Starbucks workers begin a strike in 3 cities on December 20

A union representing Starbucks workers said that baristas in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle walked off the job Friday morning and that the strikes would spread to hundreds of stores by Christmas Eve unless the company improved its wage offer in contract negotiations.

The union, which represents baristas at more than 500 company-owned stores in the United States -- about 5 per cent of the US total -- said it called the strike after a bargaining session with the company this week failed to produce better wage gains.

The strike will begin in about 15 stores across the three metropolitan areas, according to a union member familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

"Starbucks proposed an economic package with no new wage increases for union baristas now and a guarantee of only 1.5% in future years," the union, Workers United, said in a statement.

The guarantee would entitle unionized Starbucks workers to receive a wage increase of 1.5% even if the company raises wages nationwide by less than that amount in future years. If the company raised wages by more than that -- as it did this year, with a recently announced increase of 2% -- unionized workers would get the higher amount.

Andrew Trull, a Starbucks spokesperson, said union delegates "prematurely ended" this week's negotiations. "It is disappointing they didn't return to the table given the progress we've made to date," he added.

The two sides have been bargaining a national contract framework during monthly sessions since April. They have reached more than two dozen tentative agreements on a variety of issues, including health and safety, attendance policies and ensuring that workers can be fired only for just cause.

The union workers will also receive an expansion of paid parental leave that Starbucks recently announced for all workers; union members say the announcement appeared to be a response to a demand the union made during bargaining.

While Starbucks workers have waged one- and two-day strikes since they began to unionize in the fall of 2021, the latest action could see workers at dozens or even hundreds of stores walk off the job for longer periods. The union said the strike would end within five days.

The company had largely resisted the union's organizing efforts for more than two years until February, when it sought a peace deal of sorts that would establish a process for workers to unionize without opposition from the company, and another process for bargaining contracts at hundreds of stores. The two sides also agreed to try to resolve litigation that had been filed during the fight.

The decision to engage with the union was made by the company's former CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, who faced pressure from a union-backed campaign to elect three new candidates to the company's board, as well as from boycotts and protests tied to the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Narasimhan said on an earnings call in January that the protests were having a "negative impact" on the company financially despite being "driven by misperceptions" that the company was hostile to Palestinians and their supporters.

Starbucks ousted Narasimhan in August and replaced him with Brian Niccol, the former CEO of Chipotle. Niccol wrote a letter to the union in September saying he was "committed to making sure we engage constructively and in good faith." But union members involved in the bargaining say the momentum slowed somewhat during the fall.

"Our CEO Brian doesn't know what it's like to preside over the company while it's fighting with us," a Starbucks barista and bargaining delegate, Silvia Baldwin, said on a call open to supporters and the media Thursday night.

"It was pretty clear very quickly that we were going to have to remind him or teach him what that looks like."