By: Terence Cawley

SOMERVILLE, MA – The last few weeks have been tumultuous for the workers at the Starbucks store in the Davis Square neighborhood. On Wednesday, September 17, workers voted to join Starbucks Workers United. That made Davis Square the 650th unionized Starbucks store. One week later, on Thursday the 25th, Starbucks announced the imminent closure of hundreds of stores nationwide – including the Davis Square store. By that Saturday the 27th, the store had permanently closed. The new unionized location was gone.

Starbucks shuttered at least twenty locations in Massachusetts in this round of closures, including eight union stores. Besides the Davis Square store, the union store closures include the Harvard Square Starbucks, which unionized in May, and the store at 874 Commonwealth Avenue in Brookline, where the longest strike in Starbucks union history occurred over 64 days in 2022.

Brief History of Starbucks Workers United

Since Starbucks workers in Buffalo, N.Y. started Starbucks Workers United in August 2021, 650 stores (representing over 12,000 workers) have unionized. More than 200 of those stores joined Starbucks Workers United since February 2024. Despite these successes, not one of these stores has so far reached a collective bargaining agreement with the company.

Starbucks Workers United’s demands include changes that will enable more baristas to make a living wage, like higher pay, expanded healthcare benefits and paid leave, and more consistent scheduling. The union is also asking for stronger protections from racial and sexual harassment, as well as the enshrinement of current benefits in a contract so they cannot be revoked by the company later.

Starbucks initially opposed unionization efforts aggressively, leading to over 700 Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) filed against Starbucks with the National Labor Relations Board. The company reached an agreement with Starbucks Workers United in February 2024 to negotiate a “foundational framework” for contracts for union stores. Starbucks then failed to meet its own deadline to agree to this framework by the end of 2024, leading to workers at over 300 Starbucks locations going on strike on Christmas Eve for the largest labor action in company history.

Starbucks Workers United and the company entered mediation in February 2025. While the union has made some progress in contract negotiations, reaching 33 tentative agreements with the company, Starbucks continues to hold out on the workers’ three core demands: increasing worker hours to address understaffing and ensure workers qualify for benefits, increasing take-home pay, and resolving all outstanding ULP charges.

Starbucks Workers United claims on their website that Starbucks could finalize fair union contracts for less than the over $97 million Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol made for four months of work in 2024. Starbucks also covered the cost of Niccol commuting from his home in California to company headquarters in Seattle via private jet.

Organizing at the Davis Square Starbucks

Ben Levin has worked at the Davis Square Starbucks since April 2023. “From the beginning,” he has loved his coworkers. However, when Levin and his partner began planning to have children, he saw how his coworkers with families struggled due to a lack of consistent scheduling, subpar benefits, and low wages, not to mention the high cost of living in the Greater Boston area. Levin reported to Working Mass:

I was like, it would be so cool to be able to keep this job and start a family, and the only way I can see that that would be possible would be to fight back and win some of those things.

Some Starbucks customers had already encouraged Levin and his fellow Davis Square workers to unionize, but workers spent several years organizing the groundwork to reach the point where the store was ready for an election. Levin partially attributes this to the “stigma Starbucks manufactures in the workplace” around unionizing. “I understand why people are scared,” Levin said. “There are very material reasons for that.”

While Levin said management at his store did not engage in active union-busting, they did discourage workers from organizing through what he characterized as “trying to manufacture a sense of divisiveness and fear.” Despite the opposition, Levin found success building support for the union by connecting with his coworkers on a human level, listening to the challenges they faced at work, and providing accurate information about how a union could help with those challenges. According to Levin:

At the end of the day, everyone cares, everyone wants a better workplace. [You just] have to keep shoring up support and reminding folks why we’re in it together.

Levin also found inspiration in the accelerating momentum of the nationwide Starbucks Workers United effort. “It’s important to be connected to a larger movement,” said Levin. “This is a really powerful and kind of explosive labor movement- you know, [Starbucks Workers United] is the fastest-growing unionization effort in modern history.”

Additionally, the Davis Square workers had the support of Julie Langevin, a Starbucks Workers United staff organizer and former barista who has been involved with the union for over three years. She sees significance in the milestone of 650 unionized stores which Starbucks Workers United reached with the Davis Square election victory. Langevin said, on a hopeful note:

Every store that unionizes shows other baristas that they can do it too. 650 is a number some people thought impossible, but to us, it’s the proof that workers know what they’re worth and that they know when they fight, they can win.

Store Closures and What Comes Next

“It was sweet to celebrate,” said Levin. “It’s just hard to think about it not in the context of the closure.”

The official reason given in Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s statement is that the stores being closed are “coffeehouses where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance.” In a separate statement, the company denied that unionization impacted which stores they closed. Still, Levin believes that, while Starbucks targeted stores without customer seating (like Harvard Square) and stores with lower revenue (like Davis Square) for closure, a desire to close union stores, particularly newly unionized stores with “the most fired-up workers,” may have been a factor.

While Niccol’s statement claimed that Starbucks would offer workers at closed stores the opportunity to transfer to other stores, as of September 30, Levin and his Davis Square coworkers have yet to receive any such offer. Fortunately, Starbucks Workers United has secured several protections for laid-off union members, including an extra month of health care benefits and the option to decline a transfer offer without losing their severance package.

“For some of us, this is our last week at Starbucks, but we still got to see the real material impact that the union is having,” said Levin. And even in the face of store closures and protracted contract negotiations, Langevin and Levin remain confident that the union will ultimately prevail. As Langevin said:

We have no other choice. Workers can either accept what the company gives them, or fight for a chance at a better life. And every time workers reach out and want to fight, it brings me hope and continued inspiration.

Supporters of Starbucks Workers United can show their solidarity and receive email updates about future actions by signing the No Contract, No Coffee pledge at https://sbworkersunited.org/take-action/. The union and its supporters have been canvassing for these pledges since summer to demonstrate to Starbucks how many customers will not cross the picket line if workers go on strike. To that end, Starbucks Workers United will hold a practice picket outside the Harvard Square Starbucks on Saturday, October 4 from 11am to 1pm.

“I absolutely think that a fire has been lit. We’ve had so many customers come in and express outrage at what’s happening to us, and ask what they can do to support us.”

“We’re escalating to something major,” said Langevin. “This practice picket is just the beginning of us flexing that power to company leadership, and there’s more to come.”

Terence Cawley is a member of Boston DSA.