Starbucks Workers United announced that union employees will go on strike starting Friday in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle.
The walkouts will spread to other markets over five days, ultimately reaching hundreds of stores from coast to coast by Christmas Eve. Over 535 stores and 11,000 employees in 45 states and Washington, D.C., are part of the Starbucks union.
The union accused Starbucks of backtracking on future organizing and collective bargaining negotiations. Workers United said the beverage chain repeatedly pledged publicly to reach contracts by the end of 2024 but has not presented union employees with a “serious economic proposal.”
Less than two weeks ago, Starbucks suggested a package with no new wage increases for union workers and a guarantee of a 1.5 percent raise in future years.
The group urged the coffee giant to “work collaboratively towards a foundational framework to achieve collective bargaining agreements for thousands of union workers” and work toward resolving hundreds of unfair labor practice legal cases.
“Nobody wants to strike. It’s a last resort, but Starbucks has broken its promise to thousands of baristas and left us with no choice,” Fatemeh Alhadjaboodi, a five-year Starbucks barista from Texas and bargaining delegate, said in a statement. “In a year when Starbucks invested so many millions in top executive talent, it has failed to present the baristas who make its company run with a viable economic proposal. This is just the beginning. We will do whatever it takes to get the company to honor the commitment it made to us in February.”
The announcement comes a few days after 98 percent of Starbucks union workers voted to authorize a potential strike. The last negotiation session of the year was held on Tuesday.
Starbucks said it was disappointed the union left the negotiating table given the progress both sides have made.
“We are ready to continue negotiations to reach agreements,” Starbucks said in a statement. “We need the union to return to the table.”
In February, the two sides announced they would start working toward collective bargaining agreements, resolution of legal matters, and a fair process for union organizing. As part of the truce, the coffee giant agreed to provide employees represented by Workers United with credit card tipping and other benefits announced in May 2022, including pay bumps for tenured workers and further investments in managers.
Two months later, Starbucks and Workers United discussed contract bargaining over a two-day session in Atlanta. At the time, the coffee giant said the bargaining committees “made significant process” and worked toward “the foundational framework that will contribute to single-store contract negotiations and ratification.”
New CEO Brian Niccol seemed to reaffirm the progress in a September letter. The executive wrote, “I deeply respect the right of partners to choose, through a fair and democratic process, to be represented by a union. If our partners choose to be represented, I am committed to making sure we engage constructively and in good faith with the union and the partners it represents.”
This week alone, baristas voted to unionize at six more stores in Maine, North Carolina, Texas, New York City, and Seattle, including the SoDo Reserve location within Starbucks Headquarters. Stores have been organizing since December 2021, when a group of Buffalo locations first made the move.
