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EVANSTON, Ill.—More than 125 Starbucks workers and their supporters, including representatives from the Chicago Teachers Union, Amalgamated Transit Union, the Service Employees (SEIU), Illinois Professors, and AFSCME retirees. Northwestern Graduate Workers Union, Chicago Workers Solidarity Network, Students Organized for Labor Rights (Northwestern), IWW, and the CPUSA maintained a robust picket line at the Starbucks store in Evanston, just outside Chicago, today.
The action in Evanston is part of a nationwide strike by thousands of unionized Starbucks workers that began Thursday. It is already the largest strike in the history of the company.
Alderwoman Claire Kelly of Evanston invited the strikers to speak at an upcoming City Council meeting.
Kyle Dudley, a barista at the store, told People’s World that “we are out here on strike because we are looking for higher pay and for them to settle unfair labor practices and guaranteed hours so we can have predictable schedules.”
Another barista on the picket line told People’s World: “The crowd here supporting us is so big that try as they might, the managers were unable to open the store this morning.”
Short staffing weighs heavily on the workers at the Evanston store. A third barista, James Maeder, said, “Starbucks keeps us on a strict regimen of the bare minimum of workers assigned to do the biggest workload. If anyone calls in sick, we end up with customers having to deal with a dirty café, and they naturally become agitated and angry. Despite our best efforts at putting in the maximum amount of work we can physically do, there simply are not enough people to manage the work they have us do.
“In rare cases, we are able to get them to cut off the mobile orders, the outgoing orders, so we can put in even more work in the store. But even there, they often refuse to do that because their main goal is to reach the maximum number of customers per hour regardless of the physical strain and stress that this causes for us.”
Support for the Chicago area Starbucks workers is broad and extensive. According to a statement by Starbucks Workers United, tens of thousands of working-class Chicagoans have pledged support to the strikers and are actively pushing for people to stop buying coffee at Starbucks stores until the strike is over.
In a public letter, a union statement says, 33 organizations and counting “call on Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol and his negotiators to bargain with Starbucks Workers United to finalize a fair union contract that includes decent wages, predictable scheduling, and adequate staffing.”
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