Lafayette’s Film and Media Studies Department, or FAMS, and unionized workers at an Easton Starbucks united to hold a screening of Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s documentary “Union” on Friday at Buck Hall.
“The film itself is really sort of a testament to the kinds of possibilities, the kinds of the things that people can do,” Nandini Sikand, the FAMS chair, said.
“Union,” released in 2024, follows the creation of the Amazon Labor Union from 2020 until shortly after its election victory in 2022.
“The ‘Union’ film was just an extension of that physical proof of change and a reality that we could believe it,” said Rhea Pitt, one of Starbucks Workers United’s organizing committee members.
“It’s hard for people to talk about it and be like, ‘yeah, it’ll be better in the future,’” she said about the progress of unions. “They need to see it. They need to see that it’s possible.”
Pitt and Drew Swedberg, a visiting instructor in the FAMS department, worked together to organize the event. They screened the documentary using a temporary projector in the Landis Cinema.
Swedberg said he began to see the film as “something that’s deeply in conversation with workers’ struggles in the area” when he and Pitt discussed screening it.
“Rhea and the Starbucks Workers United are very much on the front lines of that labor struggle in the Lehigh Valley,” Swedberg said.
As one of her union’s organizing committee members, Pitt helps inform people about unions and encourages them to vote in the union.
“It’s not us against the company,” Pitt said. “It’s us trying to advocate for a better company.”
Pitt described her struggles at Starbucks as “making five drinks at once, 20 drinks at once, 40 minutes behind, stuff is spilling on the counter, a strain of machines are just going crazy.”
She said she invited past and current Starbucks workers who had experienced these conditions to the screening.
“They know the chaos and they want it to be changed,” she said.
Pitt described Starbucks Workers United as less grassroots and having more press than the Amazon Labor Union in the film. She said that over 500 Starbucks are now unionized.
“You’re part of something bigger than yourself — that’s why I personally joined my union,” said Pitt, who has been at Starbucks for four years and part of her union for three years.
“I think it’s a topic that people don’t really know a lot about,” said Martin Mann ‘27, a FAMS student who attended the screening.
Pitt and Swedberg hope to hold more screenings of “Union” for Starbucks baristas in the future. According to Swedberg, the documentary does not currently have distribution in the United States, meaning it cannot yet be shown widely in theaters.
“We like to be educational while letting people know, this is important work that you’re doing,” Pitt said.
