I’m a Starbucks barista, and here’s why I’m going on strike
This holiday season, the last thing my coworkers and I wanted to do was go on strike—but this week Starbucks has left us no other choice. As baristas, we make Starbucks run. We’re the reason the company hit record-breaking sales in its fourth quarter last year—and yet Starbucks continues to fail to invest in us, choosing to cut our hours rather than give us more support on the floor as we struggle to fulfill thousands of ever-more-complicated drink orders every day. When I started working as a barista at Starbucks almost 18 years ago, I was drawn in by the company’s warm atmosphere and commitment to building community. As a barista, I loved being able to connect with our customers, along with the dozens of amazing baristas I’ve been honored to work alongside. But lately that connection has been strained by the impossible workload my colleagues and I have been saddled with due to understaffing across stores. Working at a drive-through store where there are a maximum of four baristas on the floor at one time, each of us is expected to do the job of multiple people. And the work multiplies when the holidays bring in a flood of customers, making things far from merry for the skeleton crew often tasked to handle the chaos with a smile on our faces. It’s no wonder customers—especially younger customers—are turning away from Starbucks, finding other options, and spending their hard-earned money elsewhere. On top of dealing with the stress of understaffing at my store, I wake up every day fearing that my hours are going to be cut. I make just a little over $18 an hour—that’s far from a livable wage in Urbana, Illinois, where an average one-bedroom apartment costs $1,125 a month to rent. That’s especially true when I have to beg my manager to ensure I’m scheduled for at least 20 hours of work a week. If I don’t meet those 20 hours every week, I could lose my benefits and the health insurance I rely on to care for my three children, including my 10-year-old daughter, who has type 1 diabetes. For me, ensuring I’m able to get enough hours is literally a life-or-death situation. My daughter needs her insulin. Starbucks Workers United members picket outside a Starbucks store in Chicago on December 20, 2024. [Photo: Vincent Alban/Bloomberg/Getty Images] When the opportunity came around to organize my store last year, I immediately jumped at it. I was proud to join the thousands of Starbucks workers organizing with the union to win a voice on the job, living wages, and the protections and staffing we need to be able to make Starbucks the great place it used to be. And I’m just as proud to be joining baristas across the country this week as we go on strike to protest the company’s unfair labor practices and show executives that their behavior at the bargaining table won’t fly and that we—and our customers—deserve better. It’s great the company has invested in leadership at the top—now it’s time for Starbucks to pay us what we’re worth, and to move toward resolving the hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practice charges it’s still facing for violating labor law during the union’s national organizing campaign. After union partners put forth a bargaining proposal last month to double parental leave for retail employees, the company declared just weeks later it is expanding leave to all baristas—showing that when our union organizes and speaks out together, we can deliver results for all baristas. But our work is far from over, and isolated policies alone can’t fix our workplaces. (Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.) How did we get here? Less than two weeks before the company’s end-of-year deadline to bargain a foundational framework for contracts with our union—one that would transform the lives of more than 11,000 Starbucks baristas across the country—it proposed an economic package this month with no new wage increases for union baristas now and a guarantee of only 1.5% in future years. Just think about that. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s pay package is worth $57,000 an hour—on top of his salary—a shocking 10,000 times what the median barista makes. In the same year that Starbucks gave Niccol a $113 million golden greeting, the company had the audacity to tell us—the very baristas who fuel its profits—that there’s no money to invest in our raises. We entered an agreement back in February to bargain a foundational framework—the company said repeatedly that it wanted one finalized by December 2024. A part of that framework included resolving outstanding legal issues with union baristas. Yet Starbucks has failed to fully resolve hundreds of unfair labor practice charges. And it has not brought a viable economic proposal to the table. Starbucks did not put forth a real raise for baristas over the past three months of bargaining meetings. These walkouts, over unresolved unfair labor practice charges and the company’s failure to offer a serious
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This holiday season, the last thing my coworkers and I wanted to do was go on strike—but this week Starbucks has left us no other choice.
As baristas, we make Starbucks run. We’re the reason the company hit record-breaking sales in its fourth quarter last year—and yet Starbucks continues to fail to invest in us, choosing to cut our hours rather than give us more support on the floor as we struggle to fulfill thousands of ever-more-complicated drink orders every day.
When I started working as a barista at Starbucks almost 18 years ago, I was drawn in by the company’s warm atmosphere and commitment to building community. As a barista, I loved being able to connect with our customers, along with the dozens of amazing baristas I’ve been honored to work alongside. But lately that connection has been strained by the impossible workload my colleagues and I have been saddled with due to understaffing across stores.
Working at a drive-through store where there are a maximum of four baristas on the floor at one time, each of us is expected to do the job of multiple people. And the work multiplies when the holidays bring in a flood of customers, making things far from merry for the skeleton crew often tasked to handle the chaos with a smile on our faces. It’s no wonder customers—especially younger customers—are turning away from Starbucks, finding other options, and spending their hard-earned money elsewhere.
On top of dealing with the stress of understaffing at my store, I wake up every day fearing that my hours are going to be cut. I make just a little over $18 an hour—that’s far from a livable wage in Urbana, Illinois, where an average one-bedroom apartment costs $1,125 a month to rent. That’s especially true when I have to beg my manager to ensure I’m scheduled for at least 20 hours of work a week. If I don’t meet those 20 hours every week, I could lose my benefits and the health insurance I rely on to care for my three children, including my 10-year-old daughter, who has type 1 diabetes. For me, ensuring I’m able to get enough hours is literally a life-or-death situation. My daughter needs her insulin.
When the opportunity came around to organize my store last year, I immediately jumped at it. I was proud to join the thousands of Starbucks workers organizing with the union to win a voice on the job, living wages, and the protections and staffing we need to be able to make Starbucks the great place it used to be.
And I’m just as proud to be joining baristas across the country this week as we go on strike to protest the company’s unfair labor practices and show executives that their behavior at the bargaining table won’t fly and that we—and our customers—deserve better. It’s great the company has invested in leadership at the top—now it’s time for Starbucks to pay us what we’re worth, and to move toward resolving the hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practice charges it’s still facing for violating labor law during the union’s national organizing campaign.
After union partners put forth a bargaining proposal last month to double parental leave for retail employees, the company declared just weeks later it is expanding leave to all baristas—showing that when our union organizes and speaks out together, we can deliver results for all baristas. But our work is far from over, and isolated policies alone can’t fix our workplaces. (Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.)
How did we get here? Less than two weeks before the company’s end-of-year deadline to bargain a foundational framework for contracts with our union—one that would transform the lives of more than 11,000 Starbucks baristas across the country—it proposed an economic package this month with no new wage increases for union baristas now and a guarantee of only 1.5% in future years.
Just think about that. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s pay package is worth $57,000 an hour—on top of his salary—a shocking 10,000 times what the median barista makes. In the same year that Starbucks gave Niccol a $113 million golden greeting, the company had the audacity to tell us—the very baristas who fuel its profits—that there’s no money to invest in our raises.
We entered an agreement back in February to bargain a foundational framework—the company said repeatedly that it wanted one finalized by December 2024. A part of that framework included resolving outstanding legal issues with union baristas. Yet Starbucks has failed to fully resolve hundreds of unfair labor practice charges. And it has not brought a viable economic proposal to the table. Starbucks did not put forth a real raise for baristas over the past three months of bargaining meetings.
These walkouts, over unresolved unfair labor practice charges and the company’s failure to offer a serious economic package, are just the beginning. Starbucks can’t turn its business around without baristas like us. We want to partner with the company to return Starbucks to its storied past. We’re ready to consider proposals that include meaningful raises for union workers and resolve the outstanding unfair labor practices. Starbucks, it’s your move.
