Starbucks Union Plans Strike at Hundreds of Stores for Red Cup Day

Thousands of Starbucks workers across the country plan to walk off the job Thursday when the world’s largest chain of cafes expects to see one of its busiest days of the year.

The union representing those workers says they are protesting understaffing and the chain’s refusal to negotiate with unionized stores.

Thursday is Red Cup Day, when Starbucks hands out free 16-oz reusable coffee tumblers. Customers pack Starbucks stores for the promotion, but employees say the chain doesn’t schedule enough workers, resulting in interminable lines and frazzled baristas struggling to keep up with the unending demand.

In an emailed statement, Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trull said the cafe chain is working on improvements to its scheduling system to provide more "stability, flexibility and consistency," to workers' schedules.

Some customers get angry when supplies run out and take out their frustrations on baristas, a union representative said in an emailed statement.

Understaffing “leaves us overwhelmed, and customers with long wait times,” Caitlin Power, a barista at a Gardner, Mass., Starbucks said through a union representative. 

The rush of customers means more is asked of the workers scheduled that day, said Neha Cremin, a barista at an Oklahoma City Starbucks.

“At my store, we're expected to make drive-thru orders, walk-up orders, mobile orders, and delivery orders,” she said. “This is difficult enough to manage with a fully-staffed floor, but we're often expected to manage all these things with only three workers.”

Trull noted that Starbucks announced company-wide raises between 3% and 4% last week and referred to comments from company executives in a recent earnings call in which they pledging to return 20% of Starbucks' profits to the stores in the form of wage increases, training and equipment.

The union said last week that the raises were “tone deaf” considering the coffee chain saw a year-over-year revenue increase of 11% in the most recent quarter.

Starbucks Workers United has dubbed the single-day strike the “Red Cup Rebellion.”

Striking workers hope to expand the union by delivering survival kits to non-unionized stores, hoping to encourage workers at those cafes to organize.

In an email, Trull put the blame on Starbucks Workers United, which represents around 9,000 workers at roughly 250 North American stores, for the lack of progress in contract negotiations.

"Despite escalating rhetoric and recurring rallies demanding a fair contract, Workers United hasn't agreed to meet to progress contract bargaining in more than four months and has yet to deliver on the campaign promises they've made," he said.

The union, on the other hand, says that Starbucks is dragging its feet by coming up with flimsy excuses not to negotiate.

Thursday's work stoppage would mark the second straight year unionized Starbucks employees walked off the job during the annual promotion to protest the lack of progress on union negotiations.