Starbucks Workers United calls nationwide boycott as contract fight drags on

Starbucks Workers United, the union representing more than 12,000 baristas, launched a nationwide boycott of Starbucks on August 25 under the slogan “No contract? No coffee,” calling on customers to stop buying from both unionized and non-unionized stores until the company signs a first contract, according to a HuffPost report.

More than 700 of Starbucks’ roughly 11,000 North American stores have voted to unionize since late 2021, and none has reached a contract with the company, HuffPost reported. The union represents about 5% of Starbucks’ U.S. workforce.

The organizing drive began on December 9, 2021, when baristas at a store on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, New York, voted 19-8 to unionize with Starbucks Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, according to an NPR report. It was the first unionized store among the company’s roughly 9,000 U.S. locations at the time.

The union is demanding “a minimum $17 per hour wage, enough hours to live on, better staffing in our stores, and basic workplace protections,” according to a statement reported by HuffPost. “Every year, our living costs rise but our wages don’t keep up,” the union said. The union told Stocktwits that after years of stalled bargaining, the boycott “leaves us with no other choice.”

More than 550 unfair labor practice charges are pending against Starbucks, according to a Stocktwits report. Administrative law judges have already ruled in dozens of separate cases that the company violated federal labor law while resisting the organizing campaign, and the union has filed additional charges accusing Starbucks of illegally threatening and retaliating against union supporters, HuffPost reported.

The AFL-CIO, a federation of 65 unions, endorsed the boycott on August 25, saying it was “standing with them in their fight for a fair contract” and criticizing what it called “unchecked corporate greed.” It is not the first time the federation has backed the union: more than 90% of unionized baristas voted to authorize a strike over stalled contract talks in November 2025, according to Common Dreams.

A Starbucks spokesperson said the company is “committed to engaging in productive bargaining” and pointed to its “competitive pay, industry-leading benefits,” the “lowest turnover in the industry” and more than one million annual job applicants as evidence of its appeal as an employer, according to Stocktwits.

Management and the union have held bargaining sessions and reached agreements on dozens of smaller issues, but the process has been slow and repeatedly interrupted by stalled talks, according to a TipRanks report, which also noted that Starbucks shares fell 2% on August 25, the day the boycott was announced.

The unfair labor practice charges are pending before the National Labor Relations Board, according to a Blockonomi report, which also reported that Starbucks’ most recent quarterly results showed U.S. comparable sales growth of 7.9%, the fourth straight quarter of positive sales, with adjusted earnings of 85 cents per share, up 70% from a year earlier.

The boycott has no announced end date and applies to Starbucks’ company-owned stores nationwide, regardless of whether workers at a given location have unionized, HuffPost reported.