Union Baristas are on Strike over Starbucks’ Record-Breaking Labor Law Violations

Workers United filed a national ULP charge in December 2024 alleging Starbucks’ had failed to bargain in good faith and was undermining the representative status of the union after Starbucks backtracked on the previously agreed-upon path forward and failed to put forth serious economic proposals after nine months of negotiations.

This ULP was amended and expanded in April 2025 after the company unlawfully implemented new policies, such as components of “Back to Starbucks” and the restrictive new dress code, without bargaining with the Union.

Since the organizing campaign began, the Union has filed more than 200 ULP charges protesting the retaliatory firing of union baristas.

In September 2025, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declared that Starbucks “engaged in a scorched earth campaign and pattern of misconduct in response to union organizing at its stores across the United States…I take notice that despite several Board orders and dozens of ALJ decisions, Respondent’s behavior continues unabated.”

Since January 2025, Workers United has filed over 150 new ULP charges, many of which allege retaliation against union baristas for union organizing or participating in protected union activity.

Looking Back: Starbucks’ Conduct Breaks Records

Starbucks is the biggest violator of labor law in modern history as NLRB ALJs have found that Starbucks committed more than 400 labor law violations. Of those cases upon which the NLRB later ruled, it found Starbucks committed more than 140 labor law violations.

For example, on December 16, 2024, the NLRB found that Starbucks had committed more than 60 violations of labor law at the Buffalo stores where the organizing campaign originated. The Board commented that “the severity and pervasiveness of the Respondent’s unfair labor practices demonstrate a general disregard for its employees’ fundamental statutory rights in its Buffalo-area stores.”

Previous decisions from ALJs in September 2023 and July 2024 addressed Starbucks’ unlawful pattern of promising and then granting benefits to non-union employees that it withheld from unionized employees, including: raises, access to credit card tipping, relaxed dress codes, faster sick leave accrual rates, and more. Adding onto the hundreds of outstanding legal issues, Starbucks is sitting on many millions of dollars in legal liability.

In other cases, ALJs found multiple nationwide labor law violations, including maintaining unlawful rules, maintaining an overly broad mandatory arbitration clause, and making implied promises and threats to deter unionization.

In February 2024, former Starbucks CEO and Board Chair Howard Schultz appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions where he was pressed by Senators on the company’s illegal union busting. He made numerous false or misleading statements about the company’s record. As Harvard’s Sharon Block wrote at the time, “Mr. Schultz’s willingness to blithely misstate the law to cover up his company’s unlawful conduct matters. It matters a lot. It is a bedrock of our democracy that the law applies to everyone, including the most powerful. Labor unions play an important role in protecting that bedrock principle, so much is at stake in ensuring that Starbucks’ workers’ rights to unionize are protected and respected.”


https://sbworkersunited.org/union-baristas-are-on-strike-over-starbucks-record-breaking-labor-law-violations/