucks employees] will receive basic California labor standards, which puts our students in a very dangerous situation.”
Whitfield described the end goal for their campaign as one that will allow fair labor practices for Starbucks employees and aims for “getting Starbucks off of UCR[‘s] campus and off of all college campuses … this will not only put a dent in their pockets and harm them financially but will generally send a message to the corporation that we don’t want you on our campuses if you’re not going to treat your workers right. We are willing to fight for that and make sure that we have ethical business practices on the campus.”
