strike<\/a> in 2023 over unfair labor practices and unsafe working conditions, particularly during heat waves. According to Noven, the Shattuck Avenue Starbucks location lacked air conditioning for a number of months.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cThe central point is that workers are community,\u201d Noven said. \u201cWhen workers are being exploited, it\u2019s incumbent upon us throughout the community to take action in solidarity with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starbucks defended its treatment of workers, saying the two sides have reached more than 30 tentative agreements as of 2025 and that it remains willing to negotiate.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarbucks has competitive pay, industry-leading benefits, and meaningful opportunities to grow a career,\u201d said a Starbucks spokesperson in an email. \u201cAs we have always been, we\u2019re committed to engaging in productive bargaining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jaz Brisack, a co-founder of Starbucks Workers United and practitioner in residence at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, said strikes alone are not sufficient to make meaningful changes in the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI and my fellow organizers believed from the beginning that the only way we would be able to win against a company like Starbucks was through public pressure,\u201d Brisack said in an email.<\/p>\n
Brisack called on customers to provide support to help union organizers win a contract with Starbucks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we organized the first Starbucks stores in Buffalo, we knew we were up against huge odds \u2013 three stores organizing out of 10,000 corporate-owned locations,\u201d Brisack said. \u201cStriking at 300 or 500 stores out of 10,000 is not enough to hurt the company\u2019s bottom line. Only public support can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berkeley Student Food Collective, in collaboration with UC Berkeley\u2019s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[110278,30098,188519,188521,188520,143,145,144,188522,3989,19116,149],"class_list":["post-480616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-student-food-collective","tag-cal-young-democratic-socialists-of-america","tag-j-noven","tag-jaz-brisack","tag-labor-center-at-uc-berkeley","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-shattuck","tag-starbucks","tag-starbucks-workers-united","tag-uc-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}