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Red Cup Rebellion Redux: An Interview With Starbucks Workers United

November 30, 2023 Bella DeVaan, Inequality.org. , , ,
The Starbucks Workers United are here to stay. After Buffalo-area stores organized in 2021, unionization caught on like wildfire at franchise locations across the nation. (That year, the median Starbucks employee made under $13,000 while the company’s then-CEO Kevin Johnson took home $20.4 million) Since then, the organizing workers haven’t let up, roasting former CEO Howard Schultz in a high-profile Senate hearing and escalating their campaign. President Biden’s National Labor Relations Board has issued landmark rulings in the union’s favor against the company’s cruel union busting. Now, over 9,000 workers constitute SBWU’s ranks at over 300 stores across America.

Starbucks Workers’ Strike On Red Cup Day

November 15, 2023 Jaya Saxena, Eater. , , , ,
Red Cup Day, the day Starbucks releases its collectible holiday cups, is one of the company’s most profitable. But last year, Starbucks Workers United used the occasion to draw attention to its ongoing fight for unionization. The group’s Red Cup Rebellion involved strikes at over 100 stores and was SBWU’s largest coordinated effort to date. This year, SBWU says it’ll be even bigger. On November 16, according to SBWU, thousands of workers will once again walk out of hundreds of Starbucks locations to protest working conditions, including short-staffing and the frequency of promotional days like Red Cup Day.

Starbucks Is Exploiting Violence In Gaza And Israel To Attack Its Union

October 21, 2023 Lynne Fox, In These Times. , , , , ,
My grandmother and aunt were murdered at Treblinka, one of the deadliest Nazi concentration camps. Six months before liberation, my grandfather died in Nordhausen. My father, John, spent seven years between the ages of 11 and 17 in nine different concentration camps. Czech partisans rescued him and his brother, Harry, from a forced march, during which my father had become gravely ill. After the war ended in 1945, my dad landed in Windermere outside of London and was taught to socialize and eat with a knife and fork. He learned to be a tailor. He met my mother. They moved to the United States seeking a better life, and he started working and soon became a member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

Half A Million California Workers Get A Raise And A Seat At The Table

September 21, 2023 Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect. , , , , ,
In the realm of burgers and fries, California’s hot labor summer is sizzling. In a remarkable reversal of fortune, the state’s fast-food worker movement, created and steered by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has compelled the giants of the fast-food industry (both national stalwarts like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Starbucks and local legends like In-N-Out) to withdraw their opposition to raising their workers’ wages and establishing a statewide labor-business board to deal with industry issues. Last year, after the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that established such a council to raise those wages, the industry announced it would put $200 million behind a ballot measure it had devised to overturn that law.

Buffalo: Starbucks Workers, Volunteers Hold City-Wide Pickets

August 13, 2023 Sam Yaser, Workers' World. , , , ,
Buffalo, New York - As part of the Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) Bus Tour, Starbucks workers and volunteers in Buffalo, New York, demonstrated the power of the Starbucks unionization campaign in the face of corporate resistance. To bolster their efforts,  dozens of Starbucks workers traveled to Buffalo on July 26, to spread information concerning the company’s egregious union busting and breaking of labor laws. The Bus Tour displayed working-class power in a united front for fair compensation and protection from Starbucks’ actions. Informational pickets were dispersed around Buffalo. Customers and passersby were asked if they had previously heard of Starbucks’ union busting and were given information on Starbucks’ unofficial policy toward union workers.

Long Island Starbucks Workers March On Boss Who Fired Employee

August 1, 2023 Elsie Carson-Holt, The Indypendent. , , , ,
Yesterday, baristas from Farmingville Starbucks in Long Island and their union allies marched on the Starbucks regional corporate headquarters in Manhattan to demand the reinstatement of a shift leader who they say was fired for his union activity — and to confront their former boss who sacked him. Brendan Lopez was an outspoken leader in the fight to get his Farmingville Starbucks unionized. He participated in every strike at the store and advocated for the union in the media. His efforts were successful — the Farmingville location unionized last summer in a 13-1 decision, making them the first location in Suffolk County to unionize.

How The Labor Movement Is Showing Up For LGBTQ+ Rights

June 28, 2023 Sam Carliner, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
At any march for rights there’s no shortage of creative chants. This year in New York City at the annual Queer Liberation March, a new one debuted. Playing on the lyrics to RuPaul’s “Cover Girl,” queer rights activists chanted “Socialists, put that bass in your walk! Unionize, let the whole workplace drop!” This was one of several labor-themed chants from a Left and Labor contingent which formed to amplify a labor movement that increasingly represents the LGBTQ+ community and is organizing for LGBTQ+ rights. Left Voice, an all-volunteer socialist publication, initiated the contingent. Around two dozen unions and politically left organizations joined the initiative, endorsing it, bringing out their members and publicizing the march.

Thousands Strike Over Starbucks Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies

June 28, 2023 Arjae Red, Workers World. , , , ,
In addition to firings, Starbucks has leveraged its own benefits against LGBTQ+ workers. Starbucks has offered various types of coverage for gender-affirming health care procedures, which were then held hostage against workers after the launch of the union campaign. Many LGBTQ+ workers were told that if they voted for the union, they might lose their coverage — the implication being “vote no, or we take it away.” Many of these procedures can be lifesaving, and for Starbucks to hold them over trans workers’ heads is violent and coercive.

Starbucks Agrees To Settlement For Violating Workers Rights In Seattle

June 21, 2023 Jordan Zakarin, More Perfect Union. , , , ,
Starbucks agreed to a settlement with the NLRB and Starbucks Workers United that will compensate nearly a dozen unionized employees in Seattle who were illegally discriminated against throughout the fall of 2022. In August, managers called for volunteers to work at a mobile Starbucks bar the company operates at Husky Stadium during University of Washington football games. The opportunity was advertised in a Facebook post the responsibilities and promised an extra $3-an-hour in base pay and perks that included food, drinks, and free parking. The ad, posted in a group for Seattle-area baristas with over 1300 members, contained one caveat: “This is only open to non union partners at this moment.”

Why The Fight To Unionize Starbucks Matters To Us All

June 14, 2023 Andrew Moss, Counterpunch. , , ,
For good reason, the fight to unionize Starbucks has drawn considerable public attention since workers at a Buffalo, New York store voted to unionize in December of 2021. Since that time, workers at more than 300 stores, representing more than 8000 workers, have so voted. The campaign has been met with strong company resistance, resulting in legal rulings that found Starbucks violating federal labor law by (among other things) illegally surveilling workers, firing workers involved in union organizing, and adding workers at specific workplaces to dilute union strength. In an eventful year-and-a-half, the company has failed to negotiate a single contract.

US Labor Agency Rejects Starbucks’ Effort To Obtain Records Of Worker Communications With Media

May 23, 2023 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , ,
A judge for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined it was unlawful for Starbucks to request records of communications between unionized workers and news media organizations. The decision [PDF] reversed a prior ruling from a United States court, which upheld subpoenas issued to 21 workers that were sought by Starbucks to help the corporation defend against allegations that they engaged in unfair labor practices against Starbucks Workers United. Under the National Labor Relations Act, workers are guaranteed a right to form a union. They are also supposed to be protected from interference, restraint, or coercion by an employer that may be intended to prevent them from unionizing.

Starbucks Union Workers Have A New Strategy To Win A First Contract

May 20, 2023 Saurav Sarkar, In These Times. , , ,
It’s a truism in labor circles that winning a first contract can be even more difficult than winning a union election. The ongoing year-plus battle between Starbucks and its unionizing baristas is proving that adage correct. According to data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), as of May 10, workers had won union elections at 308 Starbucks stores since December 2021 — yet not a single shop has come close to reaching a first contract. (Each Starbucks that has unionized is legally a separate bargaining unit organized into Workers United, an SEIU affiliate.) The barista network Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) has made over a dozen proposals to date that serve as a basis for each store’s bargaining.

Workers To Starbucks: Time To Negotiate

May 8, 2023 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , ,
At Starbucks regional headquarters in Manhattan on May 1, staff were setting up an office pizza party when they heard a chant coming from the hallway of their fifteenth floor glass-enclosed office. “Who are we? We are partners! Who are we? We are workers!” chanted a dozen Starbucks workers as they filled the reception area, many wearing shirts saying “Partners? Prove It. WE are Starbucks.” Headquarters staff fled into back offices as the café workers traded off reading sections of a written statement with their demands—the chief one being that the company negotiate with the union and stop retaliating against workers for organizing.

The Undercover Organizers Behind America’s Union Wins

April 5, 2023 Josh Eidelson, Portside. , , , ,
If you want to unionize a workplace, Will Westlake was saying, get used to unclogging the drains. At a secret off-hours gathering held in Rochester, New York, in March, the 25-year-old former barista told a few dozen labor activists that a great way to build trust with co-workers and bosses is to volunteer for thankless chores. In his case, that meant spending months at a Starbucks outside Buffalo in 2021 getting on his knees and reaching beneath the sinks to yank loose the grimy mix of mocha chips, espresso beans, congealed milk and rotten fruit that regularly stopped things up. “Be the person who’s willing,” Westlake said. “It’s going to make the company less suspicious of you.”

What Unionized Starbucks Workers Think Of Howard Schultz’ Testimony

April 1, 2023 Saurav Sarkar, In These Times. , , , ,
The latest round in the fight between Starbucks and its nascent barista network — Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) — came to a head on Wednesday with the appearance of former CEO and current board member Howard Schultz at the Senate Committee on Housing, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). “It was honestly hard not to laugh out loud at some of the [bald-faced] lies he told,” said James Greene, a fired Starbucks shift supervisor in the Pittsburgh area. “He denied breaking the law repeatedly as senators were listing off multiple judges’ rulings against [Starbucks],” Greene added.
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