Starbucks union drive: Member describes ‘a lot of hour cuts across the country’

Other things he loves: the company he works for—and its union. 

“I’ve always really enjoyed Starbucks as a company,” he told Fortune, and that’s why he’s “so interested in staying with Starbucks and seeing what it could be with the union effort.” 

Larsen has been a Starbucks employee most of his adult life. He’s worked at different stores in Washington and Reno for nearly nine years and has moved through the ranks from barista to shift manager, assistant store manager and then store manager–but he stepped back down to a shift supervisor to join the union after, he said, “a hard time getting management to hear me.” 

It’s really about Starbucks’ labor model, he explained. The labor model the company uses to schedule employees is sales-based. Each store gets a number of labor hours dependent on its recent sales and seasonal shifts like holidays. The issues that workers are facing include weeks when there aren’t enough labor hours for them to earn enough.

“There’s been a lot of hour cuts across the country,” he said, adding that “maybe the hours will go down next week, but there’s still the same amount of staff.” 

Hour cuts are a big concern

He’s far from alone, as the Starbucks union drive has been making headlines for years now. Recently, on February 20, workers at 21 stores across the country filed petitions nearly simultaneously with the National Labor Relations Board to join Starbucks Workers United, the company’s union group under Workers United, marking the union campaign’s biggest single-day filing since…