Workers at 4th LI Starbucks file petition to unionize

Workers at a Starbucks in Farmingville have filed a petition seeking to hold a union vote, making the store the fourth on Long Island from the giant coffee house chain where employees have done so.

Organizers at the Farmingville shop at 2280 North Ocean Ave. filed 23 signed union cards Friday morning, according to the union. The staff there join a growing movement of stores around the country that have sought to unionize since late last year.

Like employees from other Starbucks stores joining the union push, the workers are seeking to be recognized as part of Workers United New York New Jersey Regional Board, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.

A Starbucks representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Thursday’s petition filing with the National Labor Relations Board comes after employees at store locations in Great Neck, Massapequa and Westbury began publicly seeking union votes, starting in February.

Workers at shops in Great Neck, Massapequa and Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, began mail-in voting in early April.

More than 250 Starbucks locations across the country have begun publicly pushing for a union vote, with 41 stores having already unionized, Workers United said in a news release Friday.

In addition to the local petition, the union also announced Friday that workers at the Astor Place Starbucks in Manhattan voted 11-2, with five challenged ballots, in favor of unionizing. The location is the second in New York City to unionize after the Roastery in Chelsea Market became the first early this month.

Sam Cornetta, 21, a barista and lead organizer behind the Farmingville union effort, said the winter COVID-19 omicron variant wave was a major turning point for their store, which is connected to a CityMD walk-in clinic.

“You would see a line of people down Ocean Ave. just waiting to get COVID-tested and those same people would get off line, come inside to get a hot chocolate and then hop back on line,” said Cornetta, a Farmingville resident.

Cornetta and many other employees ended up catching COVID-19 around Christmas and New Year’s Eve, leaving the store short-staffed and “basically wiped out,” she said. After hearing during a Christmas Eve shift that she might have been exposed, Cornetta said she was told to finish her shift. She later found out she had caught COVID-19 and spent the holidays quarantined in her family's basement.

Additionally, Cornetta said management failed to enforce mask-wearing among customers, putting workers' health at risk. 

While Cornetta, a full-time student at Stony Brook University, said the union push is primarily about having a greater say in the workplace and giving workers greater job security, she added that the issue is also about the broader service economy.

“During COVID some serious inequalities and issues were revealed,” Cornetta said. “And now that it's finally being brought to the forefront of the nation’s mind, now is the time to do it."