In These Times Honors Starbucks Workers
Starbucks workers received an Honorable Mention in the Labor Organizer of the Year awards for a groundbreaking campaign that is training up a generation of worker-organizers.
Fatima Jalloh
This article is part of the In These Times Labor Organizer of the Year series. The award honors emerging leaders building worker power across the country. Starbucks workers received one of two honorable mentions in 2025. Read about the winners here.
The campaign to organize Starbucks had its humble beginnings in 2021. Forty-nine workers in the Buffalo, N.Y., region signed a letter to former Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, who had boasted about record company growth while workers (or “partners,” in the corporate lingo) struggled and cried in back rooms over the inability to make ends meet.
Four years on, Starbucks Workers United boasts over 570 unionized stores and almost 13,000 members.
In April 2024, after years of stonewalling, Starbucks resumed bargaining with the union, with the goal of a contract by year’s end. A democratic bargaining committee of more than 500 workers came up with nine main proposals, including a strong foundation of rights, health and safety measures; guaranteed and consistent scheduling; a $20 base wage for baristas; and reliable retirement plans. Negotiations broke down in December 2024, after the multi-billion-dollar company offered a 1.5% increase in wages, which the union took as a slap in the face.
The union’s response was to shut down more than 300 stores in 2024’s “strike before Christmas” (though Starbucks claims the number is 170), asking patrons to boycott the coffee shops during the strike in solidarity. Following the strike, Starbucks agreed to enter mediation with the union to try to reach a deal.
In April, workers at a Starbucks store in Sartell, Minn., became the latest to join the union.
Fatima Jalloh (they/them) is a poet and journalist from Jacksonville, Florida, currently based in Chicago, Illinois. With an education in Journalism, Black Studies, and Poetry from Northwestern University, they work as an editorial intern for In These Times alongside their own personal writing projects.
