No Contract Means No Coffee as Starbucks Baristas Walk Out
Striking workers were joined by other unions in front of a Starbucks in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Attending were members of Laborers Local 79, the Communications Workers, the United Federation of Teachers, and building workers from SEIU Local 32BJ. Photo: Jenny Brown
Chanting “What’s outrageous? Starbucks wages! What’s appalling? Starbucks stalling! What’s disgusting? Union busting!”, Starbucks workers at stores across the country walked out Thursday. They are on strike against unfair labor practices and the company’s stonewalling at the bargaining table.
The strike started with 65 stores in 40 cities, and could spread to as many as 550. The union, Starbucks Workers United, said it is prepared to make this the “longest and largest unfair labor practice strike in Starbucks history.” After rounds of practice pickets in October and November, workers voted 92 percent vote to strike.
The strike started on Starbucks’ big annual promotional “Red Cup Day,” a day many workers dread, Sabina Aguirre, a Columbus, Ohio, barista told the Labor Notes Podcast. Starbucks distributes a re-usable cup with most drinks as a promotion, leading to long lines. “It’s one of the busiest days for Starbucks all year,” said Aguirre. “It’s so well known to be a day of overwork and frustration on behalf of the employees.”
SHUN ALL STARBUCKS BREW
The union has organized 650 stores, but the company operates 10,000 stores in the U.S., so striking baristas are asking everyone to shun all Starbucks stores, whether union or not, for the duration of the strike, and tell the company why.
Starbucks started bargaining with its unionized workers in February of 2024, after inflicting record unfair labor practices starting in 2021, when the first stores in Buffalo organized with Starbucks Workers United, a division of Workers United/SEIU. But then progress stopped.
“It was just very disheartening, because so much progress was made in the earlier part of 2024, before the new CEO, Brian [Niccol], took over in September of last year,” said Tyler Cochran, who works in downtown Manhattan. “Obviously, we knew that getting to the economic portion of the bargaining is always going to be the most challenging part. So the timing there kind of aligned with Brian taking over.” Niccol came from Chipotle, where the company closed the first store that filed to unionize, later paying $240,000 to workers there in a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board. Niccol makes 666 times the pay of the average barista, Cochran said.
In the face of flagging sales, Niccol launched a billion dollar program to refurbish stores to get people “Back to Starbucks,” but baristas consistently say that adequate staffing is the main thing that would make stores more appealing to customers. Lines are often out the door, baristas said.
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They also say that the company scrimps by not fixing broken equipment—they pointed to busted pitcher washers, leaking cold brew machines, and a refrigerator that wasn’t fixed for a week, necessitating storing milk on the counter.
The company has dozens of unresolved unfair labor practices, most of them related to the company illegally punishing or surveilling workers for union activities, but also over workplace safety violations, said Aguirre. In addition to those, the top grievances strikers hope to fix with a contract are inadequate hours and pay that leaves them applying for food stamps.
Starbucks pays between $15 and $19 an hour, except where the minimum wage is higher. Aguirre, in Columbus, said she makes $15.50. “Contrast that with earlier in the year they threw a store manager convention in Las Vegas which cost an estimated $80 million,” said Cochran. “It's like, you know, they have money that they're choosing to spend in certain ways.”
Many baristas can’t get health insurance or other benefits because they don’t consistently get enough hours. Even for those that do receive it, if they drop below the hours limit over a six-month period they can lose their health insurance for another six months.
Paradoxically, while baristas are asking for more hours, understaffing persists. “It feels like we’re constantly being made to do more with less,” Aguirre said. “They assume that by placing a time constraint on [orders] it will automatically solve the problem when, as we all know, staffing fixes these issues, nothing else.”
[To learn where to support picket lines and help in other ways, go to nocontractnocoffee.org.]
