Employees at Starbucks in Vernon have decided to unionize. The vote passed with a 13-1 decision Thursday.
It'll still take time to get a contract with Starbucks, and that timeline is unclear.
Vernon Starbucks is now the second location in Connecticut to vote to unionize after the one in Corbin's Corner in West Hartford.
Starbucks employees said the process has taken a little over two months.
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The first step was gathering union cards, sending them in and going public in May, the ballots were sent to employees in June and the vote count will take place today.
“I think the tenured employees who had been there for years have seen how things have changed. You know, they saw Starbucks’ priorities about making customer connections and really developing that sort relationship, and now it’s all about go, go, go, get the window time down,” Mark Tomko, a Starbucks barista, said.
“So, you know, pay, better staffing, and then safety and infrastructure improvements. We want more bars to get the drinks out sooner, we want the floors to be less slippery, we don’t want to see people being injured on the job and overworked. You know, there’s ways that the company could handle those sorts of things,” he added.
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Starbucks released a statement, saying, “As we have said throughout, we will respect the process and will bargain in good faith guided by our principles. We hope that the union does the same.”
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