Unionized Starbucks workers are electing strike captains and getting customers to pledge they won’t cross picket lines. They’re amassing in front of stores with picket signs, borrowing a slogan that UPS Teamsters used during their 2023 contract campaign: “Just Practicing for a Just Contract.”
Thirty-eight stores held practice pickets in early October, and starting October 25, eighty more stores plan to hold pickets and sign up customers to a “No Contract, No Coffee” pledge, promising not to patronize any Starbucks in case of a strike.
“We’re all strike-ready,” said Jhoana Canada, a barista in Nashville. She said that when they practiced picketing at her store, many customers learned for the first time that they were unionized. “It’s just basically an ongoing, overpouring amount of support,” she said.
Starbucks agreed to bargain starting February 2024, and negotiations progressed for eight months, then stalled. “Most of our contract was already agreed upon,” said Diego Franco, a Des Plaines, Illinois, barista. “It’s just the aspects related to pay and scheduling guaranteed hours that the company has been stonewalling us on.”
Over twelve thousand workers are members of Starbucks Workers United, part of Workers United/Service Employees International Union (SEIU), at 650 US stores. But Starbucks operates ten thousand stores in the United States, so asking the public to shun all stores in a strike is an important escalation.
The union carried out short unfair labor practice strikes at three hundred stores right before Christmas last year, after a 98 percent strike authorization vote. Previously workers struck regularly to get the company to the bargaining table and have carried out many single-store walkouts for…
Auteur: Jenny Brown
