From Associated Press , San Diego UT
Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday, hours before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders visited striking baristas on a picket line.
The development came amid a continuing strike by Starbucks’ union that began last month at dozens of locations around the country [including San Diego].
The workers want better hours and increased staffing, and they are angry that Starbucks hasn’t agreed on a contract nearly four years after workers voted to unionize at a Buffalo store. Union votes at other locations followed, and about 550 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned stores are now unionized. The coffee giant also has around 7,000 licensed locations at airports, grocery stores and other locales.
Workers and the company dispute the extent and impact of the strike, but Mamdani, Sanders and some state and city officials sought to amplify the baristas’ message by mingling with scores of strikers and supporters outside a Starbucks shop in Brooklyn.
“These are not demands of greed — these are demands of decency,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist who ran on pledges to aid working-class people, told the crowd. Some workers carried giant mock-ups of Starbucks takeout cups, bearing the union’s logo instead of the coffee chain’s insignia.
Four years after the first shop’s union vote, “Starbucks has refused to sit down and negotiate a fair contract,” said Sanders, a Vermont independent who supported Mamdani’s campaign.
A message seeking comment on the progressive politicians’ picket-line visit was sent to Starbucks.
Striking baristas described a harried workplace with chronic short-staffing, online orders so complex that the ticket is sometimes longer than the cup, and last-minute calls to come in.
“It is the company’s issue to give us the labor amount to schedule partners fairly, and they are not scheduling us fairly, no matter how much money we are making them,” said Gabriel Pierre, 26, a shift supervisor at a store in suburban Bellmore.
Starbucks has been trying to bounce back from a period of lagging sales as inflation-conscious U.S. customers questioned whether its coffee concoctions were worth the money. The Seattle-based company recently reported the first increase in nearly two years in same-store sales — a term for sales at locations open at least a year — but restructuring costs, store redesigns and other changes took a bite out of profits in its July-September quarter.
Under the agreement announced Monday with New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Starbucks will pay $3.4 million in civil penalties, in addition to the $35 million it is paying workers. The company also agreed to comply with the city’s Fair Workweek law going forward.
The company said it’s committed to operating responsibly and complying with all applicable local laws and regulations everywhere it does business, but Starbucks also noted the complexities of the city’s law.
“This is notoriously challenging to manage,” spokesperson Jaci Anderson said.
Most of the affected employees who held hourly positions will receive $50 for each week worked from July 2021 through July 2024, the department said. Workers who experienced a violation after that may be eligible for compensation by filing a complaint with the department.
“I sure hope that it gives Starbucks an awakening,” said Kaari Harsila, 21, a Brooklyn store shift supervisor who was picketing Monday.
The settlement also guarantees that employees laid off during recent store closings in the city will get an opportunity for reinstatement at other Starbucks locations.
The city began investigating in 2022 after receiving dozens of worker complaints against several Starbucks locations. The investigation eventually expanded to hundreds of stores. The city said the probe found, among other things, that most Starbucks employees never got regular schedules, making it difficult for staffers to plan other commitments, such as child care, education or other jobs.
The company also denied workers the chance to pick up extra shifts, so they remained part-timers even when they wanted to work more, according to the city.
From Associated Press with AP Press writer Bruce Shipkowski contributed from Toms River, New Jersey.
Local San Diego Starbucks Workers Also on Strike
Baristas at over 120 union Starbucks locations are continuing to strike as part of the ‘Red Cup Rebellion‘ over allegations of unfair labor practices from the global coffee giant, with a picket line being held on Tuesday in Hillcrest.
The Hillcrest picket line will take place at the Starbucks located at 1240 University Ave and will run from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Union Starbucks baristas teamed up with Starbucks Workers United, comprising 11,000 baristas across over 550 Starbucks stores, to launch an open-ended unfair labor practice (ULP) strike demanding a fair union contract, the resolution of unfair labor practices and a better future at Starbucks.
The strike continues 18 months after national framework bargaining began in April 2024. In September 2024, union baristas presented a set of economic proposals for negotiations to increase wages and benefits.
Starbucks went on to deny all of the proposals three months later in December. In exchange, Starbucks put forth an economic package that would not raise wages in the first year of the contract. Additionally, baristas felt the proposal did not address the core issues of hours and staffing.
According to Starbucks Workers United, “Starbucks backtracked on the previously agreed-upon path forward. This prompted Workers United to file a ULP charge in December 2024, alleging Starbucks had failed to bargain in good faith and was undermining the representative status of the union.”
PHOTOS: Man sentenced after 34 animals rescued from flooded home
The ULP was then amended and expanded in April 2025.
The Red Cup Rebellion grew on Nov. 28, when hundreds of new baristas from 26 more stores joined what has become the longest ULP strike in Starbucks history.
The three remaining demands in the union contract include:
1. Better hours to improve staffing in stores
2. Higher take-home pay
3. Resolution for hundreds of outstanding alleged unfair labor practice charges
As of Black Friday, more than 125,000 supporters and allies have signed the ‘No Contract, No Coffee’ pledge to not buy Starbucks while baristas are on ULP strike, according to Starbucks Workers United.
While baristas are confident the union contract is close to the finish line, they still feel that Starbucks is “stonewalling” them. San Diego Fox5 News
I worked for *$s back in the 90’s before the company had built two thousand stores. I worked in a Long Beach store on Second Ave. Not a bad place to work then. I worked construction in the day time & then usually closed the store. Shit, even then, around 1996, the store was grossing about $5000 per diem & then the closer to Xmas the store consistently generated about $7000 per diem. Good tips each week. I worked Long Beach, Torrence & then a store up in Sacramento. The greed from upper management is now readily apparent.
I stopped buying their product about 18 months ago.
I stopped buying their product about 18 months ago.
Almost spit out my home brew coffee laughing reading this. It’s a commodity job for high schoolers now. Or AI to automate. The only real protest is to stop buying.
I stopped going years ago simply because there were (and are now) so many better options.
As many OBceans know, we had our own Starbucks battle back in 2001 and mounted a serious boycott of the store. And even though we “lost” — it didn’t close (then) – an informal boycott of the place by locals went on for decades. If you’re interested in more details, check into it via our search bar at the top of the page.
Jungle Java was a favorite of mine back then. Always more people there than Starf***s. Now (for OB) it’s Coffee Cycle and OBeans.