Workers at the State Street Starbucks stores held a surprise walkout Wednesday afternoon, a day ahead of a nationwide strike Nov. 16.
Customers at the State Street Starbucks store were asked to leave at 12 p.m. while Starbucks workers passed out flyers for the walkout and closed the store. The store will remain closed the rest of the day and all of Thursday.
The surprise walkout was held the day before the “Red Cup Rebellion,” a nationwide strike organized by Starbucks Workers United on Red Cup Day — Starbucks’s biggest sales event of the season and one of the most stressful work days for baristas, according to the Starbucks Workers United website.
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Member of the Wisconsin Starbucks Workers United Organizing Committee and Starbucks barista Maeve Perkins said the walkout Wednesday prepares the store for the Red Cup Rebellion Thursday. According to Perkins, the overall strike and walkout comes as State Street joins over 360 Starbucks stores nationwide in securing a contract.
“We are striking for recognition because we want to contract and we want Starbucks to come to the bargaining table,” Perkins said.
Across the U.S, 361 Starbucks stores have unionized but no Starbucks stores that have held union elections, including the State Street and Capitol Square, have a contract in place.
Starbucks executives recently declined a request from the State Street store for sharps containers, which are containers designed for used needles and other medical-waste sharps to be discarded into. Because there were not enough official incident reports, the request was denied, according to Perkins.
“Our store is so big and so busy, a lot of the time when stuff happens we won’t officially report through the company because that’s a lot of paperwork,” Perkins said. “So we only had two official Starbucks incident reports, allegedly, that they saw, so they said there wasn’t enough need for us to have sharps containers.”
The State Street Starbucks store voted to unionize June 2023. The Capitol Square store voted to unionize June 2022 and the Starbucks stores in Wisconsin cities like Plover, Oak Creek and Green Bay have also sought union representation.
