Indiana has a union Starbucks in the south, a second in the north – and could soon have a third in the middle. Employees at a Starbucks in Bloomington filed to unionize Monday to get better compensation and “protect the culture of authenticity and inclusion” for LGBTQ+ workers.

The workers asked the company to voluntarily recognize their union in a letter to the company’s CEO, Laxman Narasimhan.

“You’ve made our jobs harder as one of the highest volume stores in the state of Indiana, cutting hours and causing severe understaffing, and then asking us to meet the impossible expectations of keeping drive-thru times down and getting more orders out the window to earn the same hours back,” the workers wrote. “With unpredictable scheduling, we wonder if we’ll be able to pay next month’s rent or if we even qualify for necessary health care while watching the new CEO get multi-million dollar sign-on bonuses paid for with the profit we make for this company every day.”

ANDDDD EVEN MORE STORE FILINGS!!!! 🔥

During this week of our national Strike With Pride, please welcome the Partners of the Bloomington Eastside store in Bloomington, IN to the movement! ✊ pic.twitter.com/AL9KZE0Itx

— Starbucks Workers United (@SBWorkersUnited) June 26, 2023

Narasimhan replaced Howard Schultz as CEO in March, amid a stack of federal complaints and a congressional inquiry into the company’s alleged “union busting” campaign. Officials say that included withholding benefits from hundreds of union stores, including one in Clarksville, Indiana, to “discourage” unionization. 

Nationally, the company has not voluntarily recognized most stores that seek to unionize, including the first two in Indiana.

READ MORE: Valparaiso could house Indiana’s second union Starbucks

The Bloomington store will likely have to hold a vote with the National Labor Relations Board to get recognition. If successful, the workers will join Workers United, the union representing 331 unionized stores across the United States.

Workers in the Bloomington location have faced “extreme” cuts to working hours, said barista Stefanie Sharp.

“A lot of our shift supervisors were cut down to 17 hours a week and that’s below the benefits threshold,” Sharp said.

Starbucks did not respond to an interview request. In a past statement about similar allegations coming from now-union workers in Valparaiso, Indiana, a spokesperson said the company provides workers opportunities to pick up extra hours at their stores and others nearby. They also noted that part-time workers only need 240 hours every three months to meet eligibility requirements for health care and other benefits.

But Sharp said management “told the shift supervisors that they weren’t [allowed] to limit their availability to be able to find a new job or else they will be demoted.”

Sharp was hired last summer at about 35 hours a week, she said, and has since seen her shifts cut down to about 20 hours.

“It’s regular small talk, talking about how, ‘My bank account just hit the negative, ha ha,’ and then we turn around and see customers have more money in their Starbucks card than we do in our bank account,” Sharp said. “That’s incredibly demoralizing.”

Those issues had Bloomington workers considering unionization, but Sharp said a manager removing a pride flag recently is what pushed them “over the edge.”

“The one thing that we had of being prideful and being open and being ourselves in our workplace, that’s also being taken away from us,” she said.

Workers at more than 150 union Starbucks stores are on an Unfair Labor Practice strike, partly over alleged policies banning pride displays in some stores and alleged threats to gender affirming care in health coverage. In statements posted online, Starbucks denies those allegations, calling it “misinformation” from Workers United.

“They say that they haven’t banned pride flags, but they’re still taking them down,” Sharp said. “So it’s almost like gaslighting.”

The company has filed complaints with the NLRB against Workers United for the “smear campaign.” Both sides have filed large volleys of complaints against each other throughout the process. The union, for example, has filed several complaints alleging surveillance, threats and other coercive, illegal actions against union workers at the Clarksville location.

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Sharp said customers did not speak out against the pride flag when it was hung in the store. She said it feels like management is “conceding to fascism” and “further validating the threat of violence as a legitimate political discourse” by taking it down.

Sharp, who is a transgender woman, said she sees LGBTQ+ rights and workers rights as “the same fight.” She notes many of her coworkers are also part of the LGBTQ+ community.

If the store’s employees vote to unionize, they will start trying to negotiate a contract for this location. Sharp said the store staff wants guaranteed minimum hours and staffing to not overwork their current limited staff. They are also seeking a pay increase, she said, since the employees are not making enough for a living wage in Bloomington.

“Every food service company is built upon the exploitation of their workers,” Sharp said. “And no matter where you go, you’re going to get exploited … and we’re at a point where at least the workers at my store are ready just to stand up and say enough is enough and hopefully this will reverberate through the industry at large and not just Starbucks.”

Employees at the store have not received any pushback from supervisors on their efforts so far, but are prepared for that based on alleged difficulties workers at other stores, like Clarksville, have faced. Employees see their store as a signal for other local stores to join them in unionizing.

“We have each other’s backs at the end of the day, because that’s what filing for a union is,” Sharp said.

Adam is our labor and employment reporter. Contact him at arayes@wvpe.org or follow him on Twitter at @arayesIPB. WFIU/TIU’s Katy Szpak is on Twitter at @KatySzpak and contact her at krszpak@iu.edu.