Above photo: M.C. Floreani yells chants while marching Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, during a practice picket outside of the Massachusetts Avenue location in Indianapolis. Grace Hollars/IndyStar.
The demonstration comes after two Indiana Starbucks locations closed.
Amid a $1 billion corporate restructuring.
Six days after two Indiana Starbucks locations closed as part of the multinational coffee chain’s Back to Starbucks restructuring plan, unionized employees of the Starbucks on Mass Ave briefly walked off the job in a “practice picket” Oct. 2.
Roughly 20 Starbucks employees and supporters chanted and marched with signs that read “No contract, no coffee” and “Just practicing for a fair contract” in the shade of the café at 430 Massachusetts Ave. The hour-long demonstration was part of a recent national picketing effort by Starbucks Workers United across 35 U.S. cities, according to a news release from the union. Workers United members have staged rallies over the last week calling for improved staffing in stores and higher take-home pay as negotiations for a new contract with Starbucks have stalled.
Juliet Freed, who has worked as a barista at the Mass Ave Starbucks for about a year after a few years at another downtown Starbucks, said the demands placed on the store due to lack of staffing are untenable. Freed said they have recently worked 47-hour weeks with no overtime, often forgoing lunchbreaks to keep pace with orders. They have also struggled to get time off approved to attend appointments and receive treatment for an ongoing medical condition.
“The whole Back to Starbucks campaign is just not working for us,” Freed said. “It’s unfortunate because we are the core of this business.”
The Back to Starbucks program, which CEO Brian Niccol announced in early 2025, aims to boost business by reducing customer wait times and re-prioritizing store atmospheres, among other strategies. The program, which is estimated to initially cost the brand about $1 billion, involves remodeling more than 1,000 Starbucks locations in the US and Canada over the next year along with closing more than 400 in the last three months. Several of those closures came Sept. 26, when the company also laid off approximately 900 non-retail employees.
In a Sept. 25 memo to Starbucks stakeholders, Niccol wrote that the company would shutter locations “where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance.”
Of the locations that were closed, 59 were unionized, according to Fast Company. Baristas employed at these locations received severance pay if they turned down offers to transfer to another Starbucks location; non-union baristas who didn’t accept transfer offers did not receive severance.
The two locations that closed in Indiana — one on Highway 41 in Schererville and one on North State Road 9 in Greenfield — were not unionized. Indiana currently has 10 unionized stores including the Mass Ave Starbucks.
The Mass Ave location was one of several that went on strike last Christmas Eve amid the longstanding labor dispute. Delegates of Workers United and the company resumed bargaining in April 2024 with the goal of ratifying a new contract by the end of the year, but that never came to pass as negotiations stalled with both sides blaming the other for not coming to the table.
Freed said that while they have considered leaving Starbucks, they would ultimately rather stay and fight for better working conditions at the job they love, however strained the relationship.
“I have met such kind people through this company,” Freed said of their fellow “green-apron” colleagues. “I love being the first part of someone’s morning.”
Non-Starbucks employees at Thursday’s demonstration included Democratic City-County Councilor Jesse Brown, who said Niccols and Starbucks could avoid a strike if they wanted to by offering better pay and workplace conditions. Niccols’ $95.8 million salary in 2024 has been a subject of criticism from union members; his pay was more than 6,000 times that of the median for a Starbucks barista and is the largest CEO-to-worker pay ratio among S&P 500 companies.
“We’re inevitable at this point,” Brown said, speaking in solidarity with Workers United. “We’re moving in one direction, and that’s toward more justice, more strength on the job, more solidarity. As long as we stick together like this all over Central Indiana and as long as we don’t let the bosses divide us, we will win.”
Contract negotiations will become an even more pressing issue as Starbucks nears the winter holiday season, its busiest time of year. While Workers United maintains that the recent string of protests around the country are purely demonstrative, Freed for one is ready to put that practice to use if necessary.
“We are not afraid of action,” they said.
