Employees of three Verve Coffee locations, one on Market St. in San Francisco and two others on Pacific Ave. and Fair Ave. in Santa Cruz, are unionizing after a unanimous vote, the Verve Workers United said on Monday.
Three more Verve locations have also filed for union election: a location at Levi’s San Francisco headquarters, and two in Menlo Park, one at the Meta headquarters and another at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Library. The company has 17 locations across California and Japan, including two roasteries, that the workers said they are hoping to form a “wall-to-wall” group with.
Healthcare and scheduling were two main grounds for organization. The Santa Cruz-headquartered company is currently being audited by San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement for potential violations of the city’s Healthcare Security Ordinance, which requires employers with staffs larger than 20 to contribute money to a fund that employees can use on health costs in lieu of insurance. These Medical Reimbursement Accounts (MRA) have been in place since 2005, and to workers’ knowledge, Verve has never complied. Following the investigation, the company will likely owe San Francisco workers backpay on missed MRA contributions.
Inconsistent scheduling has proven to be more than a nuisance for Verve employees: It also prevents them from qualifying for healthcare. The overwhelming majority of Verve employees are part-time, though many have expressed desire for full-time work to little avail, Althea Brennan, a union organizer for United Food & Commercial Workers said. With no protections for consistent scheduling, no MRA contributions, and making minimum wage, workers “can't even afford to buy the coffee that they make, let alone pay their rent and have enough money left over to pay bills and live comfortable lives,” said Brennan.
“I work with a lot of retail and food service workers who are trying to form unions and that's one of the most common issues people have,” Brennan explained. “It's hard to not put two and two together that it costs the employer a lot less money if they keep you just below full-time hours so that you can't actually get health care from them.”
A rally outside the Market St. location on September 24 drew the support of other organizers in the city, including the SF Labor Council, SF Building & Construction Trades Council, Service Employees International Union 87, and SF Democratic Socialists of America, as well as employees of Green Apple Books and Good Vibrations.
Verve Coffee was founded in 2007 by Colby Barr and Ryan O’Donovan. The private company has not disclosed its financials, but analysts by GrowJo, an indexer of fast-growing private companies, estimates its annual revenue in the ballpark of $62 million.
“We remain committed to respecting our team’s right to join a union. Our people and our culture are the center-point of who we are and that will never change. We look forward to working with the National Labor Review Board and their union representation to reach a positive outcome for everyone,” a Verve spokesperson told Gazetteer in an email.
Editor’s Note: Verve shared a statement with us after publication. It is added above.
