Labor from p 16 about what was happening in Buffalo, she was inspired. In recent weeks, efforts to address the issues she had with the company had failed. “I thought I had to quit,” she said. Instead, she teamed up with a coworker, Bill Whitmire, to form a union at the Starbucks on Scottsdale and Mayo. The response from Starbucks was swift. Days after Dalton began distributing union cards, she was pulled aside by a manager and was disciplined for a list of supposed transgressions that dated back six months. The video of this confronta- tion, which Dalton recorded, was ulti- mately picked up by labor media outlet More Perfect Union — and went viral. “I get an improper call out of work DELIVERY AVAILABLE Box and mattress VALLEY-WIDE Bunk-Bed-Frame with mattress $ $ 309 529 2pc sectional Choice of fabrics 4pc bedroom set 5 drawer chest $ 639 $ 439 T-$119 F-$139 Q-$169 K- $289 Twin Mattress w/ 6” Foam $ 7995 $ 139 CHESTs Starting from when I’m in the hospital? A different time because my aunt died?” Dalton asked her supervisor in the video, wiping away tears. This interaction was not an isolated incident, Dalton said. “I went through it for a pretty long time. I got multiple write- ups. I was always taken into the back room for investigations,” she told New Times. The discipline began when the union drive started. Yet for Dalton, it was more than just retaliation for labor organizing. “I’m not just a union organizer. I’m a woman of color,” she said. Dalton is Black and was the only person of color working at the store. White union organizers did not face the same treatment, she said. The National Labor Relations Board launched an investigation into Starbucks’ actions at the Mayo Boulevard store. In April, the agency filed a complaint against Starbucks. It alleged that Starbucks had committed a host of labor law violations at the store, including coercive interroga- tions of employees leading the drive and threats to take away benefits for union support. Around the same time that the April $ 139 CALL FOR PRICING mon-THU: 9AM - 7PM fri: 9AM - 7PM sat: 9AM - 6PM sun: 10AM - 5PM 3330 w Van Buren St • Phoenix • 602-272-0034 (NE Corner of 35th Ave & Van Buren) *prices are subject 18 WESTSIDEFURNITURE.COM complaint was filed, Dalton was fired. Two managers claimed that she had secretly recorded them. The NLRB alleged that this, too, was anti-union retaliation by Starbucks. In June, a federal judge declined to order Starbucks to reinstate Dalton but agreed that at least some of the disciplinary action she had faced was friv- olous. Starbucks maintained that “any claims of anti-union activity are cate- gorically false.” The case — which was combined in August with five other NLRB complaints against Starbucks loca- tions in Arizona — is still pending before an admin- istrative judge. Regardless, Dalton has become something of an icon in the labor movement in Phoenix. She has sat on panels at labor conferences. This summer, she spoke at the Phoenix protests after the fall of Roe v. Wade and told a roaring crowd that reproductive rights are part of a broader labor move- ment. This is something she’s come to realize lately, she told New Times: Her work at Starbucks was part of some- thing bigger. The store at Scottsdale and Mayo voted to unionize shortly after Dalton was fired. But the results of the election were contested by Starbucks, and the ultimate outcome is still pending. It was a sacrifice for Dalton. She was paying her ASU tuition through Starbucks’ College Achievement Plan, and now she has lost that coverage. But she doesn’t regret it, she said. “If we don’t all come together, the cycle is just going to keep going.” Victoria Stahl: ‘More People Have Found Their Voice’ At sunrise on November 22, 2021, just days before Thanksgiving, workers at Sky Harbor went on strike. They greeted the early-morning crowd with beating drums and bullhorns. One of the workers on the picket line was Victoria Stahl, a 25-year-old barista at a Starbucks inside the airport. Though Sky Harbor falls under the jurisdiction of the city of Phoenix, the airport contracts with HMS Host to operate many of its restaurants, cafes, and fast food outlets. Last year, understaffing ravaged the company. Some HMS Host employees were forced to work mandatory 12-hour shifts. “I do not have time to be a person,” HMS host worker Matthew Vargas told New Times in September 2021. Instead of shuttering stores, employees claimed at that time, the company kept as many stores open as possible, stretching its workforce thin. Stahl joined HMS Host in January 2021. She started at $12.95 an hour. “Very, very quickly I realized something wasn’t right and something needed to be done,” she told New Times. Stahl was frustrated with the company’s lack of attention to its employees. Workers were constantly rotated through different stores without any extra compensation. A broken espresso machine that blasted hot steam at employees wasn’t repaired. (When New Times asked about these working conditions in September 2021, HMS Host said it was “proud to have opened almost all of our restaurants and returned many of our valued associates to work.”) Stahl, 25, was born and raised in Maryvale. “I’m a very, very proud West Side girl,” she said. Before joining HMS Host, she had done some work in politics, registering voters and helping with the campaign of Phoenix City Councilwoman Betty Guardado. When she started at Sky Harbor, Stahl learned that the HMS Host workers’ union — Unite Here! Local 11 — had been in contract negotiations for more than three years. “We hadn’t had raises since the pandemic started. People had been laid off. People had lost health insur- ance,” Stahl said. >> p 20 SEPT 8TH–SEPT 14TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
