Abigail Marcus
Starbucks workers
Starbucks workers at the Capitol Square location, above, and at the State Street cafe, are still waiting to meet with management for contract negotiations.
Starbucks hopes to have one of its busiest days of the year on Red Cup Day, when the company gives away thousands of reusable holiday-themed red cups to customers who buy a drink. In Madison, at the company’s Capitol Square and State Street locations, union workers demanding a contract will be trying to derail the Nov. 16 promotion. Walkouts are also planned in other cities around the country.
“People are mean waiting for those cups. People are impatient waiting for those cups,” says Abigail Marcus, a leader of the union effort at the State Street store. “It makes it the most miserable day to be a worker at Starbucks. It’s a really good day to shut it down and get the word out.”
Workers are planning to walk out, picket, and rally Thursday morning and afternoon in downtown Madison on what they say is the company’s most profitable day of business. The State Street store voted to form a union in April, and the Capitol Square store did the same a year earlier.
“One of the most important things at our location is safety,” says Allie Kerr, a barista at the State Street store. “We asked for sharps disposal containers for our bathrooms because people are disposing sharps willy-nilly, leaving them in toilets and trash cans.” According to Kerr, about 75% of workers signed the petition asking for sharps bins. Workers are also seeking better pay and healthcare in a contract with the company.
Multiple workers say a sharps bin was promised for the State Street store, but in a letter dated Nov. 1, Camille Arnold, a partner relations manager for Starbucks, said the company had “found that circumstances do not rise to the level that qualifies for sharps containers” at the State Street store.
Arnold’s Nov. 1 letter says Starbucks has communicated with Lynne Fox, the president of Workers United, the national organization Starbucks workers would join, about scheduling sessions to bargain a contract. “Our bargaining will be for a full contract rather than addressing issues that you raise piecemeal,” Arnold said in the letter.
Evan McKenzie, a barista at the Capitol Square store, says bargaining has been stalled for even longer. “The last time that there’s been any effort made to work on negotiation in Madison was last October [2022], when the company came into the bargaining room 20 minutes late, then left after five minutes — once they found a reason to leave,” says McKenzie. He says the company claimed workers attending the bargaining session virtually was a violation of ground rules.
In a statement to Isthmus, Andrew Trull, a Starbucks spokesperson, blamed delays on the union. “Despite escalating rhetoric and recurring rallies demanding a contract, Workers United hasn't agreed to meet to progress contract bargaining in more than four months.”
While the Red Cup Day actions are designed in part to get the wheels turning on contract negotiations, workers could be in for more delays. Recent studies have found that about one-third of unions that win their election still had no contract after two years, and the average time to ratify a first contract was 465 days.
While workers at the State Street location filed a federal unfair labor practice charge against Starbucks Oct. 25, the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor law, says it does not have sufficient staff to deal with a historic influx of those cases. “The agency remains understaffed after almost a decade of flat funding,” the board’s office of public affairs said in an April news release, noting that staffing in field offices has dropped by 50% amid the increased workload.
The contract effort has already lasted long enough that Marcus moved on from the State Street store, though she is still active in the union effort, where she was a leader. “I care so, so much about all those people that are still working at that building…I know what a mess it is there.”
Having connected with other Starbucks baristas who are forming unions at their own stores across the Midwest, Marcus says Madison stands out among its peers for union support. “I really do think that in Madison specifically we have it really good as far as young people and the labor movement. We really run into a lot of people that once they understand our cause, they’re right with us and for us,” she says. “The public reaction in Madison has been really great.”
[Editor's note: This story has been updated to attribute Starbucks' statement to spokesperson Andrew Trull.]
