In Long Beach, Starbucks union members gathered at the picket line early Thursday morning to participate in a nationwide strike on Red Cup Day, one of the coffee chain’s busiest days of the year in which it gives away free, reusable holiday cups to customers. About 100 stores nationwide participated in the one-day strike.
The Starbucks store on the corner of Redondo Avenue and Seventh Street was completely shut down as its employees gathered outside to call for fair contract negotiations, which they say have been purposely delayed by the company.
Josie Serrano, a barista at the unionized store in Long Beach, has been leading their store’s unionization efforts since earlier this year and said that all they want is to have a contract that reflects their list of demands including fair pay, fair labor practices, and benefits for unionized employees.
“If Starbucks were to sit down tomorrow with us and bargain, I don’t think that we would have any more of these huge actions. … But if Starbucks is going to continue to delay and union bust and fire workers around the country, then we’re gonna keep standing up and showing them that we’re still here and we need this contract,” Serrano said.
Another unionized location on Candlewood Street in Lakewood was also on strike Thursday along with 10 stores in California and hundreds of workers across the country who say they’re underpaid, understaffed, feeling overworked and met with resistance when trying to bargain for a contract, Serrano said.
In contract bargaining, unionized stores are asking for organizing rights, health and safety protocols and scheduling benefits, among other things as listed on the Starbucks Workers United website.
The Long Beach and the Lakewood stores unionized in May, becoming the first and second Starbucks stores to do so in Southern California. Now, they are joined by two stores in Los Angeles and one in Anaheim that are also striking on Red Cup Day, according to Starbucks Workers United.
At the picket line, the workers at both stores were joined in solidarity by mayor-elect Rex Richardson, L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, and members of Councilmember Cindy Allen’s office.
Starbucks, meanwhile, has filed four unfair labor practice charges against Workers United for failing to bargain in good faith, claiming that union workers in Buffalo, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Louisville and Long Beach were virtually broadcasting the contract negotiating sessions and posting recordings of the meetings online.
On Oct. 28 the company filed 22 more charges and stated in a release that “Workers United representatives continued to thwart NLRB rules throughout the week, resulting in extensive and wholly unnecessary delays that negatively affect our partners.”