Starbucks baristas at about 15 locations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle walked off the job Friday morning in a holiday strike they say will spread to hundreds of stores by Christmas Eve next Tuesday unless the company ups its wage offer in contract negotiations that have been ongoing for the better part of the year.
A Starbucks store with union signs in Brookline, Mass.
Starbucks Workers United, which represents about 12,000 baristas at 530 company-owned stores, said Friday the demonstration, dubbed "'Twas the Strike Before Christmas," will grow larger each day until Tuesday.
Picket lines are forming Friday outside of three locations, one each in the three major impacted markets.
Workers say they're "protesting Starbucks’ failure to bring viable economic proposals to the bargaining table and to resolve hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practice charges."
Starbucks and the union have been bargaining over a national contract framework since April, according to The New York Times, and have reached tentative agreements on dozens of issues but are clashing over wages after the company proposed an economic package with no immediate raises and a guarantee of 1.5% in future years.
The union has asked for a minimum wage of $20, annual raises of 5% and and changed to paid leave, healthcare and scheduling protocols, among others. Andrew Trull, a Starbucks spokesman, told the Times and NPR that the union “prematurely ended” this week’s negotiations.
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Which stores strike next. The union has not said which locations, or in which cities, the strike will spread to over the coming days.
3%. That's about how many of Starbucks’ 16,500 stores are unionized.
Starbucks Workers United formed in 2021 after one store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize. Other area stores followed and union organizing drives proliferated across the United States to include more than 150 stores by March of 2022. Today, 537 locations with 12,000 workers are unionized. The company largely resisted unionization efforts and were accused of engaging in union-busting activities until this February, when Starbucks agreed to start talks on a “foundational framework” that would help the company reach labor agreements with the unionized workers. CEO Laxman Narasimhan departed the company in August, and Starbucks appointed Chipotle chief Brian Niccol as new CEO, amid an activist investor campaign. Narasimhan had taken over from founder Howard Schultz, who returned as interim CEO in 2022.