Resilient Starbucks Workers Escalate a 6-week Nationwide Strike in Common Defense against the Coffee Bosses
The following is a leaflet addressing Starbucks workers as SBWU (Starbucks Workers United) launches a nationwide strike. PDF available for distribution.
The legal union Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) has authorized a 6-week national strike as a result of an impasse in bargaining with walk outs beginning November 14th and ending December 24th. November 14th coincides with one of the most profitable days of the year for Starbucks, “Red Cup Day”. The 6-week strike is an escalation of the 5-day strikes from the preceding year’s Red Cup Day strikes, reflecting a positive development for the contract campaign to leverage the power of the now strike-confident workplaces. However, the incrementalism of striking once every year is a recipe too slow to pose a serious threat to the company’s profits and as a result bargaining can not force concessions from the bosses. The strike must be a tool workers are confident they can threaten to use at any moment, but in September our union misleaders proved they disagree.
At the end of September 2025, Starbucks gave 600 cafes a 48 hour notice of their closure, of which 61 were unionized, and guaranteed firing thousands of workers at these locations. This unjustifiable attack on Starbucks workers demands national strike power to protect these workers, but instead the attack was met with crickets from our ashamed union misleaders. This slow incremental approach of a few symbolic strikes every year is the product of an idealistic program of company unionism favored by the bosses for its weakness as it denies workers their collective class power by isolating segments of the working class to a single company. Its failure to provide a single contract to any of its 600 unionized workplaces or even secure strong economic planks in bargaining reflects the foundation of illusions the union misleaders have built this contract campaign upon.
Real power comes from the unity of the working class for the purposes of defending its interests against the onslaught of attacks by the capitalist class. If this power is going to be reflected in collective bargaining with substantial material wins, then organizing must be led with successful methods of uniting the class rather than led astray by the dead ends of craft and trade unionism which divides the class by narrow individual interests. To reflect this need for unity, union leadership must adopt a union program on the basis of class struggle.
Class unionism as an alternative to all class collaborative elements of the labor movement can leverage the true power of a united working class and provide a real defense of our living standard. Workers in a class union recognize the fundamentally antagonistic and irreconcilable interests between the working class and capitalist class. This relationship leaves no room for class collaboration as an avenue for class unity but only more division and isolation. To begin the work of uniting the class, workers must struggle for the consolidation of labor power into a large militant class union capable of challenging the bosses’ ideals of “labor peace,” or a collaboration effort between union and boss to end strikes altogether. With every lapse of the labor movement, the capitalists stand to revert many concessions previously won by the workers. Class unionism serves as a counterweight and an indefinite method of defending the class from reactionary policy and furthering its own interests.
How can Starbucks workers begin to represent class unionism in their workplace? It starts with leaders at the workplace having conversation with their coworkers about the common problems at the workplace and developing an attitude to challenge the systemic attacks coming from the bosses. With a base of activated workers who are ready to make moves, they can serve as the organizing committee for further agitation, education, inoculation and organizing.
Further conversations will likely shed more light on the value of a united workplace in order to practically defend ourselves and build power for long-term wins at the workplace. Workplace unity can be represented as a union, with legal recognition or not, and it will be the decision of the workers how they want to take their form of representation. As a union, it will be important to hold regular union meetings outside of work discussing the foundational principles of a class union caucus, whether inside an official union or working outside.
Business unions today leave little to no room for the growth of class struggle caucuses and it may be best to work outside of the official union. Regardless, a base of militant workers committed to a foundation of class union principles must be built before there is a possibility to reach other workplaces. When connecting with other workplaces, power can be built by collaborating with other groups of workers who are ready to organize around the principles of class unionism. As an example of this, last year CSAN (Class Struggle Action Network) members and worker leaders from SBWU and UFCW 555 convened with union grocery workers at New Seasons to pass a cross-union strike solidarity resolution in their union to strengthen the power of their strike and to build relationships for the positive development of a class union.
The struggle is long and the capitalist class will fight our advances every step of the way, however the only way through the immiseration of our conditions is to look forward, organize, and fight back. There is a class war at hand, and our victories will not be kindly delivered hand outs, so we need to put our abilities to the test and begin organizing. Starbucks workers can and should use this union contract campaign as an opportunity to demonstrate the failures of the business unionism of SBWU and point the way forward with class unionism.
If you are a Starbucks worker interested in organizing a class struggle caucus, or collaborating with Class Struggle Baristas United at 28th and Powell, email pdxcsbu@gmail.com to get more involved.
