On January 31, Starbucks Workers United announced union drives at two locations: the one Fahland works at in St. Cloud on 2nd Street S and 6th Avenue, and in Roseville, Minn., on Highway 36 and Fairview Avenue. According to a statement from Starbucks Workers United, the two shops, if they win their elections, will be joining 11,000 unionized baristas at over 530 Starbucks stores across the country.

Fahland previously worked at a Starbucks in a Target store for a few years before working at the Starbucks in St. Cloud. They listened to their coworkers’ concerns and noticed excitement for the recent strikes that took place over Christmas Eve at Starbucks stores across the country and locally. “I didn’t mean to do it so quickly,” they say of the union drive. “I was probably gonna do it in, like, six months from now, but I wanted to strike while the iron was hot.”

The 2024 Christmas Eve strike was the largest strike in Starbucks history, with over 300 stores shut down across the country to demand improved wages, benefits, and staffing levels, and to protest hundreds of unresolved unfair labor practice (ULP) charges. (Union workers are in bargaining with the company but have not yet won a contract.) According to a press release sent by Starbucks Workers United on January 31, the ULP charges keep coming: The union has filed over 90 unfair labor practice charges against the company in recent weeks “after the company backtracked on the path forward it agreed to over the future of organizing and collective bargaining.”

Fahland says that, initially, the conversations with coworkers were ironic, or “kind of joking, kind of not joking.” They remember workers asking each other, “What if we unionized and we went on strike? Wouldn’t that be funny?” That’s when Fahland emailed Starbucks Workers United while on their break to learn more about the process of forming a union.