In late December of 2024, SEIU affiliate Starbucks Workers United, held a five day “rolling strike” to protest the Starbucks corporation’s dismal wage offer during their contract bargaining. The strike comes in response to Starbucks’ offer of $0.25 wage increase after over a year of failed bargaining efforts. However, the company’s weak offer comes as no surprise as the SBWU leadership has ignored militant rank and file workers who have been pointing out for years that the union was moving in a direction which was not building enough leverage to force the company to make real concessions. While 98% of workers voted to authorize strike action, Workers United leadership chose to sabotage the strike by announcing a 5 day limit to the action, and planning to have stores walk out on different days across the country. The end result was a weak action that ended with no concessions made by the employer. The same method of short holiday strikes have also been employed by the union for years with its “Red Cup Day” actions which have likewise yielded similar results. True strike actions are always indefinite and are designed to leverage workers’ economic power to force the employer to make concessions. Anything short of an indefinite strike is merely symbolic action.

For the worker militants within SBWU who have been organizing within the union, the recent tactics used by leadership come as no surprise. For years Workers United and SEIU linked leadership within the union have focused the union’s resources almost entirely on a legal strategy of winning National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections and then establishing a contract with Starbucks by any means necessary, even if that means selling out workers freedom to strike. In the name of establishing an “organizing framework” they are in reality saddling workers down with an “organizing straightjacket”; however, Starbucks workers only need to look into the not too distant past to see examples of alternative forms of unionism that can deliver for workers. The first Starbucks unions were established by the IWW and through their method of “solidarity unionism” workers took frequent collective strike action winning serious wage increases, and quality of life improvements while working outside the established union regulatory framework.

Our Intervention

Party militants engaged within the workers coordination called the Class Struggle Action Network joined our fellow workers in Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) on picket-lines in six states throughout the U.S in support of the effort to pressure Starbucks into conceding wage increases, consistent hours, and other critical demands. We heard from baristas in all corners of the country who were familiar with the efforts of SBWU members in CSAN who have fought to oppose the “no-strike” clause and the “collaborative” bargaining approach promoted by SBWU leadership on a national level. The holiday walk out made it clear that across the country there is a growing number of Starbucks baristas who want to see the union move away from the failed policies of collaborationist business unionism and towards a combative union program of working class militancy.

In Portland, SBWU workers at one location have taken matters into their own hands. Despite having no official local structure workers have begun holding regular union meetings at their store and organizing shop floor actions. Over the last year the local has established close ties to the Class Struggle Action Network. Leaders from the local have been active in opposing the no-strike clause against the current union misleadership’s adamant fight for it on a first contract, and have established a local retail and service workers council in Portland which recently succeeded in passing a solidarity resolution with SBWU strikers through the New Seasons Labor Union (NSLU). By organizing with the Class Struggle Action Network, workers at this location have been able to amplify the power of their union efforts through obtaining the wider solidarity of class militants in unions across the area.

All of these efforts coalesced on December 24th, when SBWU workers at the 28th and Powell location hit the picket lines. Workers here were able to shut down the store from 4 AM until late in the evening, executing the longest lasting picket line in the city. The turnout here was large with a constant presence of people throughout the day. Picketers were supported by material supplies provided by the solidarity of NSLU and other workers in the CSAN network. Starbucks workers on the picket line wore CSAN pins, and held picket signs inscribed with the working-class internationalist war cry, “Workers of the World Unite!”. Throughout the day, workers noted the importance of the organizing efforts that the network have played in strengthening their resolve to oppose the no-strike clause in the contract & helping to strengthen the local, which in the past has had trouble turning anyone out for previous Red Cup Day actions, and has been impacted by high turnover rates nationwide which has led to leadership gaps on the shop floor. Meanwhile Party militants distributed our press and continued our criticism of the short preannounced limited strike action, pointing to the need for increasing generalized strike action for workers to win concessions from the boss.

In Richmond Virginia, Party militants along with numerous other CSAN members joined SBWU workers on multiple picket lines throughout the city. A handful of CSAN militants helped workers hold down picket lines and encouraged would-be customers and scabs to respect the picket-line. With the extra solidarity muscle, workers’ confidence at these locations was bolstered and they soon were able to effectively defend the picket line with many cars and scabs choosing to turn around.

Party militants also intervened on Starbucks picket lines In Sonoma County, California and Chicago Illinois. The end result of the symbolic rolling 5 day strike was predictable. Workers ended up with no significant wage increases and only more demoralized about the power of strike action.

The IWW, Solidarity Unionism and the First Starbucks Union

To understand the current situation faced by Starbucks workers, it is important to turn a page back to the roots of the organizing efforts of workers in the company. The first to successfully unionize Starbucks stores in the United States were the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), who waged a decade-long campaign from 2004 to 2014, and unionized 200-300 workers in over six states. It won 25% raises and guaranteed hours for workers across New York City, one of the U.S.’s largest cities, almost completely by utilizing direct action methods & without National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) union certification or collectively bargained contracts. Through frequent collective workplace action and strikes against the bosses to leverage their economic power directly against the employer and deliver “the goods” on bread and butter demands, with no need to wait for future promises to be delivered from the established union experts, no reliance on the NLRB or collective bargaining contract process. Over the long-term though, the realities of the high turnover rates in the service industry, company repression of union organizers, combined with the adhoc DIY style of IWW organizing, led the unionization effort to eventually fizzle out; however, the material gains won by the organizing remained for workers and often had crossover improvement in wages in stores across the U.S.

In this era the IWW found it extremely difficult to win NLRB elections. This was primarily due to the official policy of the NLRB to consider the bargaining units for chain fast food stores to be composed of all locations on a larger regional level. This meant that any certification vote had to be taken by all workers in the large bargaining unit, which made organizing and navigating all of the legal processes extremely difficult or impossible when combined with all of the other challenges of organizing in this sector. It is for these reasons that most established unions considered organizing workers in this sector impossible until recent years.

The Starbucks Union (SBU) campaign became a flagship campaign for the newly revitalizing IWW, that was moving from being mostly the nostalgic political society it had regressed to, into stepping it’s toes into labor organizing for the first time in decades. However, while the IWW effort mostly worked outside the NLRB process, a controversial part of strategy was the filing of Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) grievances through Section 7 of the NLRB as an attempt to win some staying power for the union by opposing firings of organizers. This method was questioned by many who viewed it as the beginning of a process of capitulation to the Wagner Act, which established the legal basis for the taming of the unions on a national scale, and ran the risk of moving the IWW away from it’s traditional embrace of combative class unionism and instead towards a slow integration into the regulatory regime via a pragmatic utilization of its legal methods within the union. Over time the tactic of engaging with Section 7 of the NLRB for filing ULP’s became increasingly accepted as a necessary tool to stave off repression and “get serious” with organizing within the union. Overtime, in some locals the process of filing ULP’s became a central focus of their organizing efforts.

No Strike Clauses, the NLRB and the Independent Union Movement

Fast forward to 2016, and the Burgerville Workers Union campaign emerged out of the IWW. The unionization effort has often been hailed by the larger labor movement as a flagship effort in organizing hard to organize fast food and service workers, but the success came at the cost of traditional wobbly principles and was a highly controversial topic in its early years. In the case of Burgerville, the NLRB allowed small local shops to file as bargaining units for certification elections, in stark contrast from its position in the past on Starbucks. To win the contracts and establish the unions with NLRB recognition, the IWW organizers who had been experienced in the “solidarity unionist” organizing methods in Portland Oregon, went a step further into the arms of the NLRB by not just obtaining NLRB certification, but by entering into collective bargaining agreements which accepted no-strike clauses and conceded a number of other important powers to the bosses in order to “win” the contracts, in direct conflict with the IWW constitution. The contracts which emerged resembled those of the most typical negotiated by business unions, and relented on wage demands in favor of things more palatable to the bosses such as rights for workers to collect tips which puts the responsibility of wages onto customers rather than the company. Over time the Burgerville union and other similar efforts that surrounded it would slowly drift almost completely away from the IWW and association with its program and principles, into the orbit of the established business unionist movement, and with it strong links to the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO.

Over the years this particular method of unionism which involved running small shop NLRB elections and accepting no-strike clauses soon began to catch on. Other sections of traditionally hard to organize workers began filing for NLRB elections in small shops across the country and accepting contracts on terms favorable to the boss, leading to a bubbling up of smaller unions that operated independently of the established regime unions but grounded on narrow company lines, divided up by many small locals and restrained by typical NLRB mandated restrictions on union activity. As the harsh realities of the position of workers in relation to the company seep in after the fanfare of winning the mostly illusory NLRB guarantees, it has led many formerly independent unions to be absorbed by larger more established unions as can be seen with the Amazon Labor Union’s merge into the Teamsters. While some of the independent unions continue on their own today, many are finding they are having a difficult time winning on worker demands.

Workers United: The SEIU and the Starbucks Workers United Campaign

In 2021, the NLRB began to alter its policy for union elections in regards to Starbucks and allowed local stores to run NLRB certification elections rather than elections only taking place based on region. As a result, the regime union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), latched onto the emerging effort through its subsidiary Workers United. Workers United, is an affiliate of the notorious SEIU that is well known for its hardcore links to the Democratic Party and its ruthless tactics of suppression of militant elements within its union. Workers United’s president is a years long AFL-CIO union functionary & SEIU is well known for putting to membership weak contracts that members reject over and over, forcing the union leadership into strike action that they actively work to sabotage via organizing weak strikes with pre-announced expiration dates.

Instead of building up an organization, empowering local worker leaders to take up fights against the company and building towards a larger strike strategy, SBWU leadership has taken the strategy of negotiating away workers freedom to strike in exchange for a contract which will supposedly create a foundational “organizing framework” that will be a stepping stone to stronger future action; however, legal guarantees have shown everywhere to count for little instead only through solidarity and generalized strike action can corporate behemoths like Starbucks and Amazon be brought down. A Instead, the present leadership threatens to negotiate away their most important tools to defend their interests while weighing them down with a regime union style organization that ruthlessly protects the status quo. So instead of having an organizing “framework” workers are left only with a straitjacket.

Starbucks Workers!

• Oppose any contract proposal that negotiates away workers’ right to strike or accepts wages that do not exceed inflation rates and thus accepts real wage cuts.

• Self-organize territorial sections of the union featuring open meetings where all members are able to put forward issues, organize shop floor and territorial campaigns against the company, discuss and approve of demands of the union.

• Establish open communication channels where members of the union can freely communicate and self-organize internally within the union.

• Build towards a national indefinite strike against the company.

• Participate in and develop territorial assemblies of workers where all baristas and workers regardless of company are welcome to organize and coordinate their efforts to stand in solidarity with each other.

• Reprioritize organizing new Starbucks stores by advancing hard hitting organizing campaigns, that deliver material wins through taking escalatory strike actions for workers.

• Grow the union by transforming it to being inclusive of all baristas regardless of company.