Five Years, No Contract: Starbucks Workers United Takes the Boycott to Campus

A union representing 12,000+ baristas across 700+ stores has spent nearly five years without a first contract. Now it's leveraging college campuses — Starbucks' captive market — as pressure points.

Starbucks Workers United is staging rallies at more than 40 college campuses across the US on Thursday, escalating a boycott campaign timed to hit the company before its lucrative holiday season. The union represents over 12,000 baristas at more than 700 stores that have voted to unionize since December 2021 — and not one has secured a first contract.

The core demands are modest by any standard: a $17/hour minimum wage, a floor of three workers per store, and just-cause protections against at-will termination. Baristas currently operate without contractual job security. As Austin barista Andrew Trinklein put it, employees can be fired for not writing on a cup. The union wants the basic protections that a contract provides. The campus strategy is not new — it began in 2023 — but it has teeth. Cornell University and Pomona College declined to renew their Starbucks contracts. UCLA stopped offering Starbucks products in its cafes. The rallies now span private and public universities including Penn, Northwestern, and the University of Washington, directly targeting the demographic Starbucks needs most. Negotiations briefly showed promise. In February 2024, the union and Starbucks reached an agreement on a path forward. Then Brian Niccol arrived as CEO, and talks collapsed. Niccol's track record at Chipotle includes a $240,000 settlement over an allegedly retaliatory store closure in Maine after workers unionized — a move the NLRB called illegal. The pattern is not subtle. Starbucks has been found guilty of violating federal labor law by the NLRB in multiple cases related to its union response. The company has reportedly spent tens of millions on union-avoidance consultants, though it has not disclosed full costs. Its public posture is that Workers United represents only about 5% of US partners and that actions like these "divert attention from the work at the bargaining table." The company's counter-narrative centers on total compensation: an average of $30/hour including benefits, comprehensive healthcare, tuition coverage, stock grants, and up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave for part-timers working 20+ hours. Nearly 3 million people applied to work at Starbucks last year. The company frames these numbers as proof the system works. But benefits set by the employer and benefits locked into a contract are categorically different things. The entire fight is about whether 12,000 workers get legally enforceable terms or remain subject to unilateral corporate discretion. Five years of delay is itself a message about who holds power and how long they intend to hold it.