It is the David and Goliath fight that has inspired thousands of young workers across the country to take up their banners and stand up for their right to form a union.
It also inspired two films by documentary filmmakers. One is “Baristas vs. Billionaires,” premiering at North Park Theater on Friday night, the other is “Partners,” from Blanket Films.
“Baristas vs. Billionaires” summarizes the Starbucks union fight that began in Buffalo and kicked off a wave of unionization across more than 600 cafes across the country in 2021. It was a labor of love and urgency for director, writer and producer Mark Mori, and producer and cinematographer Bob Judson.
“In my 20s, I was a steelworker. I was very politically active, and the steel company fired me, and the union got my job back,” Mori said. ” When I saw these things start to happen three or four years ago, Amazon was organizing, Starbucks was organizing. I could see that it was the beginning of a new era.”
And though it is not a Hollywood film, it has the star power of producer Alec Baldwin, who is longtime friends with Mori, and narrator Susan Sarandon, another politically active celebrity.
Starbucks workers and union allies picketed in 35 cities across the country over the weekend, including Buffalo, and the message was loud and clear: they’re not afraid to strike.
“(Baldwin) said, ‘Well, I think you need a female narrator.’ So we went through another producer on our team, who had a friend who knew Susan Sarandon, and we got her involved,” Mori said.
The film tells the story of what Sen. Bernie Sanders has called “the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country,” and the group of workers who put their jobs on the line to fight it.
“Something needs to be done about the billionaires. And I thought, maybe, these kids were a way to do something about it,” Mori said.
The Starbucks workers’ campaign is happening at a crucial time, he said, when the wealth gap is the widest it has ever been, inflation is rising and more than half the country is living paycheck to paycheck.
But after four years, the Starbucks unionizing campaign still has not been able to achieve its ultimate goal of negotiating a contract with the company, illustrating the difficulties organizers face, especially in a retail setting where worker turnover rates are high.
The organizing campaign at Dash’s Market is shedding light on a practice known as “salting” − where workers join a company with the goal of organizing its workers, either with or without a union’s backing.
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“When I saw these young people organizing, taking things into their own hands and organizing, I thought, ‘Well, this could be an important, inspirational story,’ given the whole context of what’s going on,” he said.
Filmmaker Chris Sessions was similarly inspired.
“There’s not much organizing going on in the service sector, and there really wasn’t before this campaign. And I think these workers showed that you can do that,” he said. “And also, many of them are young, they’re in college or high school or around that age, and I think they were hugely inspirational for Trader Joe’s workers and Chipotle workers and REI workers in this demographic, to show that you can organize a union.”
“Partners” benefits from the inclusion of leaked footage from Starbucks Corp. and archival footage taken by workers early in the campaign.
“We had to put a lot of trust in him. He just showed up at our office in the fall of 2021 with camera in hand,” said Richard Bensinger, an advisor to Starbucks Workers United. “We are fortunate to have him document what happened to birth this historic campaign.”
The local NLRB office has issued a rare Gissel bargaining order, which orders the hotel to recognize and bargain with the Hyatt Workers United union.
Sessions teamed up with Starbucks worker and labor organizer Michael Sanabria, who is director of photography on the film and an associate producer.
“It was really Michael Sanabria who was the entry point of the film,” Sessions said.
While he’s not an activist, Sessions said he does believe in unions and hopes others are inspired by the film.
“My intention was just to show what workers are up against, and what Starbucks did, in this case, to try and stop their efforts,” he said. “It’s such a crucial story of the labor movement, I wanted to just preserve this moment and also give people a window into what happened.”
The movement brought out “incredible leaders,” he said, many of whom went on to jobs with organized labor after leaving Starbucks.
“What I learned through hearing these stories is it can be really scary and intimidating to form a union and be faced up against a large corporate power,” Sessions said. “And so they just have an incredible bravery.”
Bensinger said it is important that other people see that, too.
“It’s so important for the public to be made aware of how hard and terrifying it is for workers who want to organize a union in their workplace,” he said. “If they understood that employers engage in egregious threats and intimidation and firings and store closings when workers try to exercise their rights, there might be more pressure to fix the broken labor laws.”
“Baristas vs. Billionaires” makes its world premiere at the Buffalo International Film Festival at 7:15 p.m. Friday at North Park Theatre, 1428 Hertel Ave. A post-film Q&A will feature Mori, producers Alec Baldwin and Bob Judson and documentary participant Gianna Reeve. Other members of the cast and crew will be in the audience. “Partners” is now screening across the country and will make its Buffalo debut next year.
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Samantha Christmann
News Business Reporter
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