‘Starbucks is the largest labor violator in modern history’: Starbucks workers prepare for indefinite national strike

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and we’ve got an urgent episode for y’all today. By the time you hear this, Starbucks workers in over 25 cities across the country may be on strike. Last week, a super majority of unionized baristas with Starbucks Workers United voted to authorize an unfair labor practice strike ahead of the holiday season. The strike would begin on Thursday, November 13th, on so-called Red Cup Day Starbucks’s annual corporate holiday. In a press release from Starbucks Workers United, the Union States Union baristas announced Wednesday that they have authorized an open-ended unfair labor practice strike with 92% voting yes ahead of the critical holiday season.

The vote comes after six months of Starbucks refusing to offer new proposals to address workers’ demands for better staffing, higher pay, and a resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges. Union baristas are prepared to turn Starbucks’s Red Cup Day into the Red Cup Rebellion. If Starbucks fails to finalize a fair contract by November 13th, the strike actions could hit over 25 cities as an opening. Salvo and baristas are prepared to escalate if they don’t see new proposals and substantial progress towards finalizing a contract that addresses pay hours and staffing and the resolution of hundreds of LPs. Workers United and Starbucks are not currently engaged in contract negotiations as Starbucks has refused to put forth new proposals that address Union barista’s demands. Elected Union delegates overwhelmingly rejected Starbucks’s insufficient contract offer in April of 2025, which failed to improve wages or benefits in the first year of the contract and didn’t put forth proposals to address chronic understaffing.

Starbucks’s failure to listen to and support their own baristas is moving them to take drastic action, which could include striking over unfair labor practices. Starbucks is the biggest violator of labor law in modern history with administrative law judges in the National Labor Relations Board, finding that Starbucks has committed more than 500 labor law violations. To date, workers United has filed more than 1000 unfair labor practice charges, including more than 125. Since January of this year, more than 700 unresolved charges remain including a set of national LPs around bad faith, bargaining and unilateral policy changes and specific LPs around retaliatory firings and discipline. Union baristas mean business and are ready to do whatever it takes to win a fair contract and end starbucks’s unfair labor practices said Michelle Eisen, Starbucks, workers United spokesperson, and a 15 year veteran barista. We want Starbucks to succeed, but turning the company around and bringing customers back begins with listening to and supporting the baristas who are responsible for the Starbucks experience.

If Starbucks keeps stonewalling, they should expect to see their business grind to a halt. The ball is in Starbucks’s court in a letter to Starbucks employees that was released last Wednesday, Deanne Durbin reports at the Associated Press Starbucks’s chief partner Officer Sarah Kelly said the union has proposed a 65% pay increase immediately and a 77% increase over three years with additional payments for things like weekends or days when Starbucks runs promotions. Kelly also said some proposals would significantly alter Starbucks’s operations, such as giving workers the ability to shut down mobile ordering. If a store has more than five orders in the queue, any agreement needs to reflect the reality that Starbucks already offers the best job in retail, including more than $30 an hour on average in pay and benefits for hourly partners. Starbucks spokeswoman Jackie Anderson said Wednesday the union said that Starbucks is unfairly lumping together various economic proposals from the union to arrive at those pay raise figures.

So to talk about all of this, I am honored to be joined on the show today by Michelle Eisen herself again. Michelle is a 15 year veteran barista and a spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United in 2021. Michelle and her coworkers in Buffalo, New York formed the first Starbucks Labor Union in the United States. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I want to just kind of start with where we are right here right now. We’re recording on Tuesday, November 11th. The strike date is set for later this week. Tell listeners more about what they may be seeing this week, where this strike is coming from and what it tells us about the State of the Union struggle at Starbucks.

Michelle Eisen:

Yes, thanks so much for having me. So last week we announced that 92% of union workers voted to authorize a strike should the company not respond to our multiple requests for them to return to the bargaining table with new proposals that will address the outstanding issues, mainly more take home pay for workers, better hours to fix the staffing chronic understaffing in our stores and to resolve the numerous, you said it, hundreds of unresolved unfair labor practice charges that are still hanging over their heads. Starbucks is the largest labor violator of modern history that is undisputable and it’s hard to be a worker working in those conditions, right when you actually have to be afraid of your employer continually violating your rights. So we have made multiple requests for them to return to the table with these new proposals that will help settle these issues. Since labor relations broke down last December, they have failed to respond in any meaningful way and really in any way at all.

They instead continue to misrepresent what the union’s demands are. I think it’s absolutely comical that 65% number that they’ve arrived at. They literally took all of this potential options that we presented them with last October. We were like, Hey, we could do this or we could do this and this, or we could do just this Either way. What we’re trying to do here is get more take home pay in these workers’ pockets. They added them all together and came up with that number. That’s like going into a restaurant, that’s like going into a Starbucks, adding together every single menu item and then being like, whoa, it costs a thousand dollars to eat here. And they know that it’s disingenuous. It’s actually just, it’s an actual misrepresentation of what went on in bargaining, and you have to question anyone who has to turn to flat out misrepresenting of the facts to make themselves look better or to make the union look worse. What does that say about them as a whole? Right?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, “the math ain’t mathing,” as the kids say.

Michelle Eisen:

Yeah, I mean it’s discouraging to say the least, but here we are. We’re two days out from Red Cup Day, which is I believe at least from the company’s own mouth, their biggest revenue day of the year. I worked many a Red Cup Day as a barista. It is not a pleasant day to be a Starbucks barista. That is for sure. And that’s when we were actually supported in the stores. It’s even worse now, and workers are saying, look, you’ve got, essentially the clock is ticking. Let’s see some action in the next 48 or so hours, or we will have to escalate. Workers don’t want to have to go on strike. A strike is a hardship. I think that’s incredibly important for people to recognize. Workers are laying a lot on the line if they have to embark on this, but their hands are being forced. The company is not offering another option, and so we do what we can do and the power that we hold is our labor, is our ability to produce these billions in dollars of revenue that the company reports every single year. And so we’ll see what happens come Thursday morning.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just to tease it out even more for listeners, it sounds like right now the strike isn’t hinging on some nitpicky details on a couple proposals. It sounds like Starbucks isn’t responding to any of these proposals.

Michelle Eisen:

The last offer, I won’t call it, I am hesitant to even call it an offer that came from their side when it came to the economic elements of the contract was nothing. They said no, they didn’t engage with a single potential solution or proposal to what we were offering. They said, our rep reply is zero increase for the first year of the contract. That’s not an offer. That’s an unserious response to what is going on here. And what we’re engaging in is very serious. It is the difference between a worker being able to pay their rent and buy groceries or having to make the choice between the two. This is a multi-billion dollar global corporation. We paid our CEO $98 million for the first four months of his employment with this company. They spent $81 million for a four day manager’s retreat in Vegas just this June. It would cost less than both of those numbers to finalize a multi-year union contract with their union baristas less than a single day’s profit, less than one single day’s profit could settle this. We need serious offers that have serious solutions.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I want to take a step back for a minute, right? I mean, as I mentioned in the intro, you were there in Buffalo when with the first store to unionize back in 2021, and we were covering that as it was happening. And every year since I’ve been interviewing different Starbucks workers in different stores around the country, many of those stores have been closed. Many of those workers have been fired, but the struggle has continued with each year. But I want to sort of ask, since we’re fortunate enough to have you here, if we could kind of remind listeners of what’s happened in between those two critical points in time. Can you take us back to that union drive in Buffalo and remind us of where that push came from? What were the conditions that workers were fighting against unionizing for? And yeah, let’s kind of walk folks up from 2021 to now and give them a broad sweep of how the struggle has developed since then that has led us all the way to this point where workers at locations around the country are prepared to strike to get that first contract that they’re still trying to get.

Michelle Eisen:

Absolutely. So I started with Starbucks in 2010, which feels like an actual lifetime ago. I came to the company for a lot of reasons, but for a lot of the same reasons. I think most Starbucks baristas do. I had another job in the arts. I was a stage manager. I needed some supplemental income, I needed access to healthcare, and this is what Starbucks was, right? They were like, Hey, we have flexible hours. Hey, you can have access to healthcare if you work 20 hours a week. It presented itself as a solution, and honestly, when I started with them, it was pretty much what it was cracked up to be. I got the hours I wanted. They worked around my production schedule. I had access to affordable healthcare. Things were pretty good. I felt pretty valued overall. Our stores were well staffed. It was a nice environment.

I got to interact with a lot of people. I got to learn about coffee. It was a cool gig. And then things as I think they do in any sort of capitalist society, they start to slide. The guys in charge are like, how can we make this company more profitable? And if we can’t directly make it more profitable, how can we make it appear to be more profitable? And inevitably what I think ends up happening in most cases is they look at it and they’re like, oh, we can’t necessarily make people spend more money, but we can spend less on the workers, which will make our bottom line look that much more exciting and profitable.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Every goddamn industry that we cover, it feels like a bunch of NBA holding douche bags in corporate offices have all come up with the same genius idea, which is, Hey, let’s pile more work onto fewer workers, whether it’s the railroad industry, hospitals, schools, retail or service jobs. This is the trend that I’ve been hearing from workers and I interview workers for a living, but it’s just like, Jesus, this is happening everywhere.

Michelle Eisen:

Like what do they have actual control of? They can’t technically control what the product costs that’s out of their hands in most cases. They can’t control rent prices. If they’re renting a space, what they can control is how many workers they put on the floor, what they compensate those workers and how much work they intend to have each one do. And that’s what inevitably ended up happening at Starbucks. We saw staffing levels go down, saw the responsibilities of each worker increase, and the compensation either for the most part stays stagnant. And I say that because when we decided to organize in 2021, I was making 16 cents more an hour after being with the company for 11 years than someone who had been hired yesterday. So what they did is they stopped investing in their loyal tenured employees, and then the intention was bring people on.

It became this churn and burn workforce. So that’s where we found ourselves in 2021. Not only did we find ourselves in that exact place, but we found ourselves in that place in the middle of a global pandemic. So we saw policies being rolled out that workers in these stores were expected to carry out without any input from us, and they were rapid fire. It was a pandemic. Things were happening, safety procedures, health procedures, everything was changing day in, day out. None of those changes were being done with input from the people who are actually in these stores. And for me, that was the kicker. It was like, how can you be expecting us to enforce policies when you haven’t even talked to us about how difficult these policies are going to be to enforce or you’re not supporting us while we’re being asked to enforce these policies?

On top of that, Starbucks was one of the few companies that stayed open through the entirety of the pandemic, which is, if you think about it, kind of insane because this is face-to-face. It’s not a virtual job. I’m not a virtual barista. I have to go in every day and I have to be face-to-face with people at this point. We don’t know what this pandemic is going to do. There’s not even a vaccine on the horizon. Whatever you feel about that, I’m obviously very pro, but regardless, we are being asked to do this. And the company stayed open and they stayed open under the guise of we are serving our communities. These baristas are essential. In the meantime, they’re raking in profits. Why? Because in the midst of this upside down worlds, you could still go down to the corner to your local Starbucks and get your caramel macchiato. So they were offering just this tiny bit of normalcy in this complete chaos, and they were convincing the workers that it was important that we stay open to serve our communities. Meanwhile, we have the CEO at this point. We’re four CEOs in, by the way, since 2021. I think that’s important to note.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, I’ve lost count at this point.

Michelle Eisen:

At that point, it’s Kevin Johnson and he’s on these financial shows every other day, bragging, I mean openly bragging about the amount of profit the company is bringing in the middle of this pandemic. And I’ve, myself included, and I’ve got coworkers who are working for this multi-billion dollar corporation now. I’m here full time because my other job was also an in-person job. The theaters shut down. So now I’m finding myself at Starbucks more hours than I generally did, and I’m still not sure I’m going to be able to pay my bills. And these things are not computing. So between them just not taking care of the workers who were bringing in this ridiculous amount of money in the face of this pandemic at the very moment that they should be, they should be stepping up and doing better. We’re just seeing them do worse and worse and worse.

And so I actually, organizing was not my first instinct. My first instinct was to get the hell out of there, and that is the decision I had reached just a few weeks before we decided to organize. I was like, I got to go. I was hoping production work was going to start opening up in some capacity. I didn’t even know what I was going to do for health benefits. But honestly, by that point, the benefits costs had increased so much that it wasn’t even serving the purpose it was originally serving for me. And then I was approached by a coworker about, Hey, what if we unionize? And honestly, my first thought was like, yeah, let’s do it. Because I was pissed. I was like, if they’re not going to take care of us, then we’re going to show them what we’re going to do. And then the secondary reason, which is the more lasting reason was I was hopeful that it might work and that I wouldn’t have to leave because I didn’t want to. I had been at that store for six years at that point. I’d been with the company for 11. I loved being able to go in there and see my coworkers, and we were in a really great community. I had regulars I’d known for years.

And so we decided to try, and I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t think it was going to result in what it resulted in. And I don’t say I didn’t think we were going to be successful. I did think we were going to be successful. What I didn’t expect was the company’s response. I thought they were going to be upset at first, maybe a little hesitant, but I then expected them to get on the right side of history because really the company, that’s what Starbucks had always done. I had seen them make mistakes in the past. They’re obviously not perfect by any stretch of that word, but generally speaking, I’d also seen them acknowledge that a mistake was made and then get on the right side of things. And so the fact that we’re four years in and they still are on the wrong side of this story is kind of mind blowing to me, disappointed is not a strong enough word.

It’s more just like, what are you doing? You have an opportunity here to right this wrong. Get on the right side of history, set the standard like you have always done or claimed to have always done and be applauded. Most of the worlds will forget the last four years even happened. All of a sudden Starbucks will be held up as this example of how to treat your workers and we’ll all go on our merry way. So the fact that they’re still fighting is shocking. But we won miraculously in spite of the company’s behavior, which was absolutely egregious. A lot of those charges that you refer to at the beginning of this took place in that first three months of the campaign. They were just breaking labor law left and right, you would not believe, shipped in a hundred plus store managers from across the country, stationed them in Buffalo, had them in our stores surveilling us, intimidating, you name it, you name it.

It was taken care of. There were threats, there were bribes, there were all of the things that you would think there would be. Somehow we pulled it out mostly because we had what the company will never have, and that’s the connection to each other. We were able to acknowledge that no, as much as they were trying to gaslight us, these issues really did exist and they needed to be acknowledged and there needed to be solutions. And if the company wasn’t going to help us find those solutions, we were going to find them for ourselves. And then the rest is kind of, I don’t want to say a blur because it’s been four years of very intense work, but as soon as it was seen that it was possible, then we had thousands of Starbucks workers saying, yo, these issues exist in our stores and we want to be a part of this.

We want to be a part of this in spite of the company’s response, which at that point was very publicly obviously. And so since then we have over 650 elections, 12,000 somewhere in the realm of 12,000 unionized baristas, 45 states and dc You were right. The company has closed some locations. They announced that big mass closure just last month, which did affect some of our stores, which is very disappointing. And again, yet another example of a multi-billion dollar corporation being able to make absolutely ridiculous decisions without any worker input and putting the onus on the individual to figure out how they’re going to survive, which when your CEO gets to commute to and from work in a private jet, it doesn’t seem all that fair.

Maximillian Alvarez:

No, I mean, in here in Baltimore, I believe it’s six cafes have closed, including the one on Charles Street, which was the first one in the state of Maryland to unionize. I was in the room when those workers were watching the NLRB count the votes of their union election. I’ve been to that Starbucks and many others across the city. I’ve talked to a lot of workers who have unionized here, and it feels like, again, a story that I’ve heard and reported on every year since you guys won that first election in 2021, I believe Starbucks announced that they’re going to be closing nearly 500 locations in North America in the current quarter. But that didn’t just start now. I mean, I remember interviewing workers in Ithaca, New York, and they closed down every single location. They were the first city I believe, in the United States where every Starbucks location was unionized and then Starbucks closed all of them.

And those workers, at least some that talked to were pretty clear. They’re like, yeah, this is retaliation. And I just kind of want to tease that out a bit more. And I want you to please tell me if I’m wrong here because you’re the person I would listen to. And I asked jazz BZA to tell me the same thing. But I struggle as someone who, again, interviews workers for a living who’s filmed with Starbucks workers, who’s interviewed over this podcast, plenty of Starbucks workers, and I’ve seen the excitement that your movement has generated in the working class and across this country over the past four years. It’s been really beautiful to see people cheer every time they see, Hey, a new store is unionizing in this state or a new one’s unionizing in that state. And the Starbucks Workers United campaign itself became a really central figure in the narrative over the past few years about the new labor movement.

While I subscribed to a lot of that, I felt what was missing from that narrative and what I was seeing in folks is like, I’m excited that you all are excited that a new store has unionized, but why can’t I get you to care about the store that just closed that you were excited about three months ago, or the workers who have been fired that you were sharing their stories a year ago. It’s felt like we’ve only understood the forward momentum of this movement, but we haven’t reckoned with the intense backlash or the fact that you still don’t have a contract yet.

Michelle Eisen:

I think that, well, obviously it’s more exciting to talk about the wins and to talk about that kind of excitement. And I think there are a lot of outlets, I assume we’re talking about supporters and news outlets and whatever that seem to be failing to report on just how egregious Starbucks has been in reaction to this. I think some of that comes from fear of pissing off Starbucks. I think some of that comes with like, oh, well, if we do piss off the billionaire, what’s going to happen? And that is disappointing. I think part of me also says, I don’t personally want to necessarily focus on that. I want to support the workers who are going through it. And I think it’s incredibly important to note that the union workers who had their stores closed down had the right to legally bargain over the effects of that closure and were able to secure protections that the non-union workers were not able to get.

So we hear a lot about like, well, why should I organize if the company can just come and close my store anyway? You’re right. I mean, we don’t have control over store closures. They can cite business reasons, and for the most part, they can back that up and we just have to go along with it. But what we can do is protect the workers who are affected by those closures, which is what we were able to do for the unionized workforce, that there were thousands of non-union workers unfortunately, that were affected by these closures who had zero recourse, who had zero voice. And so I think at least it’s more effective from our point of view to say, yeah, the company has responded in this way. Yes, it’s absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary and uncalled for. However, here’s how we are able to fight back. We are able to fight back in all of these ways because these workers joined, fought to join a union.

I would love to wake up tomorrow and hear that Starbucks has decided to stop violating US labor law. Unfortunately, I think we’re not quite there yet. And that’s part of why workers are going to potentially be forced to go on a strike in a couple of days because the company’s union busting has been such that it has forced workers to be like, you need to stop. If you’re not going to stop, we’re going to withhold our labor until you do, which is the power that workers in this country have. It’s not anything that should ever be taken lightly, especially when for every one barista who is committed to go on strike, there are dozens of allies who have committed not to cross those picket lines, which is a big deal. So we need community and allies to know that if workers go on strike, please don’t shop at Starbucks, don’t shop at any Starbucks, just go to your local shop. They offer a lot of great things as well. Workers need to feel that support. And I think that’s part goes back a little bit to what you were saying. The way that we respond to Starbucks behavior is by just showing them how unacceptable it is. And for workers, it’s withholding their labor and for customers and communities, it’s withholding their revenue, right?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah. I mean, as we’ve said a bajillion times on this show, but we will repeat until the end of time, never be a scab, never cross a picket line. You can get your goddamn coffee anywhere else. This is the United of America. You can get coffee anywhere. I wanted to sort of ask when it comes to the current kind of situation, and I don’t want to ask you to speak on anything that would be improper to speak on, but it’s a question that I know is on a lot of our listeners’ minds because it feels quite apparent that after a few years of organized labor upsurge in this country, from new unionization efforts to big and small strikes in different industries that have been happening over the past few years, it feels now that the empire striking back and with a national labor relations board that under the second Trump administration, it seems like it’s just been license that corporations can take to effectively not engage at all with unions or worker grievances. There just seems to be a newfound confidence in the employer class that we’re seeing in the form of mass layoffs happening, everyone gloating about how they’re going to replace us all with AI and raking in profits while working. People are standing in food lines kind of deal. That’s where we are in the country writ large. I know Starbucks, as we’ve been talking about, has been not great up until this point, but is it possible that they’ve gotten even worse with the new NLRB that we have in 2025?

Michelle Eisen:

Corporations are absolutely emboldened right now, and Starbucks is absolutely one of them. So US labor law, regardless of what administration we’re under is lacking. We can all agree that it is not strong enough and that campaigns are not really one in the courtroom. They are one in the streets, they’re one in the shops, right? It is the workers’ power and their ability to stand up to the boss very publicly calling these companies out for Starbucks. It’s a lot about brand recognition. And when you make that brand uncool because of the way they’re treating their workers in a lot of other things, why does it take 40 minutes for me to get a nice chai? That’s not acceptable. That’s where the power comes from. So yes, things are really, really bad right now. We are essentially living in an oligarchy, absolutely, that is the 1% versus the rest of us, and I don’t care what your income is.

Most of you fall under the category of the rest of us. That’s just what it is. And so yes, it is the worst, but that it’s ever been, I think at least at this moment, the current policies that have rolled out under this new CEO have actually only made workers’ jobs more difficult. They’ve not made anything easier. They’ve not made the environments in the cafes more easier. But in a lot of ways it’s so black and white right now that it feels like, at least at the beginning of the campaign, Starbucks was still trying to maintain this air of we are already so good. Why should our workers want anything better? And there were a lot of people I think, who were kind of buying that. And today I think it’s much, much harder for them to come out on that line because it’s not simply not true.

I love that the comment in that letter to workers where they said Starbucks is already the best job in retail. Yeah, it’s the best job in retail for Brian Niccoll. What we’re trying to do is make that legit, is make it the best job in retail, that number of over $30 an hour, they have done, again, what they did with our proposals, they tried to add up all of the potential benefits that they say they offer and they’re like, well, this is what you make an hour. I’m sorry, but my Spotify premium that comes with my employment, my landlord’s not going to accept that as currency to pay my rent. You can’t lump those things together and say, well, this is the compensation that our employees are being given. In most states, the majority of states, the starting rate for Starbucks barista is $15 an hour, and most Starbucks workers struggle to get more than 19 hours a week.

So they control how much they pay you an hour, they control how many hours they then give you, and then they say, but if you manage to qualify for healthcare and if you manage to qualify for these other benefits, you actually make over $30 an hour. So I don’t know what you’re complaining about. So yeah, right now things are probably as bad as they’ve ever been in the country for the majority of workers, but it’s galvanized. Most workers, we’ve only seen our organizing increase since this administration came into power and since the CEO stepped into this role, why? Because workers are looking around and saying, the only people coming to save us are ourselves. And so if the only way to stop the CEO from rolling out additional policies that are just making our jobs harder is to stand up and say, no, we’re going to organize and then you have to talk to us before you roll out these policies.

It’s the law. So while it’s unfortunate that the NLRB is where it is and that corporations feel emboldened to just do whatever they want because God knows how long it’s going to take to litigate something, we know that that’s not where the strength is going to come from for this fight. The strength is going to come from workers continuing to stand up. And I’m grateful every day that Starbucks workers continue to do just that. I mean, I would love to say that if I had not been at the very first store that I would’ve been brave enough to do this. I want to think that I would’ve been, but I don’t know that I was very naive. I didn’t know how the company was going to react, and I was like, yeah, let’s do it. Then the company reacted the way they did. And still in spite of that, we’ve got dozens of workers a week reaching out to us and saying, Hey, we don’t care. We know it’s going to be hard. We know it’s going to be a fight. We know how this company is going to react, but we still think it’s worth it to take this on, not just for the immediacy of our jobs and our livelihood, but they understand that they’re setting a path that’s going to change the lives of workers beyond them. And I think if that’s not hopeful in this very dark time, I don’t know what is

Maximillian Alvarez:

Preach sis. I agree. I mean, it continues to be one of the few wells of hope from which I can draw to get out of bed in the morning, wherever poor working people are standing up against injustice and fighting for a better life for themselves and others. Therein lies the hope for all of humanity. I mean, I genuinely believe that, and I’m reminded of that every time I get to talk to a working class warrior like yourself. And I want to sort of circle back to the shop floor level, like you were saying. I want to impress upon people listening out there, what the working conditions are in Starbucks stores today. Have they changed much from the time when you were unionizing in Buffalo and also get a sense of the Starbucks workers United unionization effort across the country right now, because I think you named it that in the past 10 years, conditions have visibly changed, not only for workers, but for consumers.

And I think that’s another factor to include here that maybe in the recent past, your average person was saying, well, the Starbucks near me is good and it seems like a good job. I don’t get what these workers are complaining about. And now a few years later, it’s like every business in corporate America is trying to sell us a version of reality that does not sync up with our experienced reality. The one that always cracks me up are these artisan coated Chipotle commercials where they’re like, oh, we make everything fresh and it’s all there for you. And I’m like, motherfucker, have you been into a Chipotle in the past few years? It’s like two stressed out people. Like half the menu isn’t available and everybody’s pissed off. And that’s every store I go into and people notice that Starbucks workers are stressed to hell, that there doesn’t seem be enough people that there seemed to be a lot of drinks piled up at the end of the counter over time. You just sort of internalized this sense that everything’s kind of going to shit. So I wanted to kind of ask, yeah, what does that look like in the year of our Lord 2025 for working people at Starbucks? And yeah, could you tell us a little more about those working conditions and kind of the state of the union movement across the country?

Michelle Eisen:

I think it looks exactly like what you just described, and I think it’s comical that you used Chipotle as the example. I don’t know if you knew this, but our current CEO was the former CEO of Chipotle.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I had blissfully forgotten it, but now you reminded me.

Michelle Eisen:

So it’s not shocking that you are going to walk into a Starbucks right now and it’s going to feel like walking into the Chipotle that serves lattes, right? It looks like that. It looks like two stressed out workers and orders piling up and mobile orders spewing out of the sticker machine and a line of customers. And it is an unpleasant experience. I think what I think we haven’t focused enough on, and I’m glad that you sort of integrated this in, is how the consumer is being affected. I mean, obviously as a union organizer, I’m fighting for the workers’ working conditions, but to assume that that doesn’t directly correlate to the consumer’s experience is absolutely ridiculous. All of the demands that the union has had has focused on how do we improve our conditions and therefore improving the customer’s conditions and therefore improving the company overall, those things are all absolutely connected, but as a consumer, you should be insulted.

You should be absolutely pissed off and insulted that you are spending what you are spending on a single beverage at Starbucks and then walking in to pick it up in the conditions you’re walking into. You see, especially this time of year, Starbucks loves their holiday ads where they present these warm, beautiful cafes and there’s a barista who’s making a beverage and then has the time to have a conversation with the person who they’re handing the beverage to. And the reality is, once upon a time, that environment did exist. It’s not like a complete fantasy. I lived it. The stores were staffed appropriately. Mobile order hadn’t completely taken over and overhauled the entire cafe experience, and we had the opportunity to have a coffee tasting. I used to lead coffee tastings in the lobby all of the time with customers and try new blends out and try new pastries.

And guess what? Me being off the floor for 10 minutes didn’t completely tank the entire ship, which is what happens right now. If a worker, God forbid, gets sick, there’s no buffer. And so right now the conditions are, I would say, worse than they were when organized in 2021. And that seems incredibly hard to believe because they were pretty damn bad in 2021. But no, the policies that have rolled out have heaped additional responsibilities on the already understaffed stores and workers are being told, figure it out. I don’t know how you’re going to do all of these things, but it’s your job to figure it out. No, it’s not my job to figure it out. My job was very clear. I know what my responsibilities were. It is not my job to take on the five additional ones that you just added. And if you’re going to say that that is the case, then we need some sort of discourse to discuss it.

And that’s where the union comes in because the workers forming their own union, it’s them inserting themselves into the conversation right now. You have to talk to us before you roll out an additional policy that’s going to make my job harder, especially when you’re rolling that out without additional compensation, which is what we really need to talk about. It is not like workers are saying, no, I don’t want to do the work. It’s like, you need to compensate me fairly for what that work is. And if you’ve doubled my workload since I came on and my compensation has not changed, how is that fair? And so as a consumer, I should be very angry that I’m paying for what I’m paying for and I’m walking into the conditions. I’m walking into baristas, don’t want to look angry. I know that SNL has done multitudes of skits.

Sometimes you go back and you look at the old Starbucks skits and it’s like the representation of this pretentious barista who knows everything there is to know about coffee and tries to make you feel stupid. That’s not the reality. But there was something to the sort of level of respect and integrity that came with that role. The fact that there’s this implied sort of way of thinking in this country that service workers don’t deserve a certain level of respect or that these are somehow not real jobs. That’s something that everybody needs to get the hell over. Every single job is a real job. Anytime somebody is giving you their labor, they deserve to be compensated fairly. They deserve to do that job in a safe environment. I don’t care what it is. There’s a lot of like, well, this is a starter job. It is.

You’re not going to have access to coffee between 7:00 AM and 3:00 PM when all of the kids who you think are supposed to be doing this job or at school, who do you think is doing this job? And let’s say for sake of an argument that somehow this is right. Somehow, yes, this job should only be done by 14 to 16 year olds. You’re okay with 14 to 16 year olds being exploited. You’re okay with them not being fairly compensated for their labor. You’re okay with them not having safe working conditions. You got to pick an argument here. And so what we’re here doing is fighting a company that can, if there was ever a company on this globe afford to do better by its workforce, it is this company. And so we’re fighting. We’re fighting very hard. We’ve been fighting for a very long time, and we’re at the point now, where’re done and workers will go on strike by Thursday if this company does not come back with some new proposals and resolve all of these ridiculous, unfair labor practice charges that are still hanging over their head, that’s embarrassing. If I’m the CEO o of this company, I would be fricking embarrassed that this is what it’s been reduced to. So the fact that he’s just business as usual, I don’t know. I guess if I’m a shareholder, I’m kind of questioning that as well.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I feel like it’s really remarkable how much good faith the Starbucks brand has lost in recent years because the company has shown the public what it really is, and the public has responded accordingly. But I feel like again, in another era, even just a decade ago, if Starbucks was doing that, the impact would be even greater. But it’s kind of like the impact has been mitigated a little bit because everything’s going to shit. And it’s just like people are just like, yeah, pile on. Everything sucks. Consumers experience sucks. Everything’s more expensive. So it becomes harder to point out the exceptional villainy of any one company. But I wanted to sort of really drive that home for folks listening as we round the final turn here, I know I got to let you go, but let’s bring folks back down to the picket line level and what can they expect to see this week, and this is an indefinite strike. What are the coming days and weeks look like? What can folks out there do to stand in solidarity with y’all? Because I know there are more ways than one to do that.

Michelle Eisen:

So there’s a few things. First is you can go to no contract, no coffee.org. You can sign our pledge that says you will not cross the picket line and you’ll not shop at Starbucks. You will not spend your money at Starbucks while workers are on strike. That’s number one. Workers are standing strong. They’re going to withhold their labor. They’re going to sacrifice a lot during a holiday season to show the company that this is what it’s going to take to get this contract. And supporters, allies, consumers can do that by withholding their revenue. That is the number one that includes don’t buy teachers Starbucks gift cards, think outside the box when you want to get gifts. You would be shocked how many Starbucks gift cards go to teachers this time of year? Get them something from a local shop, anything. So don’t buy gift cards.

Don’t cross the picket line. In fact, join the picket line. Our picket lines are pretty exciting and notoriously pretty fun. We would love to have you on that picket line and don’t shop at Starbucks. That’s the strongest message you can send is like you said, we’re in a place right now where everything feels really bad and it’s hard to say, well, is this place worse than the next place? Every place is really bad right now and it’s going to feel good to do something that you know is on the right side of history and supporting workers in this moment so that we can settle this fair contract is the right thing to do, and then we look forward to welcoming you back into these cafes when we have that contract and we’ve worked to actually improve the cafe experience. We want you to come back when things are great.

We don’t want you to come back when everything’s on fire. Why would you want to put yourself in that situation? I think what you just said about how do you decide who’s worse? I think the flip side of that is because everyone sucks so bad right now, how easy would it be for this particular company to come out on top? How easy would it be for them to all of a sudden change course, write their relationship with their unionized workers and then it’s an easy choice? Then guess what? Everybody sucks except Starbucks, and isn’t that someplace they would like to find themselves? It’s certainly the place that workers would like to find them, right? So I think those are the top things. Sign the go to, no contract, no coffee.org. Sign the pledge that you’re not going to shop at Starbucks. Well, if workers have to go on strike, if you see workers on strike, throw them your support, honk your horn wave, let them know that you’re standing behind them.

You would be shocked at how far just that knowledge can go for the mentality of workers. This might be a long time if we have to engage in this. It’s going to be a long time during the holidays when people are sacrificing time with their families to be out there on the picket line. So showing them that customers and consumers and their communities are behind them on this and willing to stand with them. It goes a very, very long way. And if you have ever have an opportunity to let Starbucks know what you think on their public posts maybe, or we often give out what they call customer connection surveys in stores where you can let the company know what you think about the service or that situation. Voice those opinions. I’ve never seen problems solved so fast in stores as to when a customer has an issue, believe it or not, barista will be saying, this is a problem for four months. One customer will send in a comment saying, Hey, why is your ice machine broken again? And all of a sudden the ice machine is broken the next day. So it is important. Consumer’s voices do matter.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to thank our guest, Michelle Eisen, a 15 year veteran barista and a spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United who formed the first Starbucks Labor Union in the United States with her coworkers in Buffalo, New York back in 2021. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next week for another episode of Working People, and if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at The Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and don’t ever, ever cross the damn picket line solidarity forever.