Ann Arbor community members gathered at the Washington Street location of Sweetwaters Coffee & Tea on Saturday to show support for Sweetwaters Baristas United at their “Solidarity Sip-In.” The Sip-In comes in the wake of the back-and-forth between employees and their corporate team, headed by Sweetwaters co-founders Lisa and Wei Bee, about unionization. The event was meant to garner public support ahead of Jan. 25, when 60 baristas across four locations will vote on whether to formally form a union. Community members and representatives from various unions, including Teamsters and Starbucks Workers United were in attendance. SBU encouraged attendees to tip with cash, congratulate workers and vocalize their support for a union.
Workers at four of the seven Sweetwaters Ann Arbor locations are organizing as one bargaining unit. The unit includes the Michigan Union, West Washington Street, Westgate Library and Meijer Ann Arbor-Saline Road locations.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA sophomore Levi Pierpont, a Westgate Library Sweetwaters employee, said the union hopes to accomplish a variety of goals, ranging from wage accountability to fair scheduling.
“When a schedule is created, the CEO, the COO and managers get to look at it and assess it for the company’s needs to see if it’s going to be efficient and to see if it’s going to save them money,” Pierpont said. “We want to do the same thing. We want to be able to look at the schedule and assess it for our needs.”
In an email to The Daily, Lisa Bee argued that their current scheduling system is very fair to their workers, and that they have a lot of flexibility to meet their baristas’ needs.
“Our baristas see the schedules when they get posted and have the ability to request changes (and they do) as needed from store managers,” Lisa Bee wrote. “Changes are made to accommodate baristas’ requests. and they have the ability to pick up more hours from the many other student baristas who are often willing to give up shifts. We have an incredible amount of flexibility built into our schedules to meet our baristas’ needs. We don’t see how a union is capable of scheduling to suit the baristas’ evolving needs that can change daily. What we understand is that unions heavily or solely bargain for schedules based on seniority rather than individual needs. With this in mind, we don’t see how union methods of scheduling benefit the baristas.”
One barista, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from management, described their negative experience with Sweetwaters’ culture around addressing employee concerns. In this article, they will be referred to as Alex. “I think there’s been a lot of gaslighting when it comes to our demands and concerns before the union even happened,” Alex said. “They were just like ‘Well, if you don’t like how it is, work somewhere else.’ ”
Alex told The Daily many of the workers who want to unionize do not intend to harm Sweetwaters as a business, but rather want to see them improve their practices for the good of the company.
“(The owners) think we’re very anti-Sweetwaters and in reality we’re pro-Sweetwaters and we want them to do better,” Alex said. “We want to have more time with the company to see it grow and see people leave the company and be able to say, ‘Yeah, you should work there.’ ”
In an interview with The Daily, Bob King, former president of United Auto Workers, said cooperative work benefits both workers and employers.
“I’ve worked in the labor movement for over 40 years and dealt with many different employers,” King said. “Employers that are smart enough to work collaboratively with their workers, improve productivity, improve quality (and) improve profitability — everybody wins when you work together. Workers can get higher wages, higher bonuses, better healthcare and will prosper more with that kind of approach versus an adversarial confrontation.”
SBU is unionizing in partnership with the local branch of International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Teamsters Local 243. In an interview with The Daily at the event, Scott Quenneville, president of Teamsters Local 243, said the Sweetwaters corporate team has responded to the unionization by trying to suppress organizing efforts.
“The problem that’s going on now — what always goes on in organizing — is the union-busting,” Quenneville said. “(The owners) have a lot of state attorneys that they hired from Baltimore and New York telling our Michiganders how to vote.”
In an email to The Daily, Bee wrote that they only have one lawyer who is from Ann Arbor.
“Scott Quenneville’s quote that we have ‘lots of state attorneys from Baltimore and New York’ is absolutely false,” Bee wrote. “We have ONE attorney from Ann Arbor, Michigan.”
Also present at the event were a dozen community members who showed up in support of the owners of Sweetwaters. Ann Arbor City Council member Linh Song, D-Ward 2, told The Daily she believes Sweetwaters treats their workers well, and emphasized that they have never experienced labor organization in their place of business before. Song said Sweetwaters holds a special place in her heart because of her personal connection to Lisa and Wei Bee.
“This is the family that took me in when I was a student at the University of Michigan as an undergrad — my parents had disowned me in my last year of school,” Song said. “I was working three jobs … so I have this personal relationship with them and I’ve always felt they’ve treated their workers fairly as far as I know.”
Song explained in an interview at the event how labor organizing can benefit all parties involved, if gone about properly.
“Businesses can profit, workers can have better conditions, better pay — (labor organizing) should be a win-win,” Song said. “So it’s to be seen. The reason why I’m here in support of Wei and Lisa Bee is not because of personal things, but because (the union organization) doesn’t feel like it’s winning when it’s in the process. It’s very antagonistic, it’s very emotional, and I’m waiting to see after the election what (the effects) are going to look like.”
Song described the uncertainty labor organizing can bring to a local, minority-owned business.
“I know other Asian American business owners are really afraid about labor,” Song said. “How do we repair these relationships so that labor isn’t scary or intimidating or requires attorneys? Labor needs people literally coming to the table and eating together.”
Lisa Bee told The Daily she feels the quick timeline of events hampered transparency.
“I don’t have a problem with people voting and making a decision,” Lisa Bee said. “What I do have a problem with is lack of transparency. By the time we found out we got petitioned, we found out that union organizers and a union were talking to our staff for months. Once we got petitioned, we had, three weeks before the vote happened, and I said, ‘This is not transparent.’ ”
Lisa Bee said the company was presented with a letter from concerned employees, after which she made efforts to meet with those who expressed concerns.
“There is no lack of paths to communicate,” Bee said. “I just really feel like there were other influences out there that perhaps put up some barriers that did not exist.”
Jolie Timm, Starbucks Workers United member, said she was grateful for those who attended the sip-in event.
“I think community support shows that there are people who want to see you succeed,” Timm said. “It’s really encouraging to know there are people backing you in a fight that can be kind of endless sometimes.”
Daily Staff Reporter Greta Fear can be reached at gcfear@umich.edu.
1/22 Correction: This article has been updated to add further context to the statements made about scheduling at the Sweetwaters locations, including the addition of quotes from Lisa. This article has also been updated to reflect the presence of counter-demonstrators at the event.