One Friday in late February, Brissack and another barista, Casey Moore, met on a two-bedroom rental that Brissack shared with three cats and talked about union strategy at breakfast. Naturally, the conversation turned into coffee.
“Jazz has a very barista drink,” Moore said.
Brisack details: It’s basically an ice latte with oat milk. If you have sugar cookie syrup, you know it. Now it’s no longer, it’s usually obvious. “
That afternoon, Brissack held a zoom call from the living room with a group of Starbucks employees who were interested in unity. It’s a movement that she and other Buffalo organizers have repeated hundreds of times since last fall, as workers across the country sought to follow their lead. But in almost all cases, Starbucks workers outside Buffalo contacted the organizers, not the other way around.
This particular group of workers in Brissack’s college town in Oxford, Mississippi, seemed to sell less than most people. When Brissack also said she was attending the University of Mississippi, one of her workers shook her off, as if a celebrity was in front of her. “Oh yes, we know jazz“The workers erupted.
A few hours later, longtime Starbucks employees Brissack, Moore, and Michelle Eisen gathered at the union office with two union lawyers. Former car factory.. The National Labor Relations Commission was counting ballots for elections in Starbucks, Mesa, Arizona. This is the first real test of whether the campaign is well established nationwide, not just at union bases like New York. The room was tense as the first results came in little by little.
“Can you feel the heartbeat of my heart?” Moore asked a colleague.
