Colorado Starbucks Workers Join Nationwide Strike For Fair Pay

Since November 13th of this last year, Starbucks strikes have been sweeping the nation, and Colorado is no exception. The Starbucks Workers Union (SBWU) has been working hard to unify Starbucks unions to advocate for the completion of their union contract. The demands within the contract are for a higher take home pay, consistent hours so employees may qualify for healthcare benefits, consistency of scheduling and staffing, and for Starbucks to resolve their labor violations with the National Labor Rights Board. 

January 11th, at the 16th Street Mall location, employees and supporters alike formed a picket line to put pressure on Starbucks to finalize the nearly-complete contract that HQ has been delaying for the last year and a half.

Naomi Wilson had been an employee for three years and when they were informed the 16th Street Mall Starbucks was a union store, they didn’t know what that meant at first. But after learning more about collective action and the union process, Naomi found themselves being elected as a bargaining representative and strike captain. “

To be a bargaining representative, I was on these Zoom calls with the union representatives that were in person with the company, and we would get all the information that they were given, and we would vote on different proposals and things, send the proposal back, rinse and repeat […] We met every month for, I think it was like six to eight months, and then by the time we got to October, we were on to wages, and that’s when things started getting a little more difficult.” 

Clarence Mills, co-chair of Denver’s Democratic Socialist Association (DSA) labor committee said that DSA has been supporting SBWU since they started the fight four years ago. 

Mills emphasized the importance of this movement for all workers by saying, “If wage and hour demands are met, it will create a tiered structure that will accelerate union organizing for all new unions going forward.” He went on to say, “This would be the first national fast food union contract and that creates a template for other hard to organize places like Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, and REI.”

Mills said that there are detractors of the movement and aggressive picket line crossers who’ve said, “If you don’t like your job, go find a new one.” “I’d argue that these protesters love their jobs,” Mill countered. “If you really care as a worker, you stick around and try to improve the conditions at your workplace.” 

Workers outside Starbucks Lafayette
Photo from Sprout Foster

Lucille Wayne, Strike Leader and Starbucks employee of two years, said she left her job at Dutch Bros because of the health care that Starbucks offered. All Starbucks employees are guaranteed health insurance at 20 hours a week, but that rule has been consistently deviated by scheduling employees exactly 19.5 hours.

“What I want is for every employee to receive healthcare benefits like I have.” Wayne continued, “I love my job and my coworkers and I want that positive experience to be consistent.”

Thirty minutes North in Lafayette, another Starbucks location is showing solidarity. Kai Ott is Colorado born-and-raised and has been a Starbucks employee for 7.5 years since they were 16 years-old. For the first few years of their employment, they were told by management that “Unions are only for the stores that are really terrible and broken. [Unionizing] is a terrible thing to do to your managers.”

“It made me really scared of unions; I wouldn’t even look it up to find out what they were,” Ott said. But when they finally did start searching, Ott learned that unions were simply a way to support employees’ rights. In the last two years, managers were cracking down at the smallest infractions, ostensibly in retaliation to the national Starbucks union movement.

“We were getting written up for everything, like dirty aprons, which are supposed to get dirty, and for missing nametags.”

When Ott realized they could be getting support with a union in such situations, they jumped on-board and led their Starbucks’ location in the process of unionizing. 

The workers at west South Boulder Road have been receiving support on the picket line from community members and politicians such as John Hickenlooper, but have been faced with various union-busting tactics as well.

“The barrier around the store was widened to supposedly ‘make the entrance bigger’ but it makes it so we can’t directly picket in front of the store… There was also one night that had been completely dry, no precipitation, and when we arrived the next morning to set-up the sidewalk was covered in ice. We checked up and down the street and there was no ice anywhere else.” 

Another common practice that SBWU is attempting to remedy with the contract negotiations is the “two-person play.”  Ott explained, “A two-person play is when two people are scheduled to run the whole store, even during peaks, which really sucks.” Ott said it has become common for, “employees to get woken up by frantic calls asking where they are, because the schedule had been switched the night before.” Additionally, before the uptick of strikes in November, Starbucks was the largest NLRB violator in the nation with over 700 unresolved unfair labor practice charges. 

The next action to support the Starbucks Workers Union and other labor efforts will be the Unite the Unions Event, January 27th from 3-5 pm at Civic Center Park in Denver.  

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