ABQ Starbucks workers join nationwide strike on Christmas Eve

Meg Wright wants Starbucks Corp. executives to negotiate a fair contract that includes protected benefits and increased wages.

But that contract hasn’t come to fruition in a yearslong battle between company executives and officials of the national organization Starbucks Workers United, representing workers like Wright at New Mexico’s only unionized store located at Rio Grande and Interstate 40.

Wright and other workers at the Albuquerque Starbucks participated in a nationwide, five-day strike on Tuesday — what union officials are saying is the largest to date — in response to failed commitments by the Seattle-based coffee chain made earlier this year to reach a labor agreement and resolve unfair labor practice charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

The strike by Starbucks employees joins a growing list of standoffs this year between organized labor and corporations, including a seven-week strike by Boeing workers in the Seattle area that ended in November and another by Amazon workers at delivery hubs in California, New York, Georgia and Illinois that started last week.

“I have worked in food and beverage service on and off for about 25 years, and it has always been a struggle to make ends meet, to feel OK about work,” said Wright, a Starbucks barista joined on the picket line Tuesday morning by about a dozen others. “Even though this company, on the surface, offers benefits and pay above the really bad minimum wage, it’s still not a living wage.”

The Christmas Eve strike by Albuquerque Starbucks workers follows a vote to unionize the Rio Grande store in September 2022 and other walkouts by members and supporters in the months since.

A dozen supporters and workers, about half of which are employed at the Rio Grande location, woke up early Tuesday to begin picketing in front of the store’s south and west ends. They chanted “No contract, no coffee” and “People over profits” and waved signs such as “Union busting is disgusting” to passersby.

“It felt like the biggest win to see them out on the picket line,” said Naomi Martinez, a volunteer organizer for Starbucks Workers United based in California. “I think it’s already difficult to get workers to work together, be excited, get out on the picket line, even when you’re surrounded by other stores. But they’ve been standing strong on their own for so long now, and so to see that energy still be so high and just to see their commitment to the movement … it’s just so inspiring.”

A national contract that also “accounts for different stores or different areas based on their needs” has not yet been reached with Starbucks, Martinez told the Journal. Union officials in a Monday news release said both sides have engaged in “hundreds of hours of bargaining and countless hours of preparation for each session.”

“After all Starbucks has said about how they value partners throughout the system, we refuse to accept zero immediate investment in baristas’ wages,” Lynne Fox, president of Starbucks Workers United, said in a statement. “Union baristas know their value, and they’re not going to accept a proposal that doesn’t treat them as true partners.”

A Starbucks spokesperson couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday.

“Our new CEO makes more than $50,000 per hour, and we’re making below a living wage,” Wright said, with car horns honking in the background. “We’re the ones who are making the coffee, serving the customers, getting to know the customers (and) working faster and faster and faster because we’re under constant time pressure to get stuff out.”