Inside Food Labor Movement: Update from Starbucks’ Front Lines

Danielle Nierenberg

Danielle Nierenberg

At food companies across the country, employees are saying loud and clear: Business as usual is not working.

As of this week, 290 Starbucks stores in the U.S. have formed unions, according to Starbucks Workers United, a collective of Starbucks partners across the country. In fact, Starbucks workers have organized more new unions in a 12-month period than any company in the past 20 years.

This is especially impressive given what they’re up against.

"I wouldn’t have worked at this company for 12 years if I didn’t believe in the mission and values that Starbucks claims to stand for. Yet, you cannot be a truly progressive company if you are a union-buster," Michelle Eisen, a barista from the first union-organized Starbucks store, told Food Tank. "We’re hoping to make Starbucks live up to the company’s stated values and respect our right to organize."

Their demands are simple: The right to a workplace free from discrimination. Respect and dignity for all workers. The ability to organize free from fear, intimidation, and coercion. Formalized job descriptions. Workers’ right to defend their health and safety.

And Starbucks is cracking down. Workers are facing harassment and threats simply for asking for these basic rights. Starbucks has fired more than 200 organizers and permanently closed union stores—and the National Labor Relations Board is prosecuting Starbucks with more than 1,300 separate violations of federal labor law.

"It’s been incredibly inspiring to see this grassroots, partner-to-partner movement take off across the country, as workers organized their stores and then helped other workers who were reaching out start organizing theirs," said Jaz Brisack, who was fired from Starbucks amid organizing efforts and is a director with Workers United Upstate NY.

And as with plenty of other movements in the food system, Gen Z and young folks are leading the charge. I’m inspired by the vision young people have for the future—and their willingness to do what it takes to achieve it.

One way to uplift these stories is through the power of the arts. Over the past few years, Food Tank has used theater to raise awareness of food and climate issues. Our first production, "WeCameToDance," blended a warning of the climate crisis with a story of hope and action through food systems. The show premiered at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2021 and was performed live in Good Morning Britain, the BBC, and featured in the New York Times.

Now, at South by Southwest, Food Tank is presenting "Little Peasants," an interactive dramatic showcase of how workers at fictional coffee chain "Mermaid Coffee" are treated during union organizing campaigns. The script is written by Food Tank’s co-founder Bernard Pollack and me, and it’ll premiere at SXSW with a special second performance during Food Tank’s Official SXSW 2023 Summit "All Things Food," hosted in partnership with Huston-Tillotson University and Driscoll’s.

And if you’ll be at SXSW in Austin next week, be sure to register HERE to see the debut of "Little Peasants," and CLICK HERE to join our official Summit.

"We relish the opportunity to engage in a conversation around ethical labor practices through the theatricalization of conflict around baristas' right to unionize, and look forward to the energy and responses that the audience will bring to the piece," the show’s director, acclaimed Austin-based artist and storyteller Kristen Osborn, told Food Tank.

The show puts audience members in baristas’ shoes to demonstrate the tactics employers are using to thwart organizing efforts. "Little Peasants" allows us to peek behind closed doors to understand the lengths that employers like Starbucks will go when employees ask for basic workers’ rights.

"[Young people] are reviving the labor movement as a counterbalance to the power of large corporations," Richard Bensinger, an organizer with Starbucks Workers United and former national organizing director of the AFL-CIO, told Food Tank. "But for the baristas to succeed, the public and customers must hold Starbucks accountable."

Now’s the time to demonstrate—and act upon—what we believe in. As the labor movement continues to take hold in the food system, it’s up to us to stand with employees and support their right to a healthy workplace free of intimidation, harassment, and threats.

As Richard said, it’s up to us to hold companies accountable: Companies like Starbucks, but also others like Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, and more who are not living up to their stated values when it comes to their treatment of workers.

We need to demand better from large companies in the food system—and that means standing with workers.

(Danielle Nierenberg in the President of Food Tank and can be contacted at danielle@foodtank.com)