In First, Starbucks Workers United and Its 12,000 Members Call for Boycott

In a first, Starbucks Workers United and its 12,000 members are calling for a boycott of the coffee chain, after spending nearly 5 years pressuring the company to negotiate a first contract since the first location unionized in 2021.

“At a time when working-class people across the country are struggling in a challenging economy, it is no longer possible to be both a Starbucks customer and in support of workers,” the union said in a statement announcing the boycott. “[C]hoosing to spend money at Starbucks is choosing a law breaking corporation over the baristas who make your coffee everyday exactly as you ask for it.”

The union points to determinations that Starbucks has committed hundreds of violations of federal labor law, “more than any other company in modern history,” the group said.

The call for a boycott is an escalation of the union’s fight for a contract with the company. Starbucks workers have previously launched targeted strikes in hopes of forcing the company to the bargaining table.

But the company has refused to agree to a contract with reasonable pay and working conditions, the union has said. This is despite the fact that more than 700 Starbucks locations have unionized since 2021, now representing roughly 5 percent of the company’s workforce.

The goal of the boycott is to achieve a first contract with “a minimum $17/hr wage, enough hours to live on, better staffing in our stores, and basic workplace protection,” as well as an end to Starbucks’s union busting. This is a revised proposal from the union’s previous demand for a $20 an hour minimum wage, which it revised earlier this year in hopes of restarting long-stalled contract negotiations.

“Instead of finalizing a fair and reasonable union contract, Starbucks has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of care for the workers who fuel the company’s profits by wasting millions of dollars on Al and technology that doesn’t work, launching countless gimmicky drinks designed to distract from real problems, and inventing pointless policies that do nothing but make our jobs harder,” the union said.

In response to the boycott, the company said that it’s “committed to engaging in productive bargaining,” and already has “competitive pay” and “industry-leading benefits,” per HuffPost. “People love working at Starbucks which is why we have the lowest turnover in the industry and why more than 1 million people every year apply to wear the green apron,” a company spokesperson said.

The boycott is being backed by the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

“America’s unions are proud to endorse [Starbucks Workers United]’s boycott of stand-alone corporate Starbucks stores. Workers are fed up with unchecked corporate greed, and we’re standing with them in their fight for a fair contract,” the AFL-CIO said in a statement.

In place of Starbucks, the union published a list of coffee shops that have a collective bargaining agreement that it encouraged supporters to visit instead in locations across the U.S.

The Starbucks union wave helped launch a historic unionization effort of service workers across the U.S. in the early 2020s — but even as some efforts at retail stores like Barnes & Noble and Apple succeeded in gaining a bargaining agreement, other companies like Trader Joe’s and REI still have yet to negotiate a first contract.