The Worker’s View: Stauf’s union campaign stalls amid lack of support, fears of retaliation

Quinn, a pseudonym, said as a barista with Stauf’s Coffee Roasters they earn $13.50 an hour – a few bucks above Ohio’s minimum wage – before tips.

After more than three years with the nationally recognized Columbus coffee company, Quinn, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said they are forced to look for work elsewhere.

“I recently asked my boss for a promotion to team manager and he laughed at me and said, ‘I hope it’s not about the money,’” Quinn said. “It was absolutely about the money. I’m having to sell things on the Facebook Marketplace to make ends meet.”

Stauf’s workers, who span across five locations in the city, announced in April their intention to unionize the company’s baristas, line cooks, bakers and warehouse staff under the local AFL-CIO hospitality union, Unite Here Local 24. But lack of internal support – and difficulty communicating with employees across Grandview, German Village, North Market, Victorian Village and Cup O’ Joe in Clintonville – means the unionization efforts have stalled.

“We’re really at a standstill,” said Quinn, a member of the employees’ organizing committee.

Less than 20 of 80-plus eligible employees have signed authorization cards, Quinn said. And the workers recently published an Instagram story on their account suggesting that two Stauf’s locations are either against unionizing or fear retaliation from upper management. (Quinn said they were not comfortable naming the locations to which the post made reference.)

“The committee has realized that organizing could take years,” the post read. “Our goal is to make Stauf’s a better workplace, eventually.”

Stauf’s CEO Mark Swanson did not respond to multiple requests from Matter News for comment.

In January, Swanson held an all-staff meeting at Stauf’s Grandview location to discuss a since-deleted social media post in which management informed employees they should serve federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers if they entered one of the coffee company’s shops, Matter News previously reported. Swanson later apologized to his employees and allowed storefronts to post “No ICE” signs on their doors.

But one of Stauf’s kitchen workers, Evan Romero, said that the entire debacle led customers to avoid Stauf’s and to a decline in tips. The frustration led Romero and North Market employee Matthew Greene to talk to the staffers they knew about unionizing.

Initially, Swanson and other members of upper management seemed on board, Romero and Greene said, but later hired what the two described as an “anti-union” attorney. The staffers on Stauf’s organizing committee decided to publicize their campaign in an effort to drum up support and signal to the Columbus coffee community that workers’ values are separate from management.

“That was one of the reasons we went public [with the unionization] announcement, because we knew through that announcement that we were re-engaging with the community about who we are,” Greene told Matter News in April.

In an ideal world, Quinn said they would love to see every employee throughout the company earn a living wage, whether that’s $15 an hour or higher. “The employees on the floor are Stauf’s biggest asset,” they said. “We really want a say in how this company is run. Right now it feels so out of reach. We’re ignored.”

Quinn said one of their coworkers is a single parent relying on a combination of wages and federal subsidies to support their four kids. Members of the organizing committee have heard from other staffers that folks are terrified of losing their jobs.

“We want to continue rooting for Staufs, but they will spend money on anything but us,” Quinn said. “I guess there’s no room for growth here.”