COLORADO SPRINGS – There are now two Starbucks stores joining the movement to unionize after the Academy Blvd. and Flintridge Rd. store filed its intent to organize employees under the National Labor Relations board Monday morning.

Last week, the Starbucks location at Nevada Ave. and Brookside St. moved through the same process to form a union.

“This isn’t a case of ill will towards Starbucks,” Joe Tally-Foos, an employee, said. “It’s good will towards our co-workers.”

The local push to organize was inspired by a movement in recent months at several of the chain’s coffee shops around the country, according to Bradley Kurtz, the lead organizer of the movement. He has worked as a barista in “nearly every” Starbucks in Colorado Springs over the past five years.

When asked why the workers won’t go work somewhere else if they’re not happy at Starbucks, Kurtz says, he overall enjoys working there, but the recent culture changes concern him.

“Starbucks was once at the forefront of the retail industry – and particularly of the food service industry – but that is no longer the case,” Kurtz said. “Partners once felt heard, seen, and appreciated. They now feel disconnected from some of the company’s top leadership.”

Kurtz highlighted three things he – and about two dozen employees with him during Monday’s press conference – want from the unionization effort.

The first is easier and more tipping options for customers. Kurtz said Starbucks’ competitors have easier ways for customers to tip.

Next, Kurtz says the group wants a more transparent pay structure for both hourly employees and tenured staff.

Finally, they say they want Starbucks to stop cutting hours, a claim made by several unions but one Starbucks says, “would not be accurate.”

“The company is not systematically cutting hours and Starbucks tries to meet workers needs,” while trying to schedule appropriately to meet each store’s demand, the spokesperson said. Starbucks also pointed to several raise increases in December 2020, the summer of 2021, with a planned increase that will bring workers to an average of $17 per hour, with a range of $15-$23 per hour.

Still, as recently as Monday, union movements across the country say the company has cut hours. Tally-Foos says when he started in December, he was working up to 40 hours a week. He says that was slowly cut to 20 hours and this week, he’s scheduled four hours.

“Having a raise to $15 per hour is great, but when you’re only working four hours, that doesn’t count for much.” he said.

The cut in hours also eliminates employees from accessing some of the companies benefits, the employees claim.

“A lot of us can’t spare those hours.” Matthew Broussard, another employee organizing the union effort, said. “In addition to that, benefits such as health care, our college education program, a lot of partners are no longer eligible for those with the kind of hour cuts we’ve seen.”

Employees are set to vote within the next two months.

Starbucks has filed legal challenges against unionization efforts, such as trying to argue in court that individual stores cannot hold votes, rather regions must collectively must decide on unions. The National Labor Relation Board shot down that argument.

In a statement to FOX21, Starbucks still claims that it is respecting employees right to unionize through the NLRB process, despite disagreeing with the need to unionize because it believes employees and the company work “better together as partners without a union between us.”