Starbucks employee strikes expanded to Denver stores on Saturday; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, Union leaders said.
Starbucks Workers United, the union that has organized workers in 535 U.S. stores since 2021, launched strikes that began Friday in Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle, to protest a lack of progress in contract negotiations with the company.
According to the union, the company has not fulfilled a commitment made in February to reach an employment agreement this year. Workers United has said the latest strikes could spread to hundreds of stores across the country by Christmas Eve.
Starbucks proposed an economic package with no new pay increases for unionized baristas and a 1.5% increase over the next few years, the union said Friday.
In a Sunday post on X, the union said the picket lines had expanded to Brooklyn and Long Island in New York, St. Louis and Pittsburgh. Without giving a specific number, union leaders said dozens of Starbucks stores are now affected by the strike. On Monday, baristas at several Starbucks locations in Philadelphia also joined the nationwide strike against the company.
“We were ready to bring the foundational framework home this year, but Starbucks was not,” Lynne Fox, president of Workers United, said in a statement. “After everything Starbucks has said about how they value partners across the system, we refuse to accept zero immediate investments in barista wages and no resolution to the hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practices.”
According to Starbucks, Workers United ended a bargaining session early this week. The company also says it already offers rewards and benefits worth $30 per hour for baristas who work at least 20 hours per week.
Strikes at Starbucks and Amazon
The union also wants Starbucks to resolve outstanding legal issues, including hundreds of unfair labor practice charges that employees have filed with the National Labor Relations Board. The agency has also opened or settled hundreds of charges against Amazon. Thursday, a day before the strikes at Starbucks, the Teamsters union announced strikes at seven Amazon delivery hubs.
Amazon delivery drivers and Starbucks baristas are on strike in a handful of American cities as they try to pressure the two major companies to recognize them as unionized employees or meet demands for an inaugural labor contract.
The strikes that began Thursday and Friday followed other recent standoffs between corporate America and organized labor. Large and established unions have won meaningful employer concessions following strikes this year Boeing factory workerslongshoremen at ports on the East and Gulf coasts, video game artists, and hotel and casino workers on the Las Vegas Strip.
But workers at Starbucks, Amazon and some other prominent consumer brands are still fighting for their first contracts. Amazon refuses to recognize the organizing efforts of drivers and warehouse workers — many of whom have voted to unionize — even as the powerful Teamsters union says it represents them.
The e-commerce giant says the delivery drivers, who the Teamsters have been organizing for more than a year, are not its employees. Under the business model, the drivers work for third-party companies called Delivery Service Partners, which deliver millions of packages to customers every day.
“For more than a year, the Teamsters have continued to deliberately mislead the public by claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers.’ That is not the case, and this is yet another attempt to advance a false narrative,” said Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said this recently in a statement.
Starbucks, meanwhile, has long resisted unionizing its stores but had agreed to negotiate a contract by the end of the year.
Strikes – especially those during the holidays, a time of high economic activity – can help unions gain leverage during negotiations or flex their muscles by gaining support from workers and sympathetic consumers.
Wave of unionization efforts after COVID-19
Both Amazon and Starbucks saw a surge in organizing efforts following the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic focused attention on frontline workers and the impact of economic inequality on the lives of wage-earning Americans.
Workers organized in bookstores, where unions are rare, and had success with campaigns in some stores of Apple, Trader Joe’s and outdoor gear company REI.
But converting these wins into contracts can be a challenge. At Amazon and Starbucks, which did not have a union before the pandemic, workers have yet to reach a deal with the e-commerce and coffee giants, both of which are headquartered in Seattle.
Last attempt by the unions before Trump
John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, said he thinks Amazon and Starbucks workers are “desperate” to make progress before President-elect Donald Trump can appoint a Republican majority to the National Labor Relations Board. During his government he is expected to be less friendly towards the unions.
“The unions want to make these disputes public and put political pressure on the companies,” Logan said in a written statement. “If these disputes drag on into next year, and if they are fought out largely through the Labor Council and the courts, unions and workers will almost certainly lose. This could be their last, best chance to put public pressure on the companies before Trump arrives. to the office.”
However, Trump has also given some signals that he might be friendlier to labor in his second term than he was in his first. Last month, he chose Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer to lead the Department of Labor in his new administration, bringing in a Republican congresswoman who has strong support from labor unions, including the Teamsters. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien also spoke at the Republican National Convention last summer.
The Teamsters say Amazon workers struck at seven delivery stations in Southern California, San Francisco, New York City, Atlanta and Skokie, Illinois, as the company ignored a Sunday deadline the union set for contract negotiations. At midnight Saturday, the Teamsters say workers will also strike at a prominent New York warehouse, which voted to join the fledgling Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and has since chosen to join the Teamsters.
requirements of the Union
The prominent labor group says it is fighting for higher wages, better benefits and safer working conditions for Amazon workers, many of whom experience economic insecurity while working for a $2.3 trillion company. It is not said how many Amazon warehouse workers or drivers will join the strike.
The union has focused mainly on organizing delivery workers, who the company says are not its employees because they are directly employed by contractors that Amazon has hired to handle package deliveries.
That kind of setup gives Amazon more cover against unionization efforts in an industry — transportation and trucking — dominated by the Teamsters. However, the union has argued before the National Labor Relations Board that the drivers, who wear Amazon’s ubiquitous gray-blue vests and drive similarly colored vans, should be classified as employees of the company.
Meanwhile, the online retailer has accused the union of spreading a “false narrative” about the thousands of workers it claims to represent. Amazon has also touted its pay, saying it is offering warehouse and transportation workers a base wage of $22 an hour plus benefits. The hourly wages for outsourced delivery personnel were also recently increased.
NLRB under Biden
In September, the NLRB, which has taken a more pro-labor stance under President Joe Biden, filed a complaint finding that the drivers were joint employees of Amazon. The agency also accused Amazon of unlawfully failing to negotiate a contract with the Teamsters for drivers at a California delivery center.
The Teamsters union says it also represents Amazon warehouse workers, including thousands of employees at the major New York City fulfillment center who voted to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union.
Amazon objected to the 2022 election results, claiming the Amazon Labor Union and the Federal Labor Council tainted the vote. A regional NLRB director filed a complaint last year accusing Amazon of violating the law by refusing to bargain with the union.
Amazon, in turn, is challenging the NLRB’s constitutionality in federal court, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In June, the Supreme Court made it harder for the agency to win injunctions in labor disputes, siding with Starbucks in a case brought by the company.
Unlike Amazon, contract negotiations are ongoing at Starbucks. Last year, the coffee chain’s employees left their jobs twice.
Patricia Campos-Medina, who recently ran for the U.S. Senate as a New Jersey Democrat and directs Cornell University’s Worker Institute in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said she expects there will be more union activity before Trump comes to power.
Trump’s responses will give the public a chance to see what his “commitments are to the working class,” Campos-Medina said.
