Baristas at one of Tampa Bay’s only unionized Starbucks locations in Clearwater joined a national strike this week to secure a fair union contract.
Workers at dozens of other locations across the country, unionized with Starbucks Workers United, have gradually joined the strike that began Nov. 13, leveraging an escalation strategy used by the United Auto Workers union during their “Stand Up” strike against automakers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis in 2023.
Starbucks workers at the 433 Cleveland St. location joined the strike Thursday, which has now spread across 180 locations in 34 cities, including two unionized Starbucks locations in West Palm Beach—the first in Florida to join the strike last week—and Oviedo, near Orlando.
Ethan Best, a 28-year-old barista of two-and-a-half years at the unionized Starbucks in Clearwater, said he and about a dozen coworkers were primarily motivated to join the strike over the union’s fight for higher wages and a guaranteed number of hours on the job. Workers at his store first voted nearly unanimously to unionize last summer.
“Starbucks likes to tell people they offer the best benefits in the industry, but you actually need to work 20 hours a week to be eligible for those benefits,” Best explained to CL.
Yet, Best estimated that the average barista these days gets just 19 hours a week scheduled—a shortfall he believes is very telling. “I think when people hear that, they can recognize that’s not acceptable,” he said.
According to Starbucks Workers United, nearly 4,000 unionized Starbucks workers are now on strike, as part of the union’s latest expansion of the work stoppage. Workers are asking customers and their communities to boycott Starbucks for as long as they’re on strike—meaning no gift cards, no coffee and no holiday merch.
Best and his coworkers were joined on the picket line Thursday by allies with the Pinellas Democratic Socialists of America, who rallied members to join them in solidarity. They also received honks of support from drivers passing by.
Unlike one-day strikes organized by Starbucks baristas in the past—a rarity in an industry where so few workers are actually unionized—this national strike by union members is open-ended, meaning the end date for their work stoppage is yet to be determined.
Best said that although an open-ended strike is a “bigger sacrifice” for him and his coworkers, especially going into holiday season, he said he’s confident that this is the right move.
“I feel like the community does support us,” he said. “And, you know, all my coworkers, all of us have accurate information. We know what the risks are by doing this.”
An organizer with the West Central Florida Labor Council set up a GoFundMe to cover lost income for the striking Clearwater workers. Proceeds from official Starbucks Workers United merch, including shirts with messages like “Be Gay and Organize” and “Trans Rights Are Labor Rights,” are also currently benefiting workers’ strike funds.
‘No Contract, No Coffee’
More than 650 Starbucks locations across the U.S.—still just a fraction of the coffee giant’s total number of U.S. stores—have voted to unionize since 2021. For baristas across the nation, many of whom were drawn to Starbucks because of its progressive branding, this fight for a first union contract has been years in the making.
“Baristas like me shouldn’t be worrying about making rent or whether we’ll qualify for healthcare coverage, especially in the holiday season,” said Zarian Antonio Pouncy, a barista of 12 years from Las Vegas, in a statement. “We need Starbucks to end the illegal union busting, and we need a fair contract with fair pay, reliable hours, and on-the-job protections. Until then, the message from baristas and our allies across the U.S. and beyond is clear: No Contract, No Coffee!”
Despite its branding as a top employer in retail and service jobs, Starbucks has been accused of hundreds of labor law violations since 2021, when baristas in Buffalo, New York, unionized the first corporate-owned location in the United States. Allegations against Starbucks—some of which have been substantiated by federal labor prosecutors—range from Starbucks illegally firing workers for their union activity to cutting the hours of and otherwise retaliating against baristas who are organizing at their store.
“We’re trying to get, what we call, ‘guaranteed hours,’ which would essentially mean, if we want to work 20 hours a week, Starbucks gives us those 20 hours a week. If we want to work 30 hours a week, Starbucks gives us those hours,” Best explained. “That’s one of the most important issues to us.”
Earlier this month, Starbucks also reached a $38 million settlement with New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, according to The City NYC, over Starbucks “arbitrarily” cutting workers’ hours, in violation of the city’s “fair workweek” law. Fair workweek laws, which guarantee predictability in workers’ schedules, were banned by Florida lawmakers through legislation approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year.
Clay Blastic, a shift supervisor at a Starbucks near Orlando who also joined the national strike yesterday, said that meeting baristas’ economic demands in a union contract—the primary sticking point in ongoing negotiations—would cost Starbucks less than just one average day of sales. Other union leaders have argued the same.
“It’s just a question of priorities,” Blastic said.
Starbucks, for instance, found the money to gift its new CEO Brian Niccol, the former head of Chipotle, a nearly $100 million compensation package last year. According to an annual report from the AFL-CIO, Niccol made 6,666 times the pay of the average Starbucks barista in 2024.
“They call us ‘partners,’ but I’d like to see them put their money where their mouth is when it comes to that,” Blastic said. While critics might argue that barista jobs are meant to be entry-level jobs for younger workers, Blastic argued, “All jobs deserve dignity.”
The union last year sought a $20 minimum wage in its contract with Starbucks, plus annual 5% raises and cost-of-living adjustments. Starbucks, instead, offered a contract delivering no immediate pay raises—a deal soundly rejected by union baristas earlier this year.
Best said he currently makes $15.80 an hour in Clearwater, just a little above the coffee giant’s minimum wage. According to MIT’s living wage calculator, a living wage in the Tampa Bay metro—capable of covering basic living expenses, such as housing and transportation—is $23.81 an hour if you’re a single, childless adult. You’ll need to make more to make ends meet if you have kids or are the only working adult in a household of two or more.
Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson, in response to the strike, told our sibling publication Orlando Weekly that 99%of its 17,000 U.S. locations are still open and welcoming customers, “including many the union publicly stated would strike but never closed or have since reopened.”
Anderson added that, accounting for both pay and benefits, Starbucks jobs average $30 per hour for hourly positions. “Regardless of the union’s plans, we do not anticipate any meaningful disruption,” she said. “When the union is ready to return to the bargaining table, we’re ready to talk.”
Politicians like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, and U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost (a former Starbucks barista) have shared support for the striking Starbucks workers—with Sanders and Mamdani joining a picket line with workers in Brooklyn.
“Right now, Starbucks workers are on strike,” Congressman Frost, a Democrat from Orlando, shared in a Nov. 25 social media reel. “As a former Starbucks barista myself, I’m proud of @sbworkersunited for organizing nationwide. They need our support and solidarity.”
A map of Starbucks Workers United public picket lines can be found at NoContractNoCoffee.org.
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This article appears in Dec. 11 – 17, 2025.