After Years of Union Avoidance, External Pressure Is Building on Starbucks

It has been almost five years since workers at a Starbucks location in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionise. Since then, the Starbucks union movement has spread across the United States, reaching 700 stores as of this month and representing more than 12,000 workers. In the process, it’s also inspired a wider-reaching unionisation wave across the hospitality sector.

Starbucks Workers United (SBWU)'s efforts were all achieved in the face of an aggressive anti-union campaign. Starbucks has spent millions on “union avoidance” lawyers, fired pro-union workers, and closed unionised stores. Senator Bernie Sanders called the company’s actions “the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country” in 2023.

Progress towards a first contract has been slow. The two sides only began formal negotiations in April 2024, with the National Labor Relations Board accusing Starbucks of illegally refusing to fairly bargain on multiple occasions. According to the Economic Policy Institute, it takes an average of 465 days for unionised workers to bargain a first contract. As of this publication, SBWU has waited for 1,653 days.

While the union tries to compel Starbucks to finally agree a first contract with pickets and boycotts, pressure is also building from the outside. Lawmakers, activist shareholders, and labour leaders have all called out the company over its opposition to the union. Most recently, a group of human-rights experts appointed by the United Nations sent a letter to Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol in March asking the company to respond to allegations of union-busting.

After years of the company’s efforts to stymie its union, could these external pressure campaigns finally make a difference?

‘We Are Gravely Concerned’

The 11-page letter to Niccol was sent on March 10 by four experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). A copy was also sent to the United States government. These special rapporteurs work independently of the UN to monitor human-rights issues around the world and report their findings to the UNHRC.

In the letter, first reported by Reuters, the four experts laid out a litany of allegations against Starbucks, including “threats, harassment and intimidation” going back to 2021. “We are gravely concerned that Starbucks’ alleged conduct, including but not limited to the reprisal measures taken against workers campaigning or expressing support for unionizing, may amount to violations of workers’ rights to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association”, the experts wrote.

Gina Romero, one of the authors of the letter, is a Colombian activist and the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. As well as conducting country visits and producing reports for the UNHRC, writing these sorts of letters is part of Romero’s mandate. “The idea is to communicate both with the government and other actors, and to create a type of a dialogue between the different actors”, she tells me. 

Another goal is to raise awareness for particular causes. The letters also act as a document of allegations of human-rights violations that are collected by the UNHRC in a database, which can be accessed in the future by advocates or activists. 

In the case of Starbucks, Romero says that she was motivated by the ongoing difficulties that unionising workers face at the company. “[There are] problematic trends that the company has in intimidating workers and interfering with their rights of assembly [and] collective bargaining”, she says.

The letter lays out a series of instances in which Starbucks is accused of responding to its unionising workers with threats and intimidation, and in some cases by allegedly calling the police on its staff for handing out flyers or picketing outside a store. These incidents represent “cases of alleged violations of the rights to peaceful assembly and association”, the authors of the letter wrote. 

As is common practice, the special rapporteurs gave the company 60 days to respond. At the time of our interview, more than a month after the deadline, neither Starbucks nor the U.S. government had responded. (I reached out to Starbucks for comment on the letter and whether it planned to respond, but have not heard back as of publication.)

Romero says it’s pretty typical for companies to stay silent. “I never expect companies to reply, but at the end it is important to do this letter to try to put some evidence that the company has a responsibility to actually ensure these rights”, she says.

In a statement shared by SBWU, union spokesperson Michelle Eisen said: “We’re grateful to [Romero] for standing up for baristas and calling out Starbucks’ historic union busting as we continue to fight to build a better future at the global brand. We know that baristas are key to Starbucks’ success. It’s time for Starbucks to settle a fair contract and stop their record-breaking union busting activity so we can all move forward”.

Holding Starbucks Accountable

The UN experts’ letter adds to a number of external pressure campaigns waged against Starbucks in recent years. Local legislators and big-name politicians such as Sanders and Zoran Mamdani have joined Starbucks baristas on the picket line during their many strikes. Lawmakers have also sent multiple letters to Starbucks demanding that it negotiate with its workers. Meanwhile, SBWU has called for a boycott by customers.

Activist investors have additionally attempted to steer the company from the inside. Previously, I have written that shareholders are some of the biggest benefactors of coffee's inequities. Rather than invest in their supply chains or properly compensate their suppliers, publicly traded coffee companies regularly syphon off their massive profits and return them to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks.

How Corporations and Executives Captured the Coffee Industry’s Profits

The global coffee industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and yet many stakeholders struggle to make ends meet. As corporate revenues climb, it’s worth examining where those profits go.

The PouroverFionn Pooler

But shareholder activism can turn the tables, forcing companies to acknowledge issues or change course. Activist shareholders have introduced proposals in the past to force Starbucks to undergo a third-party assessment of its approach to workers’ rights. They’ve also gone after the makeup of its board: In 2023, a coalition of labour unions called the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) Investment Group nominated three candidates for board seats at the company. (A few months later, the group withdrew its candidates after Starbucks and SBWU came to an agreement over bargaining progress.)

Earlier this year, the SOC Investment Group and other investors urged Starbucks shareholders to vote against re-electing two board members due to what they described as a failure to properly oversee the company’s labour relations. In a letter to shareholders, the groups wrote that Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the lead independent director, and Beth Ford, the chair of the nominating and corporate governance committee, “bear significant responsibility for both the labor relations oversight failures and governance backslide”.

In the end, shareholders voted to re-elect both board members. SOC Investment Group’s corporate governance director Louis Malizia told me in a statement: “Although the Company announced a return to the bargaining table ahead of the annual meeting, no progress has followed. More concerning, the union reports that management is attempting to roll back previously agreed-upon terms. We will continue to hold the Board accountable and press for credible, good-faith negotiations”.

Pressure Builds

It is encouraging to see outside pressure campaigns attempting to steer Starbucks towards fair bargaining. But will any of them actually work? 

Professor John Logan, director of labour and employment studies at San Francisco State University, is doubtful. “I’ve been involved in dozens of union campaigns involving this kind of letter or tactic”, he says. “By itself, it usually has zero impact and is only helpful if it’s one of many, and many more direct, points of pressure on the company”.

After a series of strikes that began in November 2025 and which involved thousands of unionised baristas, the two sides returned to the negotiating table this April. The union lowered its proposed wage floor from $20 to $17 in order to restart talks.

However, points of contention quickly arose. SBWU accused Starbucks of reopening already-settled issues, saying it was “trying to move backwards”, while the company said the re-openings were necessary to “reflect current business realities, customer expectations, and partner interests”. Starbucks, which says that it offers industry-leading pay and benefits, continues to assert that it is committed to bargaining with the union in good faith. 

Logan, who has written extensively on the Starbucks union campaign since its inception, is sceptical about this as well, unless activists and organisers can ramp up the pressure even further. “There’s really nothing going on to suggest that Starbucks intends to negotiate in good faith with the union or sign a contract that would give a strong incentive to workers in non-union stores to organise. Why would it?” he says. “Unless the union can come up with some pressure from somewhere that would fundamentally change the current dynamic, there’s no reason to believe anything is really likely to change”.

Nearly five years after the first Starbucks organised, and two years since contract negotiations started, there is still no sign of a breakthrough. SBWU says that it would take less than a day’s sales for the company to meet the union’s contract demands. Instead, Starbucks has reportedly spent $250 million or more to fight the union, and its progressive reputation lies in tatters.

Despite the deadlock, pressure, however incremental, continues to build. New stores continue to unionise. The House of Representatives recently voted to pass a bill that would speed up union contract negotiations. And more politicians are voicing opposition to Starbucks’ approach. After the company announced plans to move some of its corporate operations to Tennessee, Nashville council members wrote a letter to Niccol urging a swift resolution to contract negotiations.

A global coffee corporation with deep pockets combined with weakened federal oversight under the current administration means the deck remains stacked against SBWU. External influence from investors, lawmakers, and human-rights campaigners might not be enough to force Starbucks to agree to a contract. But pressure can’t build forever, and those involved must hope it leads to an eventual release.

Header image by Şahin Sezer Dinçer via Pexels