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Unionized Starbucks workers across the US are casting their votes on whether to hold a strike amid anger over pay and conditions at the world’s largest coffee chain, and allegations it breached labor laws by engaging in bad faith bargaining.

Starbucks has faced a rapid wave of mobilization since 2021. Starbucks Workers United, a union representing baristas at the chain, has won elections at more than 650 of its locations in 45 states and the District of Columbia, representing more than 12,000 workers.

Butit has yet to obtain a contract. Starbucks Workers United claims company management started to “majorly stonewall” the union; Starbucks claims the union walked away from the bargaining table.

A strike authorization vote called by Starbucks Workers United began last Friday, 24 October, and will continue until Sunday 2 November. About 70 pickets have been planned in 60 cities across the US.

Many Starbucks baristas say they are struggling to make ends meet. Sabina Aguirre, a barista in Columbus, Ohio, said she made less than $16 an hour. “That’s not sustainable for a day-to-day life,” she said. “If I didn’t have help with my rent, I would be homeless right now. That’s the reality of my situation.

“It’s also the reality of the situation for a majority of the people I work with. Most Starbucks workers that I talk to on a day-to-day basis are one or two paychecks away from homelessness, and that shouldn’t be the reality of people who are working at a job that claims to support their workers.”

Late last year, Starbucks workers held five days of escalating strikes at stores across the US ahead of Christmas to demand finalizing a first union contract. But the action that workers are currently considering could pave the way for even larger strike actions, hitting more store locations nationwide.

“All the way back in 2021, workers organized around issues like needing better wages, better take-home pay, better hours, so they can actually make their ends meet, access the benefits they need and have better staffing so the floor can run better,” said Silvia Baldwin, a Starbucks barista in Philadelphia. “Since then, the company has also egregiously violated labor law, so workers are organizing around the company to actually making right those violations and making workers whole. Those are still the main issues that workers are fired up about.”

Baldwin, a bargaining delegate, said negotiating with Starbucks in 2024 for a period of months rendered some progress. Tentative agreements were reached covering 80-90% of the contract, she claimed, until they reached economic issues and settling unfair labor practice charges.

“The company really started to take a turn into bad faith bargaining,” added Baldwin. “The CEO regime changed. Brian Niccol was brought in. And around that same time the presidential election took place, Trump came into office, and the company began to majorly stonewall our bargaining committee and put forward proposals that were just extremely unserious.”

Unionized workers at Starbucks “are highly motivated, highly engaged, love doing their job and want it to be as good as it should be”, Baldwin said, and they can tell “the company exactly what it’s going to take to turn things around. If Brian Niccol wants to actually fix this company, you should listen to our union.”

It would take less than one average day’s sales to finalize the contract, the union has claimed. Niccol, the CEO, had a total compensation over the past year of $97.8m, whereas the median annual salary for a Starbucks employee in 2024 was $14,674.

The company has been under pressure for months, and announced earlier this year a slate of store closures around the US, including 59 union stores, as part of cost-cutting restructuring due to lagging sales.

If authorized, the strike will be closely watched throughout the US labor movement.

“It’s clear that bargaining has stalled. Thousands of Starbucks workers have voted to unionize, and they aren’t yet protected by a binding contract,” Rebecca Givan, a labor law professor at Rutgers University, said. “A strong showing in their strike-authorization vote will tell Starbucks management that these workers are serious about taking action if a contract isn’t agreed soon.

“Demonstrating that this national, dispersed campaign can lead to first contracts will send a message to workers nationwide that they can organize and win material gains, backed up with an enforceable contract.”

A spokesperson for Starbucks, Jaci Anderson, claimed the firm’s transformation campaign, known as Back to Starbucks, was working.

“Workers United, which represents around 4% of our partners, chose to walk away from the bargaining table. If they’re ready to come back, we’re ready to talk. Any agreement needs to reflect the reality that Starbucks already offers the best job in retail,” Anderson wrote in an email. “Hourly partners earn more than $30 an hour on average in pay and benefits and we’re investing over $500m to put more partners in stores during busy times.

“The facts show people like working at Starbucks. Partner engagement is up, turnover is nearly half the industry average and we get more than 1m job applications a year.”