Workers at more than a dozen Chicago area Starbucks were on strike Christmas Eve, union organizers said, as baristas escalated a national walkout that began in three cities, including Chicago, on Friday.
Across the country, baristas at more than 300 cafes were striking, according to their union, Starbucks Workers United. The union had previously warned that the strike, which began with walkouts in Chicago, Los Angeles and the coffee giant’s hometown of Seattle last week, could spread to hundreds of stores if the company did not meet the baristas’ demands at the bargaining table. By Monday, the strikes had shut down close to 60 U.S. stores, the union said.
In the Chicago area, workers at nine cafes walked out Tuesday, joining workers at five cafes that have been on strike since Friday, organizers said.
The strikes come as the union said contract negotiations with the coffee giant have broken down, saying Starbucks had offered union baristas a wage package that would include no immediate raises and a guaranteed increase of 1.5% a year in the future, which it said would amount to less than 50 cents an hour for most baristas.
Starbucks has emphasized the 1.5% raise guarantee would be a floor for future raises, not a ceiling. Baristas make an average wage of more than $18 an hour, the company said.
The company last week accused the union of “prematurely” walking away from the bargaining table. “We are ready to continue negotiations to reach agreements,” company spokesperson Jay Go-Guasch said. “We need the union to return to the table.”
Unionized Starbucks cafes represent about 5% of the company’s more than 10,000 company-owned U.S. stores. In a statement posted on the company’s website Monday, Starbucks Executive Vice President Sara Kelly said the “overwhelming majority” of Starbucks stores were still open, and that the company expected “very limited impact” to its operations even during the planned escalation Tuesday, which baristas have said is slated to the be the last day of the strike. Kelly also said that some stores that had shut down over the weekend had reopened.
On Friday, staff at the company’s 5964 N. Ridge Ave. in Edgewater, where baristas were among the first in Chicago to unionize more than two years ago, walked out on strike. Baristas at 2101 W. Armitage Ave. in Bucktown and at 4553-4557 N. Lincoln Ave. in Lincoln Square, also walked out Friday, and outside the city, baristas at one cafe each in Evanston and Des Plaines were on strike.
They were joined on Christmas Eve by workers at cafes located at 6350 N. Broadway Ave., 6075 N. Lincoln Ave., 1601 W. Irving Park Rd., 1000 W. Diversey Pkwy. and 116 S. Halsted in the city, as well as one store each in Glenview, Elgin and Carpentersville and another store in Evanston, organizers said. A handful of Illinois stores outside the Chicago area were also on strike, organizers said.
Of the striking Chicago area stores, all but the Elgin and Greektown locations were either listed as closed or not accepting online orders on the Starbucks app as of Tuesday morning.
The first Starbucks baristas to unionize did so at a cafe in Buffalo, New York, in December 2021. Since then, baristas at more than 530 cafes in more than 40 states and Washington, D.C. have also voted for union representation. But the union and the company have yet to finalize a first collective bargaining agreement — a contract that will lay out agreements on pay, benefits and working conditions for union baristas.
Starbucks initially pushed back against the union drive, but in February, the two sides said they had agreed on a “foundational framework” to finalize a first contract together and resolve ongoing litigation between the union and the company.
The escalating national strike came as union organizers accused the company of walking back that agreement.
“The company has met us halfway on a lot of the non-economic stuff,” Teddy Hoffman, an Edgewater-based bargaining delegate for the baristas’ union, said from the picket line last week. “So it makes it all the more clear with their response to our economic package that it’s not that they can’t, they just won’t.”
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