Evanston, Ill.—We kicked off our strike against Starbucks on Red Cup Day, Thursday, Nov. 13. That is historically Starbucks’ biggest earning day. It is notorious among baristas as being a really tough day, where customers are very excited to be able to get a red cup, and it’s completely busy from opening to closing.  We are looking for Starbucks to resolve some of their outstanding unfair labor practice complaints. 

We also want them back at the bargaining table, so that we can ask for a contract that guarantees our hours and access to benefits, higher take-home pay, and that the level of staffing is able to meet the demands of what the job is asking us for as they’re rolling out new policies. 

I work at this location on Dempster. Earlier last December we unionized, and we participated in a strike before Christmas. Starbucks has not brought us a new offer since that time. That offer was a 1% raise, which doesn’t keep up with inflation. So we are asking them to come back and bargain in good faith, actually bring us a serious offer. 

UNDERSTAFFING AND SPEEDUP

Since the new CEO has come in with his “back to Starbucks” initiative, they’ve been adding positions (job responsibilities) to the floor that we have not, for a single day, had adequate staff to even try to implement. One is called the green apron service, where he wants someone to just stand by the handoff plane (the counter space designated for customers to pick up their completed orders), greet customers and hand out their drinks.

We’re still struggling to have enough people just to take orders and make drinks and food. I think it’s really important that, if you’re bringing these ideas, you also have to have some way to practically have them happen. 

At times, when things are great, working at Starbucks is a pretty good experience. We get to be part of the community interacting with customers. But oftentimes, unfortunately, due to understaffing, we are scrambling to get things done. Customers are frustrated waiting up to 15 minutes and we feel their frustration. We are also frustrated, trying to keep up with the demands while also feeling unsupported, especially from the management trying to bear down on the new policies. It feels like we are being cornered between the customers and the company with no support. 

I think the median employee gets 19 hours a week of work, which is really unfortunate, because our cutoff to receive benefits is 20 hours. A lot of people are not able to get to that 20 hours. Despite having the availability, despite seeing understaffing on the floor, they are hiring more baristas instead of giving more hours to people who want the hours. It has been really frustrating.

A CALL FOR COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

At the last round of bargaining, they did kind of admit the quiet part out loud and said that they are hesitant to give us a contract because that would signal to non-unionized stores that there is something that can be done and they’re afraid of us gaining that momentum.

My message would be get organized, continue pushing, because we do have some power. Customers can boycott Starbucks. We are hoping that this can be a community effort for the wider labor movement beyond Starbucks.

There has been a lot of support from the community. I think we’ve seen maybe two or three people that are upset. But for the most part, especially around here, people have been really supportive. A lot of people driving by have been honking, and a lot are coming and asking if we need anything. It’s been great to see the community support us that way. 

–Barista

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We’ve all personally experienced really difficult situations working for Starbucks. Personally, I’ve noticed that there’s been a lot of mistreatment and not really handling staffing the workplace well. Pay is a really big issue for a lot of people like myself.

A lot of my co-workers, we’re realizing that our pay is just not keeping up with the pace of inflation and then seeing how our CEO makes an extraordinary amount of money in comparison to what we make. It’s really clear that it’s very easily possible for the company to give us what we’re demanding: livable wages, more and better staffing in our stores so that our business hours can run more smoothly.

TOO FEW WORKERS = DISAPPOINTED CUSTOMERS

We want to have less issues with our customers so it’s easier for them and easier for us. A lot of times we’ll run day parts, which are morning, mid-day and afternoon/evenings, and a lot of times a typical day part may need five or six people working the front of the house to keep everything going.

We’ll have schedule shifts where it’s only two or three people working and that creates a lot of difficulty where we’re not able to do our job as effectively as we should in order to create that experience that most customers expect from us. That creates a disconnect between the workers and the customers where they’re confused. They’re not understanding why they’re not receiving the service that they would expect.

We’re not really sure how to explain that to them, that we just don’t have the people we need behind the counter.

WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE A UNION

The store here just recently unionized. I came to support the strike here. Some of us are actually from different suburbs and we’re out here supporting this store right now. My store where I work is about a 40-minute drive from here and just recently unionized over the summer. We are also on strike, as is this store here in Evanston.

So far in the store I work at, we’ve been represented although we don’t have a contract. But we do have that union representation that we can use whenever there’s issues with the company. Now we can advocate for ourselves and demand to have our union representative there. Especially recently, with the store closures that have happened around the nation, we weren’t affected. But I know of other stores that were. Thanks to the union, they were able to get guaranteed store transfers instead of just being let go.

I would like people to know that we really do want to be able to serve the community in a way that would be easier for everybody involved. We don’t want to alienate our customers. We want the resources that we need in order to create a better working environment, so that they can get the best service that they deserve for the price that they’re paying, especially because it’s really high.

–Emily