A week after Toyota announced it would raise wages for its assembly line workers, Starbucks has increased wages and beefed up benefits packages for most of its hourly employees.
Conspicuously carved out of Starbucks’ new wage increases and benefits are those stores that have unionized. That includes at least five stores in San Antonio.
The moves by both companies illustrate how workers can benefit from union activity even when they are not themselves unionized, but also the lengths some companies will go to fend off union organizing, said Tom Alter, a labor historian and professor at Texas State University.
“Employers are in competition for workers, and workers are going to go where they can receive the best compensation and benefits,” Alter said. For Toyota to keep its workforce, “they need to raise wages and benefits to comparable levels.”
Unions are currently enjoying a renaissance of support in the U.S., with Americans of every generation expressing approval for unions. A poll from the Center for American Progress found the highest rates of support among Generation Z, at 64.3%, compared to 57.2% for baby boomers.
Alter said he sees the enthusiasm among his students at Texas State, many of whom are first generation college students from working class backgrounds. Even though most don’t have a direct connection to unions, such as a parent or grandparent active in a union, “they get it. They see what’s happening, and they’re interested in the history, the connections from the past to today.”
Staying competitive
Toyota North America announced on Nov. 1 that it would raise the wages of its nonunion U.S. factory workers just days after the United Auto Workers scored major pay hikes and benefit expansion from the Big Three automakers to end a six-week-long strike.
Across the U.S. and in San Antonio, where roughly 3,800 people build the hybrid Sequioa and the full-size Tundra pickup, hourly manufacturing workers at Toyota will see a pay hike of about 9% effective Jan. 1, according to Reuters. Most assembly plant workers will see their pay rise to $34.80 an hour on Jan. 1, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Logistics and service parts employees also will see increased wages. The time it takes U.S. production workers to reach Toyota’s top pay tier will be reduced from eight to four years, the automaker confirmed to Reuters, and paid time off will increase.
The same day it announced higher wages, Toyota reported record operating profit of $9.5 billion, a 155% increase from the second quarter the previous year.
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas declined to confirm wage specifics, but provided a statement from Chris Reynolds, executive vice president of corporate resources at Toyota Motor North America.
“We value our employees and their contributions, and we show it by offering robust compensation packages that we continually review to ensure that we remain competitive within the automotive industry,” stated Reynolds.
UAW concluded its more-than-six-week strike at Ford, Stellantis and GM after reaching proposed contracts with each car company that together employ as many as 146,000 workers. The contracts include a 25% pay bump over four years, that, with cost of living raises factored in, would raise waged to about $42 an hour by the end of 2028.
‘I haven’t been intimidated’
The situation at Starbucks is more adversarial. Since the first store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize in late 2021, more than 330 across the country have held union votes, with the vast majority of those choosing to organize.
Starbucks has battled those efforts at every step, closing pro-union stores and firing employees they accused of misconduct, including in San Antonio.
None of the stores here that voted to unionize have been able to begin the bargaining process for a contract, said Parker Davis, the union rep for his store at Blanco Road and Wurzbach Parkway. He said several employees have been fired or forced out because of their union activity.
“I haven’t been intimidated, but it can be difficult for people to get involved, because it can be scary,” he said.
On Tuesday, Starbucks rolled out a package of expanded benefits and pay raises, with eligible employees who have worked for the company for four years or less getting raises up to 4%, according to a company press release.
Those who have worked five years or more will be eligible for raises of up to 5%, but workers at union stores wouldn’t be eligible unless the raises were negotiated through Workers United, which represents Starbucks employees.
The union said it would file an unfair labor practice charge against Starbucks with the National Labor Relations Board, which ruled that Starbucks acted illegally when it offered pay raises only for nonunion shops last fall. The company has appealed that ruling.
Davis, who is studying chemical engineering at UTSA, said he is not deterred by the company’s union-busting efforts and that workers will continue to advocate not only for better pay but for more consistent scheduling.
Education and health care benefits depend on working a minimum number of hours, Davis said. “We want protections in place so partners don’t have to worry about getting their benefits kicked out from underneath them,” he said. “It can really be devastating.”
In its announcement, Starbucks said it would be improving scheduling by collecting “preferred, minimum, and maximum hours to build a complete picture of partner preferences and assist store managers in scheduling and managing their workforce.”
As much as pay and benefits are important to employees, said Alter, the right to have a say in work schedules, time off and other quality-of-life issues also are driving unionization efforts. He noted that the railroad workers who tried to strike, for example, were seeking more stable schedules so they could take time off to visit the doctor.
“A union contract gives workers protections on the job and some control of their life on the job … with a union contract, employers can’t arbitrarily change things when they want to, with workers having no say,” he said. “But some employers would rather yield on wages and benefits than give up control over their workers and the rate of production.”
Davis said he has no plans to walk away from the fight. “While I’m in college I’m going to be working at Starbucks, and fighting for a contract.”
