Workers at unionized Starbucks locations across the Portland area remain on strike this week and say they will not return to work until Starbucks resolves complaints about its labor practices and returns to the bargaining table.

Roughly 2,000 workers at 95 unionized Starbucks locations across the country have been on strike since mid-November. Seven of those stores are in the Portland area, with workers at two stores in Eugene on strike as well. 

The strike was timed to coincide with “Red Cup Day,” which is typically among Starbucks’ busiest and most lucrative events of the year. But Maggie Bolden, a shift supervisor at the Starbucks location at SE 126th and Division, said striking baristas are prepared to stay out on their picket lines for the foreseeable future. 

“Our union has really, really prepared our workers to go on strike for the long haul,” Bolden told the Mercury. “We have been working towards this moment for a long time.”

Jaci Anderson, a Starbucks spokesperson, wrote in a statement to the Mercury that the company is unmoved by the strike and that “99% of our 17,000 U.S. locations remain open and welcoming customers—including many the union publicly stated would strike but never closed or have since reopened.” 

“Regardless of the union’s plans, we do not anticipate any meaningful disruption,” Anderson continued. “When the union is ready to return to the bargaining table, we’re ready to talk.”

The showdown between Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) and the Seattle-headquartered coffee drink chain has been ongoing since a Starbucks location in Buffalo, New York voted to unionize almost four years ago. 

Since then, SBWU has grown to include more than 500 stores in states across the country—largely over the objections of Starbucks management, which has engaged in a variety of union-busting tactics that have drawn numerous complaints at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  

In February of last year, SBWU and Starbucks announced that they would begin meeting to collectively bargain for the union’s first contract. That announcement was a high point for the union. Since then, however, progress toward that landmark first contract has stalled. 

Bolden, who was working at a unionized Starbucks location in Spokane and attended the first ever bargaining session between the union and the company in Atlanta last year, said the first several months of bargaining were “very productive.” 

“We came very close to finalizing our contract,” Bolden said. “We’re about 90 percent of the way done, and the thing that the company is refusing to bargain about is wages and safe and secure staffing. Those are really the two things we need to finalize this contract.”

Two summers ago, as the bargaining process was progressing, Starbucks made a change: replacing CEO Laxman Narasimhan with Brian Niccol, the former CEO at Chipotle. Niccol, who opposed organizing efforts at Chipotle, has a compensation package of $97.8 million—or 6,666 times what the average Starbucks worker made last year. 

Last December, under Niccol’s leadership, Starbucks rejected the union’s wage and staffing proposals and, Bolden said, refused to offer workers anything beyond a one percent raise—even as inflation has increased by three percent over the last year.

The company eventually offered a two percent raise this spring, but SBWU delegates overwhelmingly voted to reject that offer in April. The two sides have not met at the bargaining table since.  

Jacinda Padilla, a Portland-based organizer with SBWU, declined to state what kind of raise the union would find acceptable, but said Starbucks’ current position is a non-starter. 

“We will not return to the table unless they have a valid wage offer,” Padilla said.

The two sides remain far apart. Starbucks claims that SBWU asked for a 65 percent raise during the first year of their contract and a 77 percent raise over the contract’s three-year lifetime, with additional pay increases for working on weekends, receiving inventory, and more. 

Now, with no progress on the bargaining front and stores like Bolden’s continuing to unionize this year, SBWU is attempting to increase the pressure on the corporation. Workers are running pickets outside the unionized stores in the Portland area this week, and are trying to educate regular customers on the particulars of the labor dispute. 

“They see us on the picket line, and they say, ‘Oh, I had no idea that this was going on—thank you for telling me,” Bolden said. “Some of them have vowed to not go to Starbucks until we return. Some of them have bought us food, or donated to our hardship fund also, and that has been really encouraging too.”

The striking Starbucks workers have also received an assist from the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose members have donated food and joined picket lines. The hardship fund for striking workers has raised nearly $4,000 so far.

Starbucks had previously garnered a reputation as an admirable employer, offering college tuition assistance, family planning and parenting resources, and access to legal aid for DACA recipients. But the unionization battle has threatened that reputation. 

Now, as the strike continues, workers are hoping to draw attention not just to the contract negotiation but the hundreds of unfair labor practice (ULP) complaints made against the company at the NLRB for alleged illegal discipline of union organizers, threats to close unionized stores, surveilling union members, and more.

Bolden said she got a taste of Starbucks’ anti-union approach when her store on SE Division filed for a union election earlier this year and a district manager attempted to prevent workers from wearing union merchandise in the store. 

“They have made it very clear that they are willing to violate labor laws in order to get what they want and then pay for it on the back end,” Bolden said.

The NLRB has already found Starbucks guilty of more than 500 labor law violations since the SBWU organizing push began. Hundreds more complaints are outstanding, including more than 100 filed this year alone—making Starbucks one of the most prolific violators of labor law in American history. 

Recently, however, the NLRB has been hobbled by the corporate-friendly Trump administration. At the beginning of the year, Trump fired one of the judges on the board—leaving the board without enough judges to reach the quorum it needs to hear cases. 

No matter who is running the NLRB, however, SBWU organizers say they are prepared for and committed to a long-term battle. This strike, they believe, is a demonstration of their approach. 

“We’ve said, ‘Okay, we’re not just going out for one day,’” Bolden said. “We’re going to have each other’s back, we’re going to build a network of coworkers, and DSA members, and community members, and provide mutual aid to each other so that we can sustain this in order to get what we need.”