The Red Cup Rebellion: A shot of class struggle in every picket line

Here’s a scene for you, as familiar and American as a cherry pie cooling on a windowsill, only this one is served with a shot of rebellion.

A few hundred souls stand firm on the heavily trafficked Fifth Avenue in New York City, their picket signs a wall of conviction in front of the gilded doors of the Empire State Building. Inside those doors sits a regional corporate office of Starbucks Coffee, and next to it, one of the company’s more high-end Reserve stores, a temple to the curated experience.

Outside, the signs tell a different story: “No Contract, No Coffee,” “Baristas on Strike.”

This is day twenty-two of the Red Cup Rebellion, the longest unfair labor practice strike in the company’s history, and it has swelled to over 3,000 baristas from more than 145 stores in 105 cities.

This pales beside the longest unfair labor practice strike in U.S. history, but the 11-year labor battle by United Auto Workers (UAW) against Kohler Company for higher wages and better conditions, ended in 1965 with a significant victory for the union after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found Kohler.

Starbucks workers launched the “Red Cup Rebellion,” in November 2023, to protest a four-year saga of union busting and a steadfast refusal to finalize a contract.

As one barista, Sabina Aguirre, put it, they are there because they know a better future is possible and that baristas are what make Starbucks run.

You might think this is a simple labor dispute, a matter of cents per hour and scheduling software.

You would be mistaken. This is a parable of modern America, a story where the numbers themselves tell a tale of two countries.

On one side, you have a CEO, Brian Niccol, who received compensation of $96 million for just four months of work in 2024. That sum, the union points out, is 6,666 times the average barista’s salary and represents the largest CEO-to-worker pay gap in the entire S&P 500.

Starbucks stopped taking care of its people, treating them as peons while calling them partners and paying them like peasants.

The union calculates that meeting their core demands for a fair contract would cost the company less than one average day’s sales. On the other side, you have baristas speaking of struggling to get by, with the union alleging many receive less than 20 hours a week—below the threshold to qualify for the company’s celebrated benefits. Starbucks says it offers an average of over $30 an hour in combined pay and benefits and touts record low turnover. But the workers on the picket lines in places like Ledgewood, Parsippany, and Pennington, New Jersey, tell a story of understaffing, unpredictable schedules, and last-minute calls to come in.

The rebellion, christened for the promotional Red Cup Day it began on, is an open-ended strike. It did not erupt in a vacuum. Its roots are in Buffalo, New York, where the first store voted to unionize in 2021, sparking a movement that has since grown to include 11,000 baristas at over 550 stores. For eighteen months, bargaining committees met with company executives, notching 33 tentative agreements on workplace issues. Progress, it seemed, was being brewed. Then, according to the union and U.S. Senators including Bernie Sanders, the company backtracked. The union presented economic proposals in September 2024; in December, Starbucks said no to all of them. Shortly after Niccol took over as CEO in September 2024, the union says negotiations came to a screeching halt. The company states it remains ready to bargain in good faith and that the union walked away.

The conflict has escalated into a war of words as bitter as a day-old espresso. Starbucks claims the union is demanding immediate pay increases of 65%, rising to 77% over three years, plus additional premiums for nearly every aspect of the job. A union spokesperson, Michelle Eisen, calls this a misrepresentation, comparing it to adding up a restaurant’s entire menu and claiming a single drink costs a thousand dollars. The company dismisses the strike’s impact, with a spokesperson noting that fewer than 4% of its U.S. partners work in unionized cafes and that 99% of its stores remain open. From the picket line, the perspective is starkly different. “The only thing that protects people from being fired in at-will employment for any reason is a just cause, and that’s in a union contract,” said Akshai Singh, a Cleveland barista. “We have been enduring the most union busting in corporate history.”

This drama found a powerful new stage in New York City this week, where the local political climate has shifted sharply in favor of the workers. The backdrop was a landmark $38.9 million settlement between the city and Starbucks for widespread violations of the Fair Workweek Law. City investigators found over half a million violations since 2021, alleging the company illegally denied thousands of workers stable schedules and the right to pick up extra hours. Hours after this settlement was announced, the scene shifted to a Starbucks in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. There, flanked by cheering baristas, stood two figures: Senator Bernie Sanders and the city’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani’s presence is particularly resonant. A democratic socialist who ran on a platform of aiding the working class, his election itself was a rebellion against the established political order. Standing with the strikers, he framed their fight in moral terms. “These are not demands of greed—these are demands of decency,” he told the crowd. He connected the workers’ struggle to the soul of the city, stating, “When you ask these Starbucks workers what the consequences are of a company that refuses to schedule them with any predictability… they do not know if they can call themselves New Yorkers any longer.” His administration-in-waiting, while staffing up with experienced government insiders, has signaled that the political will to hold corporations accountable will be a priority.

The following Thursday, the rebellion came to the company’s doorstep, rallying outside its office in the Empire State Building. The tension was palpable. Representatives for Starbucks insisted only about 25 people in the crowd were actual employees. The union said more than 100 baristas were present. Demonstrators were arrested. One detained barista, as he was loaded into an NYPD bus, gave a simple, shouted message to the company: “Stop stalling contracts, negotiate with the workers and sign a contract for fair wages.”

So here we are. In one corner, a global giant navigating what it calls notoriously challenging local laws while implementing a $500 million Back to Starbucks plan to improve operations. In the other, a growing movement of workers, now bolstered by over 200,000 customer pledges to honor their picket line and political allies who see their cause as a defining battle for economic justice.

The question hanging in the air, thicker than the aroma of roasted coffee, is not just about wages or schedules. It is about which vision of America prevails.

Is it the one where success is measured in executive compensation ratios and shareholder returns, served from behind a polished counter? Or is it the one being demanded on the picket lines, where a fair day’s work is met with a living wage and dignity, and where the people who make the coffee have a real say in the business of brewing it?

The Red Cup Rebellion is betting on the latter. They are not asking for a refill. They are demanding a whole new pot.