Starbucks workers strike on ‘Red Cup Day’ over stalled labor talks

Thursday’s one-day strike coincides with Starbucks’s annual “Red Cup Day,” when coffee shops hand out red, reusable travel mugs to customers who order qualifying beverages. It is known among workers as one of the chain’s busiest days, with devoted customers lined up early outside stores to collect the giveaway.

Striking workers have dubbed the walkout the “Red Cup Rebellion.” Union officials said more than 2,000 workers will participate in 25 states, covering 112 stores in dozens of cities, including Seattle, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Eugene, Ore., and Ann Arbor, Mich. Employees picketed outside store entrances and handed out the union’s red cups to passersby, union officials said.

Starbucks has roughly 9,000 company-run U.S. locations and 70,000 employees.

In Olney, Md., a suburban hamlet outside Washington, employees notified supervisors of their strike at 4:30 a.m. When they arrived at the store at 6 a.m. to picket, local management had donned aprons themselves to open the shop, said Ian Miller, a local organizer.

Union members then erected a tent in an empty parking space in front of the store and pleaded with customers not to cross their picket line to purchase beverages. Their requests yielded mixed results.

Del. Vaughn Stewart III (D-Montgomery) joined the demonstration, while several regular customers turned around and sought coffee elsewhere upon seeing the picket line. Others rushed into the store to grab their beverages and free red travel mugs.

“We’re addicts. We have to have it,” one customer yelled out as he walked into the store.

“We unionized to fix a lot of problems with a job we really like,” said Josie Serrano, a barista in Long Beach, Calif., in an interview shortly before the action. “It’s frustrating that the company that hired us doesn’t want to work to find a happy medium. … We want to send a strong signal to the company that, ‘Hey, this is not something we’re playing around with anymore.’”

Starbucks spokesman Andrew Trull said the company would recognize the employees’ right to “lawful protest activity” tied to Red Cup Day.

“As a company, our focus is on creating those moments of joy and sharing gratitude with our customers and one another as we celebrate the holiday season,” he said.

More than two-thirds of stores with strike activity remained open Thursday, Trull said.

This is the first time unionized baristas have banded together across the country to disrupt Starbucks’s operations. Over the past year, the company has faced more than 60 walkouts, from Seattle to New York City, often forcing the company to close stores and take a hit on sales. Those strikes ranged from a few hours to more than 20 days, but they never involved more than a handful of Starbucks locations at a time.

The first Starbucks workers to unionize did so 11 months ago at a Buffalo store that faced chronic understaffing. That momentum spread to hundreds of stores nationwide — about 3 percent of all Starbucks stores have filed to organize — making Starbucks Workers United, which affiliated with Workers United of the Service Employees International Union, one of the darlings of the American labor movement.

As organizing pushes sputtered at other companies, such as Amazon, and activists dubbed the fall of 2021 “Striketober,” the Starbucks campaign proceeded at a plodding, determined pace, and it went toe-to-toe with the chain’s founder and interim chief executive Howard Schultz. He and other executives visited stores as part of a listening tour and anti-union campaign.

The company has not agreed to a contract with any of the 264 stores that voted to unionize.

The slowing pace of negotiations frustrated union members, who hope that Thursday’s one-day walkout will convince the company to speed up talks. Between January and June, the company and union held several virtual bargaining sessions without issue, said Michelle Eisen, a barista and organizer in Buffalo. But in April, Starbucks representatives said they would only meet in person, which cut off talks.

Trull, the Starbucks spokesman, said the company changed its conditions for negotiations because of new state and federal guidance on coronavirus safety standards for in-person gatherings.

When discussions resumed in October, Eisen said, the union planned to stream the proceedings to allow members to silently observe. Starbucks negotiators objected to those conditions, eventually telling union representatives that the company would not participate while members watched online.

Trull said the Zoom streams amount to a “broadcast” of the negotiations and that the company was not provided with lists of virtual attendees or access to the stream itself. Labor negotiations, he said, are meant to be confidential because the discussions involve personnel issues and proprietary business information.

“If you guys are ready to proceed in person without virtual, we’re ready to move forward,” a Starbucks representative told Starbucks Workers United during an Oct. 24 bargaining session, according to video of the meeting the union posted on Twitter.

“You have virtual right there,” the unnamed Starbucks negotiator says in the footage, appearing to gesture to a recording device while motioning for his team to leave the conference room. “That is not what we agreed to. Let’s go, guys.”

That recording, which appeared to be taken from inside the bargaining room, Trull said, underscores why the Zoom streams are impermissible.

Similar scenes played out in almost 50 bargaining sessions nationwide since Oct. 23, Eisen said.

“They do the same thing in every session,” Eisen said. “It’s further delay tactics. They’re legally obligated to show up to the table, but they’re not done playing games.”

Negotiations for the Olney shop were supposed to take place Oct. 25 at a hotel near Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, Miller said. Days before, Starbucks Workers United contacted the company to confirm logistical details for the session but did not hear back, so the bargaining session never took place.

“They completely ghosted,” Miller said.

Workers say they want a contract that provides more stable hours and provisions to force Starbucks to address understaffing and inadequate training.

Union officials have accused the company of cutting the work hours of local union leaders so they no longer qualify for the company’s health insurance plan, or working them until they burn out by purposefully understaffing the busiest hours.

Those issues come to the fore on Red Cup Day, Serrano said, when customers clamor for holiday drinks, such as the apple crisp oat milk macchiato, chestnut praline latte and sugar cookie almond milk latte.

“Red Cup Day is chaos,” said Julia Marcus, a loyal Starbucks customer in Long Beach. Every day for the past 25 years, with a few exceptions, she has ordered a 12-ounce iced espresso with four shots for an extra caffeine boost.

Workers at the store, she said, alerted her of the strike a couple of days in advance so she could make alternate plans for her coffee fix on Thursday. She said she would brew Folgers coffee at home and join them on the picket line.

“It’s such a weird time right now since all of this has come to the forefront,” Marcus said. “I almost feel guilty going there. Starbucks is making billions of dollars every year on the backs of these employees who aren’t getting enough hours to even have their health insurance. It’s horrible. They’re basically fighting for democracy is how I feel.”