Workers at a third Thurston County Starbucks location have voted to unionize

Workers at the Starbucks on Cooper Point Road and Black Lake Boulevard voted 10-6 on June 26 to join the Starbucks Workers United union.

The store is the third Thurston County location to unionize after workers at the Starbucks at 315 Cooper Point Road NW and at 5300 Capitol Blvd. SE in Tumwater voted to unionize after striking in 2022.

Pepper Sparkman, a barista at the newly unionized Starbucks, said unionization can help protect workers from discipline, improve staffing levels and amplify workers’ demands for policy changes on the corporate level. She said under-staffing was the primary issue that pushed workers to unionize.

“The biggest issue and the one on everyone’s minds is staffing. A lot of us see that our current staffing model is unsustainable, and it’s going to lead to burnout. It already has,” she told The Olympian.

“It’s not fun to work several rushes, like a lunch and a dinner rush, with only three people in the store, because that means one person is making all of the drinks for the cafe and the drive through, one person is handling the front register and all the food items, and one person is stuck in the drive through. When this is happening, it means that nothing else can get done in the store.”

Sparkman said unionization could also help workers advance policy changes, such as reversing Starbucks’ no free water policy that was introduced earlier this year.

“My number two concern, and the majority of my co-workers’, is about the free water policy. We’re hoping to use the union to change Starbucks’ policy on giving out free water. It’s immensely disappointing to have worked before and after this change, and seeing how disappointed it makes all of us and also our customers and people who might be relying on this free water, especially when we come into one of the hottest summers in history,” she said.

Despite the move to unionize, some staff members said they believe their jobs will stay about the same until a contract is agreed upon with the Starbucks corporation.

One staff member who asked to remain anonymous told The Olympian, “I feel like it’s not going to change anything immediately, for me personally. It’s like, I was at the Starbucks store at Cooper Point before this unionized, and things will mostly stay the same until the actual contract goes through, and there’s no telling how long that’s going to take.”

For now, unionization has secured workers’ Weingarten rights.

“The only thing that has changed is that we now have our Weingarten rights… Our Weingarten rights allow us to have a union representative present during any conversation that could lead to discipline or change in job duties or termination,” Sparkman said.

She said future changes will depend on the union negotiating a contract with the corporation.

“As of now, we don’t have a contract, but we are going to bargain with the Starbucks to create one that works for both the corporation and all of the workers,” she said.

Amid nationwide strikes, walk-outs and “sip-ins” against the Seattle-based company’s labor practices last year, the Olympia store’s decision to unionize comes after talks between Starbucks and the union reached a standstill at the beginning of 2025.

Staff at the Cooper Point Road and Black Lake Boulevard Starbucks join over 600 Starbucks locations across the nation that have unionized.