Starbucks Workers Intensify Campaign

Experiences of DSA’s Starbucks Worker Solidarity Campaign in Seattle

By Bryan Watson and Connor Rauch

“Strike! Strike! Strike!” came the clarion call that broke the early morning still on July 17, announcing the arrival of dozens of Seattle Roastery workers to their strike line. Nearly 100 people – the vast majority being Starbucks workers – walked the picket line at the iconic Starbucks Roastery in Capitol Hill. Over the whole weekend, starting on Thursday and culminating on Sunday with this big walkout at the Roastery, Starbucks workers went out on strike at four stores in Seattle. The workers were protesting Starbucks closing five stores in the hometown of the international corporation – two of which were unionized – and management’s refusal to begin the legally required bargaining process with Roastery workers.

While the entire weekend was a show of strength, the strike at the Roastery was the most powerful. The Roastery is the crown jewel of Seattle Starbucks, and holds a special place in Starbucks’ line up of stores. There are only four Roasteries in the US. It’s also the brainchild of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and where he regularly gets his coffee. On an average weekend day the store makes $50,000 to 60,000! And with over 100 workers, it’s the largest workforce at a single location.

Changing Mood at the Starbucks Roastery

Nearly 80 percent of the 60 Roastery workers scheduled that day went on strike. The Starbucks Roastery was forced to close early, costing them thousands of dollars. But more importantly, it was an escalatory action that brought newly radicalized layers of workers into collective militant action, workers who had never been on strike or taken any workplace action before. Moreover, it was coordinated across multiple stores and drew Starbucks workers from Olympia and Marysville.

Unlike other stores, the vote to unionize was relatively close at the Roastery and Starbucks has been contesting it. This makes it significant that the shop went on strike with such a show of force – in solidarity with those stores which were closed and demanding that Starbucks’ management respects the vote to unionize at the roastery itself.

The Pacific Northwest has been the epicenter of strike action. In Seattle we’ve seen nearly a dozen so far this year! At these strikes, up to this point, there was usually a core group of workers – mainly Starbucks worker organizers – determined to take action: both participating in and leading the strikes and workplace actions. But at the Roastery you had dozens of workers getting involved who had never participated in strike actions before.

One worker explained to us that after 15 years at Starbucks they initially were lukewarm about the union. They thought that maybe it wasn’t necessary, believing that Starbucks was a progressive company and that they take care of their workers. But, they said, basically under the hammer blows of Starbucks union busting, they were convinced that they needed a union. They saw that things were getting worse with a lot of pressure being applied on their coworkers. Then they saw the store closures.The actions of Starbucks top management tore asunder the mask of progressivism that the corporation wears, revealing the true ugliness beneath – the true visage of Starbucks’ top management – cruel, savage, and motivated by one thing and one thing only: profits. That convinced them not just that they needed a union, but that they needed to get involved. That harkens back to the old saying, the boss is the best organizer!

Radicalizing Approach

The strategy from Starbucks Workers United from the start was to emphasize, “we are partners; we are not organizing a union in conflict with management.” The idea was to file union recognition votes with the NLRB, win those elections, and then start negotiations. In that strategy, the idea to go on strike so early, in some cases before stores had won union elections, was not part of the plan.

However, the workers were very quickly confronted with the need to hit back, or at least counter Starbucks’ union busting. So in the early stages of the unionizing campaign, there were one-off strikes, a day or a few days at individual stores. As that went on, the tactics changed and the workers reached out to other stores and started to coordinate across stores and between cities. That is still on a basic level right now, but it’s definitely going in the direction of further escalation and further collective action. That will be decisive to fight through and win. Furthermore, Starbucks workers have started to go to “cold shops” (stores with no known union activity) to talk with workers about unionizing and discreetly handing them “palm cards” with contact information. This, like the wave of strikes, was the Starbucks workers rewriting the playbook themselves.

Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) initially had a more conservative approach. They did not put forward concrete demands and – in the early stages – asked the DSA solidarity campaign not to go to other stores and try to encourage workers to also take action. SBWU was focused on developing the work on a store by store basis.

The Starbucks workers weren’t prepared for the onslaught of the union busting and the intimidation that followed, but that changed the rhythm of the fightback as well. The slow, incremental, more conservative approach that they tried first did not deliver the hoped for outcomes leading many workers to reach for more firepower to strike back against Starbucks.

Starbucks’ management’s battle plan is simple: a war of attrition and trying to run the clock out. Starbucks is legally required to begin negotiations once there’s a successful unionization vote. However, they are betting that if they delay and drag out the process they’ll outlast the workers. The Starbucks lawyers will use every opportunity to do this – if they are legally required to respond in 30 days, they’ll respond at 11:59pm on the 30th day with a proposal they know will be rejected, restarting the clock.

We saw the first coordinated strike action between stores in June. Workers at seven stores across Seattle took strike action and rallied in Pike Place Market near the first Starbucks store in protest of the so-called Heritage District, a unit of stores in and around Seattle’s Pike Place Market that Starbucks redistricted as a pretext for forcing out union activists and supporters (along with as many as two thirds of their co-workers). The roastery strike built on that coordination, bringing Starbucks workers from across the city and region in a massive show of force.

That’s exactly what’s needed to cut across the tactics of intimidation, delay and inaction. The next step will be to deepen the organizing across the region and more national coordination to mobilize community support and joint workplace action. Moreover, Starbucks workers continuing to agitate at “cold shops,” with support from unions and community organizations, is a key way to expand the campaign, stretch management thin, and win substantial contracts.

For the labor movement in general, the power of all the other existing unions unified could also be used to make the large support visible among working people. The power of the organized labor movement could be a real game changer to counter Starbucks’ union-busting attacks.

Seattle DSA’s Starbucks Workers Solidarity Campaign

Seattle DSA was there from the start. Since before the first store filed for unionization in Seattle, we’ve been postering around the city raising awareness about the union campaign. We’ve been tabling weekly outside of unionizing/unionized shops to build a list of supporters in Seattle using a pledge sheet, to let customers know about the union effort and Starbucks union busting. We’ve been able to use those lists to mobilize people for solidarity actions and to picket lines, to donate to the strike fund, and more. We’ve also built a robust social media effort through @VentiSolidarity on Twitter. In total we’ve conducted over 75 public facing events, from weekly tabling, Suds & Solidarity, strike support, “Weekend of 500 Posters,” and more!

The main tool to organize this work was the Starbucks Worker Solidarity Campaign that we launched. Seattle DSA set it up with co-chairs who are Starbucks workers. They are the main drivers of it. We are in communication with them on all fronts. We discuss where to put our tables, what to do and when, and what to bring to support the strike.

Seattle DSA and our Starbucks Worker Solidarity Campaign has really been the primary support network for these workers, especially when they go on strike. We’ve provided community support and supplies. We’ve provided picket signs. We’ve raised thousands for the strike fund. We’ve talked to customers. We’ve gathered thousands of signatures for the “no contract, no coffee” petition. DSA’s Starbucks Workers Solidarity Campaign is proud that the success of our community support and petition served as an inspiration for a nationwide community support petition now launched by SBWU.

The Starbucks Solidarity Campaign was also a tool to bring DSA members in Seattle together after this long pause of in person interactions due to Covid. As a part of the campaign, we organize “Suds and Solidarity” meetings where comrades get to know each other in a friendly atmosphere and discuss developments in the Starbucks union drive and the labor movement in general. After a “Suds and Solidarity” event we go out and poster in the community with our solidarity posters. We’ve put up over 2000 solidarity posters across the city! This has really been successful in spreading the word and getting people involved. That was one of the more attractive things to draw DSA members into activity. We also mobilized for a rally in protest of the firing of the Memphis 7, organized by Kshama Sawant’s council office, which was really successful.

Through this whole process, we have been able to get really close to the Starbucks workers. We are their first stop when they look for community support. Several Starbucks workers have now joined DSA. That is based on not coming in with a lecturing tone, but of listening to the workers and trying to provide support.

That’s the role of socialists: To genuinely fight alongside the Starbucks workers for their contract and for their unionization effort, to help advance class and socialist consciousness, and to suggest and support a class struggle orientation. What Seattle DSA has been doing is militant trade unionist activity. In the past, that might have been more initiated by established trade unions and union activists. But those traditions have been lost over the whole past period by the schemes of business unionism and the decline of the workers’ movement. So in a way we are rebuilding and reconnecting with these traditions of strike support, developing community support for the strikers, and for the union workers.

However, socialists need to also go beyond this. The working class in past periods was more fully aware of the class divide and the boss’s motivation. And so in the context of a labor movement dominated by business unionists who have been managing the defeat of Labor and not being a real force in people’s lives, in addition to reestablishing militant trade union traditions, a part of the task for socialists is to try to help workers connect the dots to the broader capitalist system and help reestablish an understanding of class and the motivations of the bosses and owners. Starbucks doesn’t make lattes. They make profits.

Socialists must help expose the capitalist system, but not in the over the top way where the workers moving into action feel what we’re saying is overshadowing their struggles. We don’t want them to think that socialists come in and just talk about capitalism, that we don’t really care about them and their struggle, that we just have an agenda that we want to impose, and that we’re just lecturing them. This approach, however correct some of the things being proposed may be, only strengthens the hand of the bosses and the business unionists by driving workers away from the ideas and doesn’t move the meter any closer towards building a robust, combat organization of the working class.

The Starbucks workers through their fighting instincts and bold actions have blazed a path forward for other Starbucks workers and the broader labor movement.