Starbucks CEO gives a nod to barista labor push: ‘We always listen to our partners'

Starbucks' (SBUX) CEO Kevin Johnson is keeping a close eye on unionization efforts made by a growing number of the coffee giant's store workers.

The small segment of cafe employees, which Starbucks calls "partners," have been making big waves recently after two Buffalo, N.Y.-based stores led an organized labor push. With stores in other cities poised to have votes of their own, Johnson emphasized there are only "two company-operated stores that are certified unions" so far.

In a phone interview with Yahoo Finance after Starbucks' fiscal first-quarter earnings results, he weighed in on the movement, which has now spread to 54 stores across 19 states. This comes only weeks after the after one Buffalo store voted to create the coffee giant's first ever union back in December, and three more Buffalo stores are holding votes on February 23rd.

"There's roughly 50...that have filed petitions to the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] to go through the process to see if partners in those stores want to vote for a union," Johnson said. "Those have not occurred yet and I think that's an important thing just to point out," he added.

The company has publicly resisted the efforts, but vowed to work to address worker concerns. The dozens of stores pushing for a union vote, however, are a small fraction of the 9,900 locations run by Starbucks in North America alone.

For those locations where employees do vote to unionize, Johnson says they are following the protocols to have this change rollover smoothly, "We're following the NLRB process and we respect that process and we'll continue to do that," he told Yahoo Finance.

In the phone call, Kevin Johnson did acknowledge the unions are not completely new to the coffee chain, but the company has experience with its channel-licensed partners.

"We have a few thousand stores in our channel-licensed partners, like many of the big grocery channels...that have a Starbucks within their grocery store that are unionized, so we've got experience with our licensed partners on how they run unionized stores," he added.

U.S. partners include stores like Kroger (KR), Target (TGT), Safeway and Albertsons (ACI). Johnson emphasized that the labor push is not making on a difference on how his business operates.

Starbucks has poured $1 billion of investment into boosting wages for workers. This announcement meant that the average pay for all Starbucks' U.S. hourly partners is nearly $17 per an hour, with average hourly rates ranging between $15 to $23.

All of which raises a fear that higher pay may start to take a toll on the bottom line, a risk Wall Street analysts have cited in an environment of increasing wage inflation.

"We had some of the investments started in October...we had another wage increase in January, we got some more coming this summer, so at the end of the day, we always listen to our partners, we always will, whether they're a union store or not," Johnson insisted.

Brooke DiPalma is a producer and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com.

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