“You know what goes good with a cup of coffee – a union” quips the current Lieutenant Governor and senate candidate John Fetterman, attending a rally in support of the unionization of baristas at Pittsburgh’s local Coffee Tree Roasters chain.

The call for unionization sparked within the news and piqued the interest of many customers at Coffee Tree’s stores. At the center of a lot of this attention was Central Catholic alumni Liam Tinker ‘21, who claims he was fired from his Coffee Tree job for being pro-union.

I interviewed Liam to get a greater sense of his perspective and what was going on.

The idea of forming a union spawned among the baristas during the summer of 2021 – a shaky and difficult time for many businesses trying to reopen their venues after the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down.

Members interested in unionizing began organizing weekly meetings. Liam claims that a culmination of pressures led to the idea of creating a union, citing faulty management, better wages, electronic tips, communication, and scheduling difficulties exacerbated by COVID-19.

Liam noted that the workers felt especially pressured by the pandemic, stating that “the sick policies are inhospitable especially if you find yourself exposed or positive. Coffee Tree doesn’t have a mask mandate for customers so people will come in and get close and expose you.” The build-up of these issues led to the union going public on Dec 22, 2021.

They emailed the CEO of Coffee Tree informing her of the union and published a social media video that included several baristas, including Liam, giving brief statements about what they wanted to improve at Coffee Tree.

The following day, Liam was fired: “My alarm was set to no volume and I woke up late. I knew I had a shift at 7 AM so I knew I was going to be late. I received a text from the manager at the Squirrel Hill store that my employment had been instantly terminated – I was completely wiped from the system. My first thought was that this definitely had to do with the union video. I had no strikes on record and never been more than a few minutes late and also never been written up or warned. I knew examples of other people who had shown up to work way later and not even given a warning.”

Liam conferred with his other baristas and concluded that it had been due to his appearance in their union video. 

After his firing, Liam reached out to the International Service Workers union organizer who had been helping the unionizers prepare to form a union and combat employer retaliation.

He advised Liam to file an investigation with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Liam had an interview with an investigator assigned to his case. The group held a rally outside of the Squirrel Hill store that saw attendance from local politicians.

Liam states he has learned a lot from unionizing: “At a very concrete level, it’s what you get in your contract to improve your working conditions – it guarantees stuff on your contract. It makes your worth and shares in the company more known to your employer and they can’t see you as expendable.”

About one month after I interviewed Liam, the union was officially formed after a vote by baristas. They joined the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers labor union.

The Coffee Tree Union’s Twitter contains updates about their status and news about other local unionization attempts: https://twitter.com/coffeetreeunion?lang=en

The Viking would like to give a special thanks to Liam for sharing his story with us!