Starbucks employees plan strike during Red Cup Giveaway Day
Thousands of unionized Starbucks workers plan to walk out of their jobs on Thursday to press their demands for contract negotiations and highlight their complaints about staffing and scheduling problems.
The discontinuation coincides with an annual Starbucks promotion, Red Cup Day, in which customers receive bright red reusable cups when they order a holiday-themed drink such as a Sugar Cookie Almondmilk Latte.
The union representing the striking workers, Starbucks Workers United, has said events like Red Cup Day force workers to fulfill more orders than normal, but without enough staff.
Unionized workers say the company has refused to negotiate on personnel and scheduling issues that are particularly acute on such days, and the union filed an unfair labor practice claim with the National Labor Relations Board over the issue this year.
The union represents more than 9,000 Starbucks employees in more than 300 stores nationwide. Workers at some unionized stores began the strike on Wednesday with the aim of surprising the company, which was aware of Thursday’s planned strike.
Starbucks says the union is the party that has prevented bargaining sessions by insisting on holding the meetings online, with rank-and-file members watching, rather than having bargaining teams sit at the table in person.
“We hope that Workers United’s priorities will shift toward the shared success of our partners and negotiating contracts for those they represent,” Andrew Trull, a company spokesman, said in a statement.
The union is calling on the company to stop mobile orders on promotional days, which it says are becoming increasingly common.
Daisy Federspiel-Baier, a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in Seattle, said her store received more than 200 orders within half an hour during an October promotion where customers could get 50 percent off any drink. The store was so overwhelmed that some drinks and food were lost and orders were halted, Ms. Federspiel-Baier said.
“I saw baristas on the verge of a nervous breakdown, being verbally abused by customers and feeling pressure from bosses to keep performing when it was unreasonable to do so,” she said.
Thursday’s strike is the latest development in a battle between the company and organized labor since workers at a Buffalo store voted to form a union in 2021.
In September, a National Labor Relations Board ruled ruled that Starbucks had violated federal law by limiting wage increases and benefit improvements to non-union employees. Another administrative law judge ruled in March that Starbucks had repeatedly violated federal labor laws by illegally tampering with union organizing and firing workers who tried to unionize.
In June, union workers called a weeklong strike at more than 150 stores to protest what they said were the company’s ban on Pride Month apparel and its treatment of LGBTQ workers — a claim management denied. Starbucks said the protest had temporarily closed 21 stores.