Your Starbucks barista might be on strike for Red Cup Day. Here’s where and why
Today is Starbucks Coffee’s annual Red Cup Day. The day sees customers able to get a limited-edition reusable red cup for free with the purchase of select holiday beverages. Red Cup Day is one of Starbucks’s biggest branding outreach days of the year, but this year it isn’t going to go off without a hitch.
That’s because Starbucks Workers United, the largest collective of unionized workers in Starbucks history, will go on strike at 113 Starbucks locations across the country for Red Cup Day 2022. The union says the strikes are meant to call attention to Starbucks’s alleged refusal to adhere to fair contract negotiations and the company’s alleged attempts at union busting.
But rather than just using Red Cup Day—which is in its 25th year now—as a symbolic day to strike, Starbucks Workers United is getting in on the Red Cup action themselves. At the 113 striking locations, Starbucks Workers United members will be on hand to hand out their own Red Cups. Yet instead of a cup featuring the iconic Starbucks logo surrounded by stars and snowflakes, this version features the hand of the Grinch holding a Starbucks Workers United ornament.
“We are aware that union demonstrations are scheduled at a small number of our U.S. company-owned stores,” a Starbucks spokesperson said when reached for comment by Fast Company. “In those locations where partners choose to participate, we respect their right to engage in lawful protest activity – though our focus has been, and continues to be, on uplifting the Starbucks experience for our partners and customers. We remain committed to all partners and will continue to work together, side-by-side, to make Starbucks a company that works for everyone. In those stores where partners have elected union-representation, we have been willing and continue to urge the union to meet us at the bargaining table to move the process forward in good faith.”
Given how Red Cup Day is popular with collectors of Starbucks’s memorabilia, collectors may want to track down the striking stores so they can get their own Starbucks Workers United Red Cup while also showing support for the workers. Thankfully, Starbucks Workers United has assembled this Google Map showing all striking locations today.
Read more: The untold story of Starbucks in China
Though the strike is relatively small in scale when measured against the company’s 9,000-plus U.S. locations, Starbucks Workers United have some big-name supporters.
In the early hours of this morning, when the first of the strikes were getting underway, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont tweeted, “I’m proud to stand with Starbucks workers on strike today across the country. CEO Howard Schultz is illegally union busting and firing workers for organizing. Mr. Schultz, it is time to recognize the stores that unionized and negotiate with workers in good faith.”
This post has been updated.
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