Red Cup Rebellion Redux: A Q&A with Starbucks Workers United

The Starbucks Workers United are here to stay. After Buffalo-area stores organized in 2021, unionization caught on like wildfire at franchise locations across the nation. (That year, the median Starbucks employee made under $13,000 while the company’s then-CEO Kevin Johnson took home $20.4 million)

Since then, the organizing workers haven’t let up, roasting former CEO Howard Schultz in a high-profile Senate hearing and escalating their campaign. President Biden’s National Labor Relations Board has issued landmark rulings in the union’s favor against the company’s cruel union busting. Now, over 9,000 workers constitute SBWU’s ranks at over 300 stores across America. 

“In the modern era, no other U.S. union has ever been able to achieve this kind of organizing success at a multibillion-dollar corporation that is determined to do whatever it takes, including committing hundreds of labor law violations, to crush a union drive,” noted John Logan in Jacobin.

On November 16, Starbucks Workers United members across the nation convened their second annual Red Cup Rebellion — coordinated strikes and walkouts on the auspicious day that the coffee chain offers seasonally beloved red cups to incentivize holiday beverage sales. 

Shep Searl has lived in the Chicago area since middle school and started working as a partner — the company term for barista — at Starbucks about 7 years ago. (The first store at which they were employed, in Cary, Illinois, later became the first unionized Starbucks in the Prairie State.) I caught up with Searl for a snapshot of their organizing and a before-and-after take on the stakes of this year’s Red Cup Rebellion.

Inequality.org: How have things been for you at work these last few years? 

Shep Searl: I’ve been at my current store for about 5 years now. We were told that we had to come back as essential workers and we noticed Starbucks starting to pull back on some things they’d promised us and had prided themselves on. The benefits, the great raises, and consistent hours gradually started going downhill over the course of the few years leading up to our campaign. 

It was exhausting and we thought, we have to do something about this. Eventually, that thought turned into a question: What can we do about this? That’s when we reached out to our organizers. My friend Teddy and I became the original organizing committee for our store. 

Inequality.org: Was there a moment in particular that inspired you and your store to choose unionizing as the solution to your workplace’s problems? 

Shep Searl: There were two: One positive and one negative. 

The positive: We’d been discussing unionizing, but not “for real,” because unionizing at Starbucks felt like an impossible task due to full union busting measures, like videos, even before the campaign began.

But seeing six Buffalo stores unionize turned our mindset from casual to serious: It woke us up. We saw it wasn’t just our store — unionization is happening everywhere, and people are managing to pull it off  — so now we can make it happen too.

The more negative thing was an early lynchpin. When the season started to get slow a couple years ago, we were still going through the worst of Covid. Without alerting us, Starbucks changed their Covid policy from fourteen days off to five paid days off even if you’re exposed to then five days only if you test positive, mandating a return to work right afterwards. Then, they pulled this policy away from us altogether. There were no longer paid days off for Covid: We still had to take five days off, but without pay. 

This was incredibly dangerous: We have multiple immunocompromised people at the store, myself included. And it was eye-opening. They didn’t actually care about our health and safety. 

The corporation made us see that unionizing is not only possible but necessary: It felt like they were lying to our face by saying they cared about us.

Inequality.org: How have you observed the progression of inequality in your city and at your store?

Shep Searl: On the north side of Chicago, inequality is a bit less visible, but we have a large unhoused population in our community. A lot of us personally know these people, so we’ve asked for resources to help them, such as overdose reversal training and supplies — we’ve had multiple instances where we’ve had to be the primary resource for people in crisis. 

Our store promised us resources, but didn’t properly support us: If there was an issue, we were told to deal with it, and if it got bad, to call the police. We’re getting paid 15 dollars an hour — we’re not trained to handle a crisis situation. Ultimately, we feel closer in proximity to the unhoused people in our store than we feel to corporate and police. 

Then, there are partners at my store who are struggling with their income, making basically minimum wage — a little bit more but not really. Multiple partners are on food stamps and have been asked to cut their hours beyond any reason. So there’s been this increasing gap between the workers and the people supposedly representing us on all issues. 

A general manager isn’t going to understand the needs of the people working on the floor any more than they’d understand the needs of the people coming into our stores who are in crisis.

There’s been, on both fronts, this increasing tension and charge of inequality between the community members, the partners, and the people supposedly representing us and trying to make the store function.

Corporate has heard us say there’s injustice and inequality present in our stores and have given us a band aid for a bullet wound. We’re looking for support for the community and support for us.

Inequality.org: How is union organizing going now? Can you tell us about your store’s second Red Cup Rebellion?

Shep Searl: It’s cool to see the way that the Red Cup Rebellion has evolved at our store. Last year, it was our biggest action thus far, and the first time nationally SBWU went on strike — hundreds of stores across the nation did the same thing. Now, it’s our largest collective action ever. Almost 200 stores are participating, not to mention new stores filing for unionization. 

We’re also shifting our focus to a nationwide call to action: Last year was more picket line-focused and this year we’re more focused on community outreach, to get our community members involved and to let workers at other stores know that we’re here to protect and support them if they want it. They have the right to walk out if they want to: We want to show not-yet-union stores that they’re not alone in this fight.

Right now, with understaffing, all stores are feeling a lot of pressure. We want to say: “This time of year is awful for all of us, you’re getting treated just as bad as we [unionized stores] are, and if you need anything, we’ve got you.” It’s a massive change from last year. 

We want to get our numbers up and have customers standing beside us and taking action. We’ve changed our metrics for success and vision of how we need to move forward: This isn’t going to be a standard unionizing campaign or process.

It seems like Starbucks will relentlessly push down on us until we can give them enough to say, “okay, we can’t keep fighting this.” And we’ve only seen that work with customer support and outreach.

Y’all really TURNED UP!!! 🥵🔥 Thousands of Starbucks workers went on strike this week, and allies took action at ~500 additional locations nationwide.

From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU to everyone who took a stand with us & keep demanding Starbucks do the right thing. pic.twitter.com/Z9pgAAwhrH

— Starbucks Workers United (@SBWorkersUnited) November 18, 2023

Inequality.org: How do you consider your efforts in the broader context of the labor movement?

Searl: Right now, there’s a huge inter-union solidarity that has reinvigorated the labor movement. Up until Covid, there’s been a lull in worker-based power. I think between the pandemic and everything else, there’s been an increase.

At first, after our big victories in 2022, SBWU felt alone in the spotlight after taking loss after loss in the micro context. It’s been very hard, enduring repeated retaliation that has made it feel like we’re never going to get a contract or see fruition for all our organizing. 

But this year, during the Hot Labor Summer and season of solidarity, I’ve seen these other victories — joining the picket line with some of the UAW folks, going to UPS practice pickets, and learning from people fundamental on the picket lines there. We’ve let them know we have their backs and we hear from them that they have ours. 

If they can win these contracts and they’re standing behind us, we’re able to mobilize more effectively and we’re able to run a campaign that can actually win. We’ve gotten so many tips and tactics: I did a panel with a worker from the writer’s guild and asked him for his “old pro” input. 

It’s been this really cool phenomenon of feeling like there was heat on us and then suddenly an explosion and there are so many people behind us. From Teamsters to actors, there’s so many ways that people win. Every day, we’ve been absorbing that information and utilizing it in our mobilization and escalation plan.

We aren’t going anywhere and so much of that is inspired by the other campaigns. If we stand together, there’s no mountain we cannot climb. 

Inequality.org: What’s your long-term vision of success for your union? What would it look and feel like?

Shep Searl: A contract! All these NLRB rulings against Starbucks are great to see — that history is siding with us. But at our store there’s been such an attrition, and I think it’s turned a lot of us bitter and burnt out. Even just having the actual solidified ability to give corporate our proposals and go back to our store and say, “this is what we want”? That would be a win. 

But so far, we haven’t had that. There’s been no bargaining. The one session we went to was immediately shut down. We need a long-term tangible measure of the fact that we are organized: We’re not just in this for us, but for when we leave and new partners come, we want them to have protection in a contract. We need to bargain and be able to sit at that table.

Inequality.org: What are you concerned about and what’s the biggest battle moving forward?

Shep Searl: I mean — Capitalism! Right now, there’s not enough punishment for union busting to make Starbucks care enough about us. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but in reality, until we can mobilize more effectively, until we can prove we’re a legitimate entity, they’re not going to bargain in any good faith because they can afford anything except losing their business entirely.

We are seeing the mindset change — but until we have enough community behind us, enough strikes, enough people on our side, Starbucks will not legitimize us. We’ve been calling it our fight for a contract. Our escalation is to land us at the bargaining table.

Inequality.org: What’s your response to the fact that billionaires — including Howard Schultz — have cumulatively increased their wealth by more than a trillion dollars while so many people, including partners at your store, are suffering?

Searl: We have to continue organizing. We are in class warfare: Our income inequality is akin to the French Revolution and Great Depression. We’re living in a time where those of us on the floor have to rise up or else nothing will change. Both sides of the aisle are bought out by the wealthy and there isn’t enough protection for workers. 

My greatest advice is to go out there, unionize, and encourage people to know their rights — to understand what their business is doing to them.

People come to me everyday and say “I didn’t even know that was illegal!” and I’m like, “know your rights, girl! Because you are making $15 an hour when your boss is making that in a breath.”

When income inequality reaches a certain level, the only thing we can do is get out there and fight it. That’s what SBWU is trying to do and it’s why we unionized. We deserve a voice and fair representation that actually cares about us — and the billionaires won’t.

If anyone thinks someone with billions of dollars out on a yacht is going to care about the needs of a person living in a studio apartment they can’t afford, then… they need to wake up. 

It’s not just Howard Schultz, either. Other billionaires are looking at him and wondering if they can get away with what he’s done.

Inequality.org: How did this year’s Red Cup Rebellion go?

Searl: We had the largest action in campaign history and that we had thousands of community allies show up to support us via pamphleting, phone calls, and standing on the picket line with us! The Red Cup Rebellion was a reminder that this movement is not slowing down, and that even when the battle feels impossible, we are pushing back against the ruling class.