Workers employed by the newly revamped Austin’s Coffee in Winter Park announced last week that they’ve formed an independent union called the United Workers of Austin’s.
It’s an ambitious — and gutsy — unionization effort among service workers in an industry where less than 2 percent of the workforce even has union representation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Florida is also a state with one of the lowest rates of union membership in the country.
But Austin’s employees aren’t deterred. Aloe Bellochi, an event coordinator for Austin’s and a former barista, said they and their co-workers first began seriously discussing unionization in September.
“We love our community and we love Austin’s — and what Austin’s can be,” they told Orlando Weekly during a sit-down interview Sunday.
Out of 17 employees total, at least 11 have signed what are known as union authorization cards, according to Bellochi, signaling they support unionization. None of them have ever been members of a union before, but they’ve been researching the process of forming one to determine next steps.
“It’s kind of scary coming forward and being so vulnerable and saying, hey, we are in kind of a lot of trouble, that we need help, but the community support has been absolutely incredible,” said Bellochi.
Through the collective bargaining process, as a union, they said their co-workers are hoping to address recurring issues with late paychecks, lack of safety for staff during overnight shifts — since Austin’s is open all 24 hours — and inconsistent scheduling that makes it difficult for baristas to make plans with friends, family and loved ones outside of their jobs.
Most importantly, they want to feel like they have a voice and an opportunity to share their concerns with management. Orlando Weekly reached out to Austin’s management for comment via email about the new union, but did not hear back. We will update this story if we do hear from the owners or managers.
“I think the biggest point that we’re trying to make with the union is that it’s not anti-owner — it’s just pro-union, pro-collaboration,” said Bellochi. “We want to have a seat at the table to talk about these things and make sure that we can be informed about decisions, or also have input, and we’re just not getting that right now.”
“I think the biggest point that we’re trying to make with the union is that it’s not anti-owner — it’s just pro-union, pro-collaboration.”
Aloe Bellochi, an events coordinator at Austin’s Coffee and former barista
Forming a union
Under the National Labor Relations Act, there are two ways that workers in the private sector can form a union. First, workers can gather signed union authorization cards from employees, signaling they are in support of forming a union.
Once you have gathered signed cards from at least 50 percent of employees — a simple majority — you can ask your employer to voluntarily recognize the union. According to Bellochi, Austin’s employees organized a “march on the boss” last Thursday to do exactly that.
It didn’t go as well as they’d hoped.
According to Bellochi, the owners declined to voluntarily recognize their upstart union. Generally, if this happens, the next step — or second way — to form a union is to file a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board.
The federal agency will subsequently — generally within a month or two — conduct an election where workers can vote on whether to form a union, or reject union representation.
With the owners deciding against granting them voluntary recognition, Bellochi said they’re getting ready now to file that petition. “We are workers that deserve rights, regardless [of] if we’re just baristas or just work at a coffee shop,” they said. “We still deserve rights as workers.”
‘We love Austin’s’
Austin’s Coffee has long served as a comfortable “third space” in the Orlando community — a communal hangout spot operating on a business model where making a purchase is more optional than mandatory.
For 20 years, Austin’s served coffee, tea and light bites, and hosted comedy nights, live music and drag performances out of its former location at 929 W. Fairbanks Ave. in Winter Park.
The city of Winter Park had, however, since at least 2021, made clear its intention to buy the property that Austin’s Coffee sat on. That purchase went through in 2024, with the coffee shop’s lease set to officially expire in 2025.
A community effort to save Austin’s Coffee from permanent closure allowed the shop to reopen under new ownership in a new location just down the street in January.
Bellochi, who has a second, primary job working in healthcare, first started working for Austin’s as part of the opening staff for the second, revamped location. They were initially drawn to Austin’s because of what it gave to them as a once-shy young person, trying to make connections with others and come into their own.
“I wanted to make more connections with people, but I was so scared, and I had so much anxiety, and I was so scared to kind of come out of my shell,” they admitted candidly.
“I started going to Austin’s, and I would just kind of be a fly on the wall a lot of the time. … I just started going up to people and being like, ‘Hey, like, sorry, I’m so nervous, I’m just really looking to make friends and find connections.’ And it was so incredibly easy for everyone to just be like, sure, come hang out with us, we’d love to have you.”
Employees who are supportive of forming a union, according to Bellochi, continue to work at Austin’s because they genuinely care about this important third space and just want to make their jobs there sustainable and safe.
“It’s one of those amazing kinds of spaces where you can just show up and find yourself and be who you are,” said Bellochi. “And I stuck around because I kept finding myself and I kept finding people that I loved, and it turned into something beautiful.”
But there are some parts of working at Austin’s that are less beautiful, and where workers have felt unable to address their concerns through existing channels.
On overnight shifts, for instance, Austin’s staff are expected to handle any troublemakers in the late-night hours themselves. Bellochi, who started off at Austin’s as a barista, said that the stress of these safety concerns propelled the decision to transition to their current events role.
“Personally, I’ve had a lot of really hard situations, especially towards the end of the night, where we would have to call cops, we would have to call EMS, things where it’s like, you know, you’re working at a coffee shop. You don’t really expect to deal with these kind of situations,” they explained.
Baristas, they said, have brought up the idea of hiring security to help staff feel more safe on the job, but have seen it shot down with the argument of “times are tough.”
That’s also the explanation they’ve gotten for paychecks that have come later than anticipated, although Bellochi admits the owners haven’t transparently disclosed Austin’s financial situation, so it’s unclear how “tough” times really are.
After the union posted on Instagram last Thursday that employees had been informed the owners would be paying them 10 days late, the union started a GoFundMe to raise funds to support baristas who rely on their paychecks to make ends meet.
Just a day later, Bellochi said that the owners told them they would be getting paid on time after all. “We can’t say for sure that it was the public pressure that really pushed them in that right direction,” they admitted. “But for it to go from like seven to 10 days late to being ready on time, it was really helpful to kind of have that push from the community to be like, ‘Hey, this is a really big issue.’”
Forging ahead
Typically, the most common route of forming a union involves affiliating with a local chapter of an established union, like the Teamsters, UNITE HERE or the Services Employees International Union.
Established unions have financial resources, existing bylaws and staff to help guide workers through the process of forming a union and negotiating a union contract.
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a joint volunteer-run project of the Democratic Socialists of America and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, also offers free training and mentorship to workers who want to learn how to form a union in their workplace.
Bellochi told the Weekly that workers at Austin’s had talked through their options, but decided that they preferred to form a new union for and by Austin’s employees independently.
This isn’t unheard of, although independent unions can require more upfront labor to get organized, keep morale up in the face of challenges and sustain themselves.
Amazon warehouse workers in New York, for instance, formed a successful upstart union called the Amazon Labor Union that won the first union election at Amazon in U.S. history, and remained fully independent before affiliating with the Teamsters in 2024.
Workers employed by Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, Home Depot and Geico have also organized independent unions, with mixed success. In the case of Chipotle, for instance, workers in Maine who had formed their own independent union saw their location shuttered after they announced their organizing drive — a common union-busting tactic.
Just ask the employees of Dandelion Communitea Cafe, a local cafe in Orlando that similarly shuttered after employees organized their own independent union, The Seeds, in 2020.
Chipotle, for its part, was ultimately forced to enter a $240,000 settlement after the workers filed a complaint with the NLRB, accusing the Mexican chain of illegal retaliation.
Bellochi said that workers at Austin’s have discussed the different ways that their organizing campaign could go — including ways it could backfire or take longer than expected for them to secure union recognition and a union contract.
“We’re kind of prepared for any way it could go, but just you know, still all holding hands and fighting strong together through it all,” they said.
So far, the workers have already created a website for their union, uwofa.org. They also created a petition that community members can sign, urging Austin’s Coffee owners to recognize the United Workers of Austin’s.
So far, more than 500 people have signed on, according to Bellochi. They urged the community to continue coming into Austin’s to support employees. They’re not going on strike or engaging in any labor stoppage. They’re continuing to work and are hoping the community will have their backs.
“We’re still working right now. So come in, support the baristas at least,” said Bellochi. “We want people to still support Austin’s in a way that is supporting us, and just spreading the word is the biggest thing.”
