Starbucks union goes on strike in three cities

Members of Starbucks Workers United staged their first strike in 13 months Friday and plan an escalating strike between now and Christmas Eve in what would become the union’s largest work stoppage since the organizing campaign started at the coffee retailer three years ago.

Members of Starbucks Workers United staged their first strike in 13 months Friday and plan an escalating strike between now and Christmas Eve in what would become the union’s largest work stoppage since the organizing campaign started at the coffee retailer three years ago. The strike is due to start Friday in three cities — Starbucks’ hometown, Seattle, as well as Chicago and Los Angeles, which the union described as key markets for the company. It said the strike will spread to hundreds of stores from coast to coast by Christmas Eve unless the company makes a commitment to honor a framework to reach the first union contract at the company. Starbucks Workers United won its first union election in Buffalo in December 2021 and has been organizing store-by-store across the company’s network since. It has won the right to represent nearly 12,000 workers at more than 500 stores, according to the most recent count from the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees representation elections in the private sector. The union has also lost votes at about 100 stores. But in either case, that is still just a fraction of the company’s 11,200 company-operated stores in the United States, employing about 201,000 workers as of the end of September. The union held a series of strikes at a selection of its represented stores since its first strike at about 100 locations in November 2022. In the past, many of the stores on strike remained open, as the company replaced the unionized striking workers with managers and workers from nearby non-union stores. But with the company and union holding negotiations and reporting progress throughout much of this year, this is the first major strike called by the union since November 2023. Whenever the union has waged a strike against Starbucks it has been for a set duration of time, rather than the kind of open-ended strike waged recently at Boeing, the Big Three automakers or Hollywood studios, in which union members stay on the picket line until an agreement is reached. Shorter, set-duration strikes have grown in popularity with US unions in recent years, with occasionally great success, like the 2023 strike at healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente.