More than 1,000 unionized Starbucks workers in 65 stores across the nation launched an indefinite strike on Thursday amid their push for a collective bargaining agreement.
The Starbucks walkout, which the workers are calling the “Red Cup Rebellion,” began on Red Cup Day, a sales event kicking off the corporate coffee chain’s holiday season menu that typically drives high sales. The union, which represents 9,500 workers, or 4.4 percent of Starbucks’s cafe workforce, warned that the strike could be the largest and longest in the company’s history.
The Starbucks strike follows years of failed negotiations and comes as CEO Brian Niccol shut down hundreds of underperforming stores, including six in San Francisco, including Castro’s unionized Bearbucks, and its unionized flagship in Seattle.
The strike is set to last indefinitely. “If Starbucks keeps stonewalling a fair contract and refusing to end union-busting, they’ll see their business grind to a halt,” said Michelle Eisen, Starbucks Workers United spokesperson and 15-year veteran barista. “No contract, no coffee is more than a tagline — it’s a pledge to interrupt Starbucks’s operations and profits until a fair union contract and an end to unfair labor practices are won.”
The Starbucks union has filed more than 1,000 charges to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for alleged unfair practices like firing unionizing baristas. Of these, Administrative Law Judges and NLRB have found that Starbucks has committed more than 400 labor violations so far, according to a memo from Starbucks Workers United. More than 45 organizations and 100 US Senators and Representatives have called on the company to reach an agreement with the union.
Their agenda, including increased pay and staffing concerns, echoes those of coffee chains in the Bay and around the country that have unionized in recent years. From local victories to campaigns within corporate giants like Starbucks, the movement is fundamentally reshaping this niche of the service industry.
There has been a major unionization push among baristas in the Bay Area. In August 2022, Starbucks workers at the 18th and Castro location voted to unionize, followed by workers at the 9th and Irving location in 2023. Employees of Bay Area-founded coffee chain Peet’s Coffee unionized their first store in North Davis, with East Bay locations following suit shortly thereafter in 2023. Workers at the Philz Coffee location in Berkeley unionized last year. Employees of Bay Area-founded, Nestlé-owned chain Blue Bottle Coffee began unionization efforts last year, and in June of this year, four Blue Bottle locations across Oakland and Berkeley joined the Blue Bottle Independent Union. Baristas at the fast-growing East Bay-founded coffee company Highwire Coffee Roasters unionized in March of this year. And most recently, baristas at Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz and San Francisco unionized in October.
Local unionization efforts are seeing real results. Last month, the city ruled that Verve must pay more than $180,000 to employees at the company’s Market Street cafe after failing to provide health benefits required by San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance. The settlement covers 33 current and former employees who were denied health care expenditures between July 2022 and June 2025. Some individuals received up to $20,000 from Verve.
However, it is yet to be determined how or whether companies will address the scheduling concerns raised by so many baristas, and hourly workers, across the US.
Instead of scheduling employees full-time, companies routinely give them too few hours, hiring multiple part-time staffers in place of one full-time worker. The status of a contingent worker is precarious: They are not eligible for benefits, and their hours can fluctuate dramatically.
Underwork is the current plight of the hourly employee. Starbucks constantly talks up its generous benefits, but the median Starbucks worker made $14,674 last year. For the baristas, who earn a $15 minimum wage, this is about 19 hours a week, just shy of the 20 hours a week that Starbucks requires to qualify for those benefits. For the part-time worker, inconsistent scheduling can inhibit one’s ability to hold another job.
Cost of living is an acute concern for many in the industry. Many baristas cannot afford to drink the coffee they make daily. Substitute oat milk, add a shot of espresso and a pump of vanilla and one latte rings up just a couple dollars short of a barista’s entire hourly wage. That may be why Starbucks’s Niccol won the award for the largest CEO-to-worker pay gap this year, earning 6,666 times more than his average employee, according to AFL-CIO’s annual Executive Paywatch report.
But why is unionization effort heating up so much in the coffee industry in particular?
Althea Brennan, a union organizer for United Food and Commercial Workers, has a few ideas. “More and more in the American economy, folks are spending a significant part of their career working in service jobs,” Brennan told me.
She described many Bay Area baristas as being downwardly-mobile “people who went to college, but weren't able to get the type of job that they wanted.” With the job market as bleak as ever, especially for those who might have migrated to the Bay Area specifically for now nearly-obsolete computer science work, barista work tends to be a common pivot. “A lot of them are making substantially less than they maybe thought they were going to make out of undergrad.”
While companies might be charging extra for cold foams and seasonal syrups, Brennan says, “I don't think you can undersell the cost of living crisis.”
