“Attempting to concentrate troops in a particular geographic area and spread heavy fire there could work,” said Peter Olney, former organizational director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. “I will focus on those metropolitan areas.”
One of the people who designed the union’s strategy in Boston is a recent law graduate named Kayla Clay, who works as a barista at a union affiliated store.
On a blistering August afternoon, Mr. Clay was sitting outside the Boston University store in a tank top and green army pants.
In the meantime, she remembers that she and a colleague recently ambushed a district manager at another store after being slow to respond to calls and text messages. “We went to the district manager and started making demands,” said Clay.
As Ms. Clay says, she knew very little about the union until last year, when company officials began flooding Buffalo after the campaign went public. Among them was Howard Schultz, who was between tours as chief executive. “Howard should have kept his mouth shut when Buffalo filed,” she said.
Employees at her first store, where she worked while in law school, and another store in the Boston area, filed for union elections in December and won votes in April. Since then, more than 15 of her New York stores in England have also joined the union, most of them with her support. Nationally, the union received about 250 of her just over 300 votes.
But adding to the total is becoming more difficult. “Stores that are easy to organize and have people who are natural leaders and are excited about it — they are already being filed,” said a former Starbucks employee in Chicago who helped organize workers there. said Brick Zurek.