As the wave of worker organizing at Starbucks took off this year, Steph Achter looked on with joy.
“I think we’re all kind of on a similar page … of just being like, enough is enough!” says Achter, a career barista who led a union campaign at an independently owned café in Milwaukee in 2020. “It’s so exciting. I am pumped.”
Achter is part of a barista-led labor movement that has grown with stunning speed. Coffee shops are driving a surge in union elections, up 70% from this time last year. Starbucks alone accounts for more than half the growth, but baristas at small businesses are unionizing too, and some of them well before Starbucks.
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