Vibrant Coffee Roasters baristas and bakers want to unionize

Another Philadelphia coffee shop has taken steps to unionize.

Employees at Vibrant Coffee Roasters in Rittenhouse Square have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to hold a union election. The organizers are trying to join the Philadelphia Joint Board, Workers United, also known as Local 80.

The proposed union would have 19 members, including baristas, bakers, and porters.

“We wanted better working conditions,” said Rebecca Werez, a baker at Vibrant and organizing committee member. “Particularly through the summer was rough.”

Werez said the kitchen where she bakes was often as hot as 94 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer, and working in those conditions prompted her involvement. The organizers are also hoping to win wage increases, more paid time off, and improvements to scheduling and job security, she said.

Local 80′s latest potential addition comes after setbacks at two cafés that were part of the union’s earliest organizing efforts.

Korshak Bagels, which was the first workplace to unionize with Local 80, closed last month. Theirs was the only Local 80 bargaining unit that had ratified a contract. Others are still bargaining.

Employees of Korshak Bagels told Billy Penn that they had pushed for changes in the store’s process and practices that would have allowed greater profits, but the store’s owner resisted those changes. Owner Phil Korshak has said the proposed changes, like automating doughmaking and using computer kiosks for orders and payment, would not be “on brand for Korshak Bagels.”

Also last month, two Good Karma coffee shops voted to decertify Local 80 as their union. It was about 18 months after the employees had unionized all of the Good Karma stores, which then numbered four. In the months after they unionized, three of the four shops closed indefinitely (one has reopened) and the number of employees eligible to vote on union issues went from 29 to 18.

Caiside Ní Chuinn was part of the organizing committee at Good Karma, where they worked for a year-and-a-half, and is now working at Vibrant. Ní Chuinn worked at the Good Karma location that closed in January.

After losing their job at Good Karma, “I was looking for a shop that paid better than other shops, that cared more about coffee than other jobs, that you would find more respect at,” Ní Chuinn said, and that brought them to Vibrant. “I thought I found the shop I wanted to be at, and I still do believe that it can turn into the shop I want to be at.”

According to Werez, Vibrant co-owner Ross Nickerson originally said management would voluntarily recognize the union. But the paperwork to make that official didn’t follow, and Nickerson hired an employment lawyer, organizers said. So the employees went the route of filing their NLRB petition.

Nickerson didn’t respond to a request for comment on the unionization effort.

Unionizing at Vibrant feels “a lot more promising” than it did at Good Karma, Ní Chuinn said. That’s due in part to the benefit of experience.

“We’ve learned a lot from these past couple years of union efforts and Local 80,” Ní Chuinn said. At Good Karma, they added, “we were kind of learning the ropes as we went along.”