Baristas, Billionaires, and (Alec) Baldwin

The Starbucks Baristas are Still Fighting for a Contract.

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Maximillian Alvarez || In 2021, workers in Buffalo, New York made history by becoming the first Starbucks store in the United States to form a union. Five years later, and after a ​“the most aggressive and illegal union busting campaign in the modern history of our country,” nearly 700 Starbucks stores are unionized and workers are still fighting for their first contract.

A new feature-length documentary, Baristas vs Billionaires, tells the story of Starbucks Workers United from the perspective of the campaign’s organizers and participants. In this episode of Working People, Maximillian Alvarez spoke to director Mark Mori and contributing producer Alec Baldwin about why they made the movie and the complicated history and struggles of Hollywood’s own labor unions.

Maximillian Alvarez: My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and I want to wish you, and all workers of the world, a very, very happy May Day. All power to the workers, baby.

In the post – World War heyday of U.S. manufacturing and industrial unionism, when the middle class was exploding, about one in every three workers in this country was part of a union. But today — as working people face a punishing cost of living crisis, an evaporating middle class and Gilded Age levels of inequality, jobs replaced by gig work or artificial intelligence — only one in 10 workers in the United States has a union job.

But after decades of decline, the organized labor movement has seen a resurgence in rank-and-file militancy over the last decade, from the Red4Ed teachers strikes of 2018 and 2019 to the United Auto Workers stand up strike of 2023; from the Hollywood writers and actors strikes in 2023 to the giant meatpacking workers strike in Colorado ended in April. Unionization efforts from Amazon workers in New York to exotic dancers in California. Something is definitely happening in the U.S. workforce.

And in the story of this recent revival of labor in the United States, the movement led by predominantly young baristas to unionize Starbucks has played a pivotal role, beginning back in 2021 with the unionization of the first Starbucks store in the United States, in Buffalo, New York. The Starbucks Workers United campaign has since exploded and grown to over 600 stores across the United States voting to unionize. And yet, after all that, after all the union busting and firings and store closures that you’ve seen us reporting on year after year, these workers are still fighting for their first contract with the coffee giant.

So the struggle, as they say, continues. And in the new documentary, Baristas vs Billionaires, Director Mark Mori takes you on a journey through the last five years of the epic, ongoing struggle to unionize Starbucks.

Here’s a clip from the trailer.

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz: Yes, I have billions of dollars. I earned it. No one gave it to me.

Chorus of Protestors: Shut! It! Down!

Michelle Eisen: We are tired of listening to billionaire CEOs take sole credit for the billions of dollars of profit made off our labor.

Starbucks Worker 1: I’m getting health care through Starbucks. I can’t afford my medical bills.

Starbucks Worker 2: I qualified for food stamps because I was getting my hours cut so much.

Starbucks Worker 3: A lot of people are just sick of it.

Unidentified Speaker: Conditions were so bad that a union made a lot of sense.

Unidentified Speaker: Howard Schultz sends a swarm of out-of-state managers into Buffalo, New York.

Unidentified Speaker: They flew in from around the country to bust the union.

News Reporter; Two Starbucks employees were arrested.

Starbucks Worker 1: They could not find a reason to fire me. They had to make something up.

Starbucks Worker 4: The only reason why they had the chance to fire me is because we don’t have the contract that says, ​“just cause.”

Starbucks Worker 5: They fired seven of us in one day, all within like 15 minutes apart.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union busting campaign in the modern history of our country.

Alvarez: Mark, I want to toss the first question to you. Talk about first why you needed to tell this story in a full-length documentary, and then talk about how you approach the task of how to tell that massive story.

Mark Mori: Before I became a filmmaker, I was a steel worker. Worked in a steel mill for five years, member of the steel workers union.

I saw what started in [the early 2020s], at Amazon and Trader Joe’s and Starbucks and REI and all these places. A union movement among young people is building up. And I could see that that was going to build up for years, somewhat like [what] happened in the 1930s.

And so I viewed this as an important story, and a story that had legs. The key thing about it is these are young people in their 20s who are taking this movement up and leading it themselves.

Alvarez: Now, Alec, you’re an activist, but you’re also a union member. I wanted to ask if you could talk about what it’s meant for you over the course of your career to be in a union, and why it’s important to you to be a producer on this film about the Starbucks union drive.

Baldwin: Mark Mori came to me and asked me if I wanted to take a look at this and what thoughts I had about the film. And [Starbucks union organizer] Gianna Reeve was on my podcast. When she’s on camera, you can’t take her eyes off of her, and her passion and her commitment and the commitment of everybody else up there in Buffalo. Howard Schultz was on my podcast as well, which was interesting. I’m thinking of splicing together Howard and Gianna into one show.

But anyway, you know, these companies that are making this enormous amount of money and kind of overworking these people, you come in there and they — it’s that great line from North Dallas Forty. [John Matuszak] says, ​“Every time I call it a game, you call it a business, and every time I call it business, you call it a game.” They alternate. Whether you’re coming to Starbucks to work and it’s business, or it’s like home and you’re part of a family, and you shouldn’t be nickel-and-diming them about your hours and your schedule and so forth.

I support unions who are trying to make the workplace safer and the schedules more humane. Right now, the world, the United States, is filled with people who need to work second and third jobs just to pay their bills, and that’s tragic, but at the same time, when they do step up and meet those responsibilities, why make it impossible for them? Why make them suffer for doing so?

Alvarez: In 2023, when both the Writers Guild [of America] and the Screen Actors Guild were on strike at the same time, I interviewed a bunch of workers during that strike. One of the peculiarities that they really all stress to people outside of the industry is that the vast majority of SAG-AFTRA members are not the high-earning superstars like Alec Baldwin or Meryl Streep. They’re the workaday actors, the radio presenters, et cetera, who are all just trying to make a living in an industry where that is becoming increasingly impossible. But we don’t see or think about that. We just think about the big movie stars.

And then, of course, there’s the other issue of Hollywood unions having much more cultural visibility than, say, striking hospital workers at Kaiser Permanente or striking meatpacking workers at JBS [Foods] in Colorado.

So as two people on the inside who have made lifelong careers in this industry, I wanted to get your thoughts on how you navigate those dynamics. How can bigger-name members of unions like SAG-AFTRA leverage their position to help all workers in their unions? And how can a more visible union like SAG-AFTRA help working class struggles like the union drive at Starbucks?

“The majors, the studios, the networks, the streamers: their fees can never go down. Their paychecks can never go down. Paying execs 30 million, 40 million, 50 million, for the work that they do. Some people earning in the hundreds of millions of dollars for the sales of companies. I think it smells. It’s bad.” —Alec Baldwin

Baldwin: The purpose of the union should overwhelmingly be to protect the interests of the workaday actors. Only [2]% do this for a living and can pay their bills and earn a living as actors. For the overwhelming majority of people, it is a struggle. 

And you see the majors, the studios, the networks, the streamers: their fees can never go down. Their paychecks can never go down. Paying execs 30 million, 40 million, 50 million, for the work that they do. Some people earning in the hundreds of millions of dollars for the sales of companies. I think it smells. It’s bad.

Mark is someone who has a keen ear for that. Maybe our next movie we could do together, Mark, is a documentary about SAG, the history of SAG and after and how they came together. 

SAG is a very interesting thing, because they fight really hard, but at the same time, these strikes ruin this business. I’ll never forget. 1987, the writers strike came, and it not only shuttered production, but in that town, which was a one-horse town, more so than now, it killed — everything closed: limo drivers, florist shops, clothing stores, dry cleaners, restaurants, bars, you name it. I mean, nobody had any money, nobody had any jobs to buy anything. So it crippled the Los Angeles economy for quite a while. 

And I think everybody knows now what a difficult place the union is in and SAG is in. They want to be able to hold over the producers the potential threat of a strike, but everybody knows a strike potentially costs more than it’s worth. 

Alvarez: Building on this documentary, it feels like we’re on the cusp of a renaissance in cinema and the arts, particularly when it comes to more stories that are infused with labor politics and working class struggle. Do you think there’s a possibility for Hollywood playing an even bigger role in building class consciousness in today’s culture?

Baldwin: Hollywood — it’s not their responsibility to build class consciousness. It’s their responsibility to make money. 

Mori: Hollywood is capable of doing these sorts of stories, but it’s the more conscious directors and producers that makes that happen. That is not initiated at the studio level. I guarantee you that. 

If Baristas vs Billionaires becomes very successful, then that would be the kind of thing that would cause some people in Hollywood to take a look. So if you want more labor stories, support the ones that are out there. 

Alvarez: So what can folks watching do to support this film? Where can they go see it and learn more about it?

Mori: Well, they can go to our website, baris​tasvs​bil​lion​aires​.com. We’re currently doing some film festivals. But anybody can go to the website and get in touch with us and set up a community screening, a church group, a local group, union local. They can either show it to their members or a group they get together, or they could even sell tickets and raise money. 

Alvarez: I want to thank our guests, Mark Mori and Alec Baldwin. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and happy May Day, baby. Solidarity forever.

This episode of the Working People Podcast was originally published on May 1.