Last week, the union trying to organize Starbucks workers reportedly launched a strike involving over 2,000 of the company’s baristas at 120 U.S. stores to protest a new dress code. According to Starbucks Workers United, Starbucks should bargain over any uniform changes, despite the fact that the union doesn’t have a collective bargaining agreement with the company.
The underlying issue arose when Starbucks announced that employees at company-operated and licensed stores in the U.S. and Canada would be required to wear a solid black shirt and khaki, black, or blue denim bottoms underneath the company’s signature green aprons. The company also said that it would provide each employee with two of the required black shirts free of charge.
While the company’s decision to change the dress code was designed “to establish a warmer, more welcoming feeling in its stores,” Starbucks Workers United decided to leverage it into a public relations stunt by ginning up controversy over the move.
Although the union’s own website curiously did not contain any reference to its protest over the dress code—in fact it does not appear to have been updated since December—the Associated Press reported on the union’s displeasure over the company’s policy. To be fair, the Starbucks Workers United’s social media did have videos of some street theater that tends to be common in the world of organized labor, but it is unlikely to have any measurable impact on the company.
Like the so-called Fight for $15, which launched in 2012 as an effort to secure a nationwide bargaining contract with McDonald’s, what is really going on is that Starbucks Workers United wants the same thing with Starbucks. Not surprisingly, that company is also not terribly interested in binding itself and its employees to a contract covering all of its approximately 10,000 company-run stores, and the union continues to be frustrated since it has only managed to unionize about 570 of them.
The reality is that what unions like Starbucks Workers United would love is a contract that forces Starbucks’ approximately 200,000 U.S. employees into the union. After all, that would be a lot of steady dues money. Maybe instead the union should stop playing games over a simple dress code change and engage in meaningful negotiations that might yield an actual contract.
About the author
Sean P. Redmond
Sean P. Redmond is Vice President, Labor Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
