Inside the Bitter Battle Between Starbucks and Its Workers

Nearly three years since the first Starbucks store voted to unionize, approximately 12,000 workers across more than 500 stores have now joined the Starbucks Workers Union. Despite a brutal fight thus far, both sides say a new contract now seems within reach. But Starbucks’ recent actions behind the scenes say something different.

Starbucks spent two years fighting the newly formed union, displaying a shocking level of viciousness for a company that markets itself as progressive and refers to its workers as “partners.” They committed scores of labor violations, shut down organizing stores in Seattle over dubious “security concerns,” and refused to negotiate with Starbucks Workers United. A judge for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled the company engaged in “egregious and widespread misconduct demonstrating a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights.”

This approach can be traced back to longtime CEO Howard Schultz, who has been outspoken against unions for decades. In a 2022 town hall meeting with workers, then-CEO Schultz angrily told a worker who inquired about the company’s NLRB violations, “If you’re not happy at Starbucks, you can go work for another company.” The NLRB ruled this was an unlawful and coercive threat.

But now, two years later, it appears the company is done with the threats.

So what changed?

After Howard Schultz stepped down for the third time in 2023, shortly before being dragged into a Senate committee hearing to testify, new CEO Laxman Narasimhan appeared better equipped to read the room. He saw the company’s perception as a friendly coffee shop was evaporating.

The company quickly changed course under his new leadership, and in February 2024 released a statement saying, in part: “We have agreed with Workers United that we will begin discussions on a foundational framework designed to achieve collective bargaining agreements, including a fair process for organizing, and the resolution of some outstanding litigation.” 

After months of tentative pro-cooperation statements and gestures, bargaining began in earnest in March 2024. According to multiple people involved in these bargaining sessions, Starbucks is actively in negotiations on this “foundational framework,” a form agreement for each unionized store to use as a base contract, by the end of this year. Stores will then bargain store-specific items from there.

When Starbucks’ board of directors ousted Narasimhan in August and hired former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol to replace him, there was concern that all this cooperation would cease. However, the company insists otherwise. “Workers United and Starbucks continue to make considerable progress on the framework intended to be the basis of each single-store contract,” Starbucks Spokesperson Phil Gee says. “We look forward to making additional progress in future sessions, remaining steadfast in our goal to reach ratified contracts for partners in represented stores by the end of this year.”

However the company is still mired in legal challenges. 

This month, the NLRB filed a complaint against Starbucks that in 2022 and 2023 the company changed unionized workers’ schedules without consulting the union, a labor violation that affected several thousand workers at 290 stores—and dropped some workers below a threshold that caused them to lose healthcare benefits. The allegation —if proven true in the trial— would require the company to pay the group of workers what they would have earned in those shifts, which the union’s legal team says could reach “north of $30 million.”

The company responded publicly by saying, “Our decisions were made across our system, in unionized and non-unionized stores, and they were made without regard to organizing activity at Starbucks.”

But therein lies the problem: once your workers have organized, you can’t arbitrarily make decisions across your company without bargaining through their union. You have to “regard” their “organizing activity.” That’s the whole deal.

Unless you don’t believe in workers’ rights at all.

Starbucks’ defense against this charge, prepared by their attorneys at union-busting firm Littler Mendleson, is aggressive to the point of unhinged—and may show how Starbucks really feels about their workers, despite all these nice public statements.

Among their 29 affirmative defense claims filed on October 24 are many vicious assertions that the NLRB itself is invalid. Starbucks’ lawyers claim the NLRB is a compromised body that has failed to “maintain and protect the integrity and neutrality of its processes,” that “the National Labor Relations Act is unconstitutional,” and that every NLRB judge has been unconstitutionally appointed. This attack mirrors those leveled at the NLRB by SpaceX, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s—three companies that have shown themselves as uniquely anti-worker by racking up hundreds of NLRB complaints over the past few years.

In a real kicker, the ghouls Starbucks hired at Littler Mendleson assert that because President Biden fired Trump-appointed former general counsel Peter Robb —a former union-busting lawyer who spent three years trying to kill the NLRB’s power to protect us workers from the gears of capitalism —all subsequent NLRB general counsel appointments should be invalidated along with all decisions they’ve made to protect workers.

Starbucks did not comment on these statements.

This isn’t the first time this year that they’ve pushed an anti-worker agenda in the courts, either. In June, they successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to use a stricter rubric to limit which labor cases move forward in the future. The legal counsel for our friendly neighborhood coffee chain has been making similar arguments in NLRB filings as far back as May 2022. 

So it appears that although their PR strategy has changed, their legal strategy behind closed doors has not.

If the two sides don’t come to an agreement before the Trump administration takes office in January, who’s to say the company will keep playing nice? Trump is widely expected to swiftly replace General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and install another anti-worker to head the NLRB that’s more in the vein of his first-term appointee, union-busting lawyer Peter Robb.

They also recently sent out an internal message to their workers that starting in January 2025, remote workers who aren’t in the office at least three days a week will be subject to an “accountability process” with consequences “up to, and including, separation.” New CEO Brian Niccol will not be subject to this policy, as he works remotely from his home in Newport Beach, CA, 1,000 miles away from the company’s Seattle headquarters.

Nevertheless, workers I’ve spoken with say they believe the company earnestly wants to reach an agreement with the union.

“The company has said it quite a few times at the bargaining table, and they’ve also said it publicly,” says Jasmine, a barista at one of the earliest organized stores in Buffalo, NY. “I think we’re on track to get the contract done by the end of 2024.”

And it’s been a long time coming for Jasmine and her co-workers, who organized way back in December 2021. She says they knew they’d be in for a lengthy fight, and have been emboldened through the tough times by how many new workers have joined the movement. She says many of these new workers—called “green beans”—specifically apply at her store because they’re a part of Starbucks Workers United and customers are vocal in their support.

But the work isn’t done yet.

Some key issues left to be hashed out include addressing widespread understaffing issues, healthcare benefits, and consistent scheduling and hours guarantees. Kay, a worker at a recently unionized store in Norman, OK, is especially excited about new agreed-upon contract points like established benchmarks for retraining and termination, and mandatory two-week notices—rare protections in right-to-work states.

Kay points out that poor working conditions can take over your life. “Then it’s more than just going to work, clocking in, clocking out. You’re taking it home,” she says. “But when you have a good work-life balance, you’re doing a better job at your job. You’re in a happier mood. It’s easier to connect with customers.”

Mac, a barista at a Bellingham store — the 500th to unionize— values that customer connection. “I like that it’s a place where people can go to work or chat with friends…I get to meet all sorts of new people every day, and I also get to see friendly familiar faces,” they say. “People remember my name, just like I try to remember theirs. I really think it’s helped me grow as a social person.”

They’ve both worked at various Starbucks locations around Washington, unionized and not. “I’ve experienced many different iterations of what it should and shouldn’t look like. And I think the union just makes the most sense,” Mac says. “Sometimes Starbucks is just too far away to hear your voice. So that’s what the union does, it amplifies it.”

But the question is: who’s on the other end of the line?