The Starbucks strike expands to include workers at hundreds of stores

According to the union that organized the walkout, the Starbucks baristas’ strike has expanded since it began on Friday to include around 300 of the coffee giant’s stores across the United States.

The strike, which is scheduled to end after Christmas Eve, is intended to pressure Starbucks during the busy holiday season to offer a better wage proposal than the first contract for its workers. Employees also want to push Starbucks to resolve outstanding unfair labor practice claims brought by workers in recent years.

Starbucks Workers United, the union that represents about 10,000 workers at several hundred of the ubiquitous chain’s nearly 16,500 U.S. locations, said baristas in Boston, Philadelphia, Portland and Tucson walked off their jobs Monday as part of a plan to To increase the number of striking employees over the course of the five-day action. They joined baristas in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle who launched the strike, and others followed in Denver, New York, St. Louis and other cities.

“My colleagues and I have made the difficult decision to launch strikes against unfair labor practices in hundreds of stores across the country because we know that investing in baristas is the only way to change the situation. These strikes are an early demonstration of strength, and we are just getting started,” Lauren Hollingsworth, a barista from Ashland, Oregon, said in a union news release.

The union said the strike was the largest in Starbucks history. The last days before Christmas are traditionally one of Starbucks’ busiest times.

Starbucks downplayed the significance of the strike, saying it would have little impact on overall operations. “The vast majority of our stores (97-99%) continue to operate and serve customers, and we expect very limited impact to our overall operations,” Executive Vice President and Chief Partner Officer Sara Kelly said in a recent blog post about the Starbucks website strike.

On Monday, more than 60 branches had to close due to the ongoing strike, the union said. And on Tuesday, Starbucks said 170 of its more than 10,000 company-operated stores in the United States had not opened as planned.

The company criticized the union, saying it ended collective bargaining “prematurely” last week.

“Given the progress we have made to date, it is disappointing that they have not returned to the table,” the company said in a statement.

Five stores in Southern California were initially involved in the strike, including in Van Nuys, Santa Clarita, Highland Park and Anaheim, said Evelyn Zepeda, organizing director for Workers United in California. That number has expanded to locations downtown and elsewhere.

The work stoppages mark a major turning point for Starbucks Workers United, which was founded in 2021 and has made steady progress in its campaign to get baristas at Starbucks in the U.S. to join. Hopes that the two sides could reach an agreement have been high since February, when the company publicly pledged to work with the union and take a more neutral approach to worker organizing.

The conciliatory stance marked a turnaround for a company that had previously fiercely resisted the campaign to organize its workers. Federal regulators found that Starbucks repeatedly violated labor laws by disciplining and firing workers involved in union activities, closing stores and delaying contract negotiations.

According to NLRB spokeswoman Kayla Blado, the National Labor Relations Board has conducted a total of 647 union elections at Starbucks stores, with 109 falling short, several others with contested ballots and 528 currently with certified bargaining units. In California, 66 stores have held union elections and 44 of them have had their bargaining units recognized by the labor department.

Blado said workers have filed more than 700 unfair working conditions claims against Starbucks, its subsidiary Siren Retail Corp. or his law firm, Littler Mendelson, alleging a number of violations. The union has not filed any new charges against Starbucks since late February.