Starbucks workers didn’t want to go on strike. But after four years of waiting for a contract at any of their hundreds of unionized stores and enduring nonstop union busting, they had no choice. As of this morning, workers are on an open-ended strike across the country, flexing their power during the $100 billion corporation’s lucrative holiday promotion, Red Cup Day. The strike that started in 25 cities today (UPDATE: now 40) will expand elsewhere if management fails to meet workers at the table and finish bargaining a first contract in good faith.
“We don’t want to be on strike, that is very important. But if Starbucks fails to deliver, we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to turn Red Cup Day on November 13 into Red Cup Rebellion,” said Jasmine Leli, a barista and strike captain at a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, the second location to unionize in a wave of labor victories that began in 2021. Workers United, which represents the baristas, says there are now more than 12,000 unionized workers across more than 650 stores nationwide.
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Workers’ demands from management include improving pay and staffing levels, and resolving more than 700 outstanding unfair labor practice charges over retaliatory firing and discipline, bad-faith bargaining, and unilateral policy changes. They note that the company is the most prolific violator of labor law in modern history, with more than 500 violations, according to administrative law judges and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They also note that though the company is the world’s largest coffee shop chain and its third-largest fast-food chain, executives keep the stores so understaffed that the backlogs of orders are causing wait times long enough to prompt customers to abandon their drinks in frustration. But executives’ response is simply to work faster, baristas said, while also greeting every customer and asking about their day.
Workers are asking community to sign the pledge to buy no coffee and join them at kickoff rallies today in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Ohio, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, as well as on the picket line in the days to come. The union’s No Contract, No Coffee website includes a ZIP code lookup to find rallies and pickets to support. Workers have also organized a strike fund.
“We need allies and supporters to stand behind us,” said Leli, who is 41. To her, the campaign “signifies hope and that you can create change if you stand together with your co-workers and your community.”
THERE IS NO FINANCIAL REASON holding Starbucks back from finishing the contract. After all, the company paid its new chief executive, Brian Niccol, $95 million in compensation last year, about 6,666 times the compensation of average workers, as well as a $5 million signing bonus. (He was only hired in September, so that was only for four months’ work.) Starbucks’s corporate board decided it would also cover Niccol’s housing expenses, COBRA reimbursements, security, a personal driver, use of the company aircraft to travel back and forth between Starbucks headquarters in Seattle and his “city of primary residence,” the cost of setting up a remote office, executive insurance, legal fees, and a physical exam, according to the company’s most recent proxy statement. In fact, the cost of settling the contract would amount to no more than a single day of sales, Starbucks Workers United said, or about four months’ worth of Niccol’s 2024 pay.
More than 100 lawmakers made that point when they called Niccol out for his greed earlier this week. The letters from the Congressional Labor Caucus and a group of senators led by Bernie Sanders (I-VT) demanded that Niccol explain how Starbucks was going to change course. Since he began as CEO in September of last year, Starbucks has “failed to put forward a serious economic proposal, backtracking on the previously agreed-upon path forward,” the lawmakers wrote. This prompted Workers United to file 100 new unfair labor practices, “many of which allege retaliation against union baristas for union organizing or partaking in protected union activity.” They excoriated Niccol for the nearly $5 billion in stock buybacks and dividends the company made last year, and his enormous pay package.
President Trump is emboldening corporate interests, including by crushing the National Labor Relations Board, the main avenue for workers to bring claims against their employers, said former NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. The board no longer has a quorum after Trump illegally fired Democratic appointee Gwynne Wilcox, whose term was supposed to run until August 2028, as my colleague Harold Meyerson has reported.
“It is less about the money and more about the power,” Abruzzo said. Executives fear that if they “give in to this organizing and unionizing effort and reach a collective bargain here, this will build momentum,” which corporate interests do not want and are emboldened under the Trump administration to avoid, even when it means breaking the law.
Related: How can unions defend worker power under Trump 2.0?
Though Starbucks executives hold themselves out as a great employer with great benefits, their behavior shows their attitude is that “we don’t want to partner with or respect our workers’ choices,” Abruzzo explained. Workers put the lie to statements about the company’s strong benefits, noting that executives leave out the fact that baristas must work a set number of hours to receive them. The company routinely schedules baristas for fewer than the number of hours required, so they don’t have to pay for the benefit. But they still get all the public goodwill.
“More and more CEOs consider their workers dispensable,” Abruzzo said. “There’s a lack of dignity and respect and I just find it appalling.”
Starbucks is not the only actor with power in this situation, however. Workers are flexing theirs by withholding their labor, their most powerful tool, Abruzzo said. Ninety-two percent of union baristas voted to approve the strike earlier this month, a testament to their ongoing commitment and unity.
Customers also have significant power, said Sharon Block, professor of practice and executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. Customers will have to decide today whether they want to cross the picket line or stand in solidarity with workers, a personal decision they’ll have to confront when their regular Starbucks location is closed.
“The board of Starbucks has suggested that they believe shareholders hold all the power,” Block said. “But this is a consumer-based company, consumers hold a lot of power. And there’s going to be a direct ask of them.”
And there is power in community, too, baristas said. Dozens of unions and other organizations have signed on to support the strike, including the American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of Teachers, American Postal Workers Union, Association of Flight Attendants, Democratic Socialists of America, Public Citizen, United Farm Workers, United Steelworkers, and the Working Families Party. The coalition, which represents more than 85 million people across the U.S. and worldwide wrote to Niccol, demanding he bargain in good faith and suggesting they will organize their members to join pickets. Some already have, including DSA’s New York chapter, which is organizing a contingent to support today’s rally at a Brooklyn Starbucks.
Baristas who shared their stories said the entire labor movement will benefit when they win their contract. It will encourage workers to unionize their own worksites, it will demonstrate how workers can take matters into their own hands to protect their rights while the Trump administration fails them, and it will discipline corporate interests to understand that they must respect workers.
“All eyes on this campaign,” Leli said. Everyone is waiting to see what happens, but she already knows the outcome. “This campaign is possible,” she said. “We are going to win.”