LADUE — Things were back to relatively normal Monday morning at the Starbucks on the corner of Clayton Road and Lindbergh Boulevard.
A table of retired gentlemen sat at their regular table next to the window facing north, solving the world’s problems over morning coffee. In the back, a young man in a suit opened his laptop. Up front, a servicewoman in Army fatigues waited on her drink. The store, across the street from Plaza Frontenac and one of the busiest in the St. Louis region, was full.
Alex Barge was behind the counter with about eight other partners. That’s what Starbucks calls its employees these days. It’s a bit of a marketing ploy to turn attention away from the fact that the “partners” are unhappy with their working conditions and pay, so much so that more than 200 stores across the country have voted to join the Starbucks Workers United union.
This store, smack dab in the middle of one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country, is one of them.
Barge and her colleagues work in one of five stores in the St. Louis region where employees have formed a union. On Saturday, the workers at Lindbergh and Clayton held a one-day strike to bring attention to the plight, locally and nationally. After a manager opened the store in the morning, about a dozen employees walked in and let the boss know they weren’t working that day. They walked outside and set up tables with signs letting their customers know why they were on a one-day strike.
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