By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists

Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace.  Officially retired from the American Friends Service Committee since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.

Liz Marshall, a senior at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, wakes early each day so she can get in her morning workout and be ready for school by 6:30 a.m.  After school, she heads to the Starbucks store at Seabrook Crossing, where she’s been a barista for a year and a half.

It’s the seventh job she’s had in her 17 years and at first she thought it was the best one she’d ever had.  When fellow baristas petitioned for union representation earlier this year, Marshall voted no, “because I knew very little about it,” she said at a panel discussion during “Union Movie Night” on Wednesday evening at the Rex Theatre in Manchester.  But since then, working conditions have gone downhill and she’s learned about the benefits of unionization.  Now, she’s preparing to be a strike leader in the event union baristas decide to walk off the job.

Starbucks Workers United, which represents 12,000 baristas in about 550 Starbucks stores nationwide, announced Wednesday that 92% of union members have voted to authorize a strike if they don’t reach an agreement with the company by November 13.  “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,” the union said.  

The union has been circulating a “No Contract, No Coffee” pledge for months, asking Starbucks customers to indicate they won’t patronize any Starbucks stores if the baristas go on strike. 

Carrying placards reading “No Contract, No Coffee” and “Just Practicing for a Just Contract” nine baristas from Starbucks stores in Seabrook, Stratham, and Epping held a “practice picket” outside the Epping Starbucks last Saturday. 

Jenn Mercier knew nothing about the pledge when she showed up at the drive-through window and saw picketers last Saturday.  Mercier, a Kingston resident who runs an herbal products store, said she would definitely respect the picket line if the baristas go on strike.  “I pay my employees well,” she said, and “large corporations, who are making God knows how much money, need to take care of their employees.”

According to the union, the pledge has been signed by tens of thousands of people and has been backed by 45 organizations representing 85 million people.  In a letter to Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, the groups said, “We’re invested in the union baristas’ success.  We are committed to supporting their demand for a fair contract that helps make jobs at Starbucks better, which will, in turn, improve all of our communities where you operate.  We will continue to back union workers’ fight, including by not crossing picket lines at Starbucks if they feel striking is necessary.  We may even join them on the picket line if progress toward a fair contract isn’t being made.” 

The union and the company began negotiations in April 2024.  To date, they have reached agreements on 33 contract provisions, mostly on non-economic issues, but talks broke down last April when 490 union bargaining delegates overwhelmingly rejected the company’s economic proposal.  The union says major gaps remain over pay, staffing, and a raft of complaints over unfair labor practices.  They say they’re waiting for the company to make a better offer.

The company says it’s the union that walked away from the bargaining table.  “If they’re ready to come back, we’re ready to talk,” a Starbucks spokesperson said by email.  

The company calls its positions “the best jobs in retail.”  The union says they want to make that claim become true. 

The union’s deadline coincides with a busy Starbucks holiday season, characterized by new cup designs and special seasonal drinks, which the company launched today.  “This year’s designs are inspired by the iconic green and red aprons worn by baristas, bringing festive ribbons, cozy coffeehouse textures and nostalgic plaid patterns to life. From apron strings tied up into holiday bows to classic holiday plaids, each cup is crafted to evoke warmth, tradition and togetherness. Plus, there’s a special spot for personal messages on every cup,” according to a post on the company’s website.

“Red Cup Day is a beloved tradition for Starbucks customers, and we’re excited to bring it back to coffeehouses on Thursday, November 13,” the company said in an Instagram post. “When customers purchase a handcrafted holiday beverage at a participating store, they will receive a reusable red holiday cup, while supplies last.”

The union says it will turn Red Cup Day into the Red Cup Rebellion if Starbucks fails to finalize a fair contract by November 13.  Strike actions would begin, they said, in two dozen cities but would escalate if the company doesn’t respond.  The unionized New Hampshire stores in Epping, Stratham, and Seabrook would not be part of the first wave, union baristas said on Wednesday in Manchester.

Sponsored by the NH Faith and Labor Alliance, the movie night featured a short documentary, “Partners,” about the birth of Starbucks Workers United at three stores in Buffalo, New York, in 2021.  Following the film, four local baristas described their own paths to union involvement and what they hope to gain from successful collective bargaining. 

“I’ve been a partner [the company’s term for employee] since 2019 and when I first started working for Starbucks,” explained Stephanie Viekman, a barista at the Seabrook Crossing store.  “One of the values at Starbucks when I first started working there was courage, and it explicitly said, ‘Act with courage and challenge the status quo.’” 

“I love Starbucks. I love my job. I want Starbucks to be a better place,” Viekman said when I first met her at a “Sip-In” last March.  Starbucks is like family to her, she said again at the Rex Theatre panel.  

“A lot of those values are still inside of us, which is why we unionized, not because we hate the company like they think we do, but because we love our jobs, we love our co-workers, and we want better working conditions for the next generation,” Viekman said.

“I actually enjoy making drinks. I find it really satisfying,” commented Reilly Ward during the practice picket.  Ward has been a barista in Stratham since February and joined the union right away.  The union gives her a sense of community and purpose, she said.

Cups and Dress Codes

The union says its major unresolved grievances have to do with wages and staffing, but matters of workplace culture are hard to avoid. That’s where cups and clothing enter the realm of labor-management relations.

To hear the baristas tell it, Starbucks used to be an environment where baristas could express themselves and develop authentic relationships with customers, especially the regulars.  They might choose to write a friendly message or draw a picture on a coffee cup, for example.  But under the leadership of CEO Brian Niccol, formerly the head of Chipotle, workplace culture has become more standardized.  The writing of messages on cups is now mandated, and they have to be the right kind of messages or baristas can face discipline.

According to Business Insider, minor infractions can include writing with an implement other than a sharpie or writing on the lid instead of the side of the cup.  “Medium infractions include writing pop culture or political references, drawings of animals, or generational slang.”  

Stratham barista Jack Duquette said he used to enjoy drawing pictures on the sides of cups but now, he says, it’s like inscriptions have to come “from a select list of phrases that were deemed to be uplifting or personal.”  On my most recent visit to Starbucks, my café mocha cup arrived marked, “Yum!”

Then there’s scheduling.  Liz Marshall, who is still in high school, said her usual shifts are 3:00 to 9:30 or 10:00 pm, or 3:00 pm to closing, a pretty early start for after school and pretty late to end on a school night.  And for a while, she said, “I was working 12-hour shifts almost every weekend, and my manager’s response to that was, well, we’ll hope we don’t get reported.”  New Hampshire labor law prohibits food service workers under 18 from working more than 10 ¼ hours in a single day.   

As for the dress code, Duquette said in the past it wasn’t very strict.  “I wore pretty much whatever pants I had,” he said, but after the new dress code was put in place, he had to buy jeans for the first time in years.  “I had to buy new boots. I had to buy a whole collection of plain black t-shirts, because that’s all we’re allowed to wear now. And honestly, knowing that our CEO comes from Chipotle, our dress code is eerily similar to that of the Chipotle dress code.”

“In the broader public’s mind, baristas are kind of known to be pretty expressive, and it’s almost like a thing,” he said.  Instead of developing personal relationships with customers, it’s “becoming like a Chipotle worker, like a McDonald’s worker, where you just have everybody look the same.”

With everyone wearing blue jeans and a black (but not faded black!) t-shirt, baristas are losing their personal relationship with Starbucks customers, Duquette said. “I mean, your physical appearance is a form of communication.” 

Moreover, at the same time baristas are mandated to look a certain way and write only certain messages on cups, they are timed for how quickly they can take orders and produce drinks, while being evaluated on “customer connection” based on surveys sent to Starbucks patrons.  One gets the sense that baristas have gone from having a workplace where they could express their individual personalities to being interchangeable cogs in a giant corporate machine.

And it is a giant corporate machine.  In its most recent Annual Report, the company said it has more than 40,000 stores across 88 global markets.  Of its stores, more than 10,000 are in the United States, and that doesn’t count coffee shops or grocery stores which are not company-owned but sell Starbucks products. 

In 2024, CEO Brian Niccol’s total compensation was $97,813,843, an amount the company reported was 6666 times the pay of the median employee, a part-time barista earning $14,674.  The same year one former CEO took in more than $21 million and another former CEO was paid nearly $7 million.  The union says Niccol’s salary is more than enough to cover the wage increases proposed by the 12,000 union baristas. 

The company points out that the union represents only 4% of their “partners,” but union members are proud of how much progress they’ve made in just a few years.  Tying their battle against corporate greed to a larger battle with oligarchy, authoritarianism, anti-union policies, and repression of immigrants, trans people, and people of color, Mars Juliano read a statement aimed at appealing to a wider community to join them, including  joining  the picket line if a strike is declared.

But beyond that, they speak to a vision of community and solidarity.

“It means a lot to me to be a part of the union, because it means that I get to be a part of something bigger, and I get to make the world better,” Stephanie Viekman said.  “I think that, like overall, that’s something I wanted in my life. Before I found Starbucks Workers United, I wanted a purpose and a reason to work hard to make the world a better place.”  With the union, she said “we get to work together and do that every day.”

“It’s like we’re all together as one, fighting for something,” said Liz Marshall.