Wrong Changes

The strike threat comes at a time when Starbucks has been losing customers — long waits have contributed to a drop in sales, and so have rising coffee prices. Starbucks buys 3 percent of the world’s coffee supply for its 40,000 stores worldwide, and bean prices have more than doubled since 2021. Climate change has damaged global yields, including with droughts and flooding in Vietnam and Brazil.

The stagnant growth caused the Starbucks board to abruptly dismiss CEO Laxman Narasimhan, whom they’d hired in 2022 with a $28 million compensation package. In August 2024, they hired Brian Niccol, former CEO of the burrito chain Chipotle. He negotiated a $97.8 million compensation package for himself and became chair of the board, which means he’ll be harder to fire.

Niccol immediately rolled out a restructuring plan called “Back to Starbucks,” which fixes none of the problems workers have identified and adds a few more. The changes appear aimed at making Starbucks more upmarket: raising prices, refurbishing stores with more comfortable seating, and tightening rules for uniforms. The plan also eliminates free bathrooms and water, and requires baristas to write a personalized message on every drink order.

The new policies are missing the point, union baristas said. “None of our customers care about us having a new uniform,” said Franco. “And you’re waiting twenty minutes on the drink. What’s the last thing you want to see the barista have to do? Write a message on every cup.”

But workers face discipline if they don’t write messages. “I either write a message on the cup, or I have a manager breathing down my neck,” said Franco.

It’s the Understaffing, Stupid

The main problem, baristas say, is rampant understaffing, which seems to be getting worse under Niccol. Canada and Franco both said that their stores had drastically cut staff in the last year.

In Jhoana Canada’s Nashville store, they’ve gone from twenty-four to fourteen baristas. “Most of the time when we clock in for a shift, we have to do the job of two or three people, especially as a closer,” said Canada. “Now it’s to the point where we have lines all the way out the door.”

This is not because Starbucks can’t hire enough workers. In fact, current workers are constantly asking for more hours, she said. Workers can’t get health care coverage and other benefits unless they work an average of twenty hours a week over six months. If they drop below that, they can’t get coverage back for six months, no matter how many hours they work.

The Des Plaines store went from thirty staff last year to fourteen, and now has long lines and waits of fifteen to twenty minutes, Franco said. “People are on their way to school or work. They don’t have the time to wait that long. Nor should they. It’s coffee, for crying out loud. They should be able to get it and go on with the rest of their day.”

“The only way we can ensure that happens is if they staff us properly,” Franco said. “We work at the largest coffee chain. I would like to be able to make more per hour than what I see in one order out the window.”

Workers said that once they accumulate seniority raises, management often targets them for reduced hours. Then they become ineligible for benefits and have to look for jobs elsewhere.

Though the company is spending a billion dollars on “Back to Starbucks,” including $850 million to remodel one thousand stores, baristas said broken equipment is an ongoing problem. They mentioned damaged floors, pitcher washers that break down “every other day,” a machine that leaks “a lot of cold brew” every night. At one union store, they had no refrigeration for ten days, and workers had to store milk on the counter, a worker said.

Many Victories

Even without a contract, the union drive has pushed up pay at Starbucks stores nationwide as the company sought to deter additional union votes. Starting pay ranges from $15 to $19 an hour, depending on location. In some places it is higher to comply with minimum wage laws.

The union effort has also won electronic tipping at all stores. At first, the company illegally punished union stores by excluding them from the tips, but a court ordered that retaliation stopped. Starbucks agreed to extend tipping to all stores in February 2024 and provide back pay and benefits for the union workers who had been excluded.

Getting the company to the bargaining table at all was a tough fight. Beginning in 2021 when the first stores organized in Buffalo, Starbucks engaged in a record number of unfair labor practices, including firing over one hundred union activists nationally and closing all three union stores in Ithaca. In 2022 and 2023, court dockets nationwide filled with Starbucks unfair labor practice cases.

Still, the wins keep coming. When negotiations started in February 2024, the union represented workers at 400 stores; now it’s 650. And last December, the company doubled parental leave for store workers, to eighteen weeks. The change came shortly after the union had proposed it at the table, though Buffalo bargaining delegate Michelle Eisen said the company did not formally respond to the proposal.

Last year, the union proposed minimum pay of $20 a hour, with 5 percent raises each year, while the company proposed no immediate increase and 1.5 percent raises in future years.

The union stresses that Niccol’s compensation alone would more than cover the cost of the union’s pay proposal for twelve thousand union workers. But the company likely fears that if it doesn’t raise pay in all ten thousand US stores, it will risk an avalanche of union organizing.

Chaotic Restructuring

In September, as part of its restructuring plan, the company closed five hundred stores, including fifty-nine union stores, saying that these locations can’t be brought up to the new standards. But the plan is more expensive and chaotic than it needs to be, union members said, because the quick rollout has meant breaking leases and paying severance. Workers generally got two days’ notice they would be laid off.

But union protection helped in this case too. At union stores, workers have been able to negotiate severance for all laid-off workers. In a nonunion store, Franco said, “if you reject the transfer [to another store], you don’t get severance. Whereas in a union store, you can reject the offer to transfer and still get severance.”

“Our movement has outlived the past four CEOs,” said Franco, who has been elected strike captain for his store. “We’ve out-organized, we’ve out-fought. You can throw another four CEOs our way. We’re still going to be here.”