More than 1,000 Baristas Starbucks in 75 American stores have been on strike since Sunday to protest against a new corporate clothing code, a union representing the workers of the café giant on Wednesday.
Starbucks has put new limits from Monday on what his baristas can wear under their green aprons. The dress code requires employees in operated stores and under license in the United States and Canada to wear a solid black shirt and a black or blue jeans.
Under the previous dress code, baristas could wear a wider range of dark colors and patterned shirts. Starbucks said the new rules would bring out its green aprons and create a feeling of familiarity for customers while trying to establish a warmer and more welcoming feeling in its stores.
But Starbucks Workers United, the union which represents workers of 570 of the 10,000 American stores belonging to the Starbucks company, said that the dress code should be subject to collective negotiations.
“Starbucks has lost its way. Instead of listening to baristas that make Starbucks the experience of what it is, they focus on all bad things, such as the implementation of a new restrictive dress code,” said Paige Summers, a Shift Starbucks supervisor from Hanover, Maryland. “Customers do not care about the color of our clothes when they wait 30 minutes for a latte.”
Summers and others have also criticized the company to sell Starbucks brand clothing styles that employees are no longer allowed to wear to work on an internal website. Starbucks said he would give two free black t-shirts to each employee when he announces the new dress code.
Starbucks said on Wednesday that the strike had a limited impact on its 10,000 American stores operated by the company. According to the union account, less than 1% of Starbucks workers participate in the strikes and, in some cases, the Strikes have closed the stores for less than an hour, said the company.
“It would be more productive than the union puts the same effort to return to the table they put to protest against the black shirts to work,” Starbucks said in a statement. “More than 99% of our stores are opened today at the service of customers – and have been all week.”
Starbucks Workers United has been unionized from American stores since 2021. Starbucks and the union have not yet concluded a contract agreement, despite its acceptance to return to the negotiation table in February 2024.
The union said this week that he had filed a complaint with the National Council for Labor Relations alleging the non-negotiation of Starbucks to negotiate the new dress code.
