When 220 baristas became union members at Heine Brothers cafés and roasteries across Louisville, Kentucky, in late 2022, baristas at nearby Sunergos Coffee were inspired.
“We thought, ‘If they can do it, why not us?’” said Sunergos shift lead Clove Harrington. Why not push to increase their low wages and get some job protection, things that could “make it a sustainable job for everybody?”
With strategy support from Heine workers, 57 Sunergos workers unionized in early 2023. Almost a year later, they inked their first contract which secured pay increases, first-ever paid time off and paid sick leave benefits, and just cause protections against arbitrary discipline or firing. They now have guaranteed quarterly meetings between workers and upper management.
The ripple spread. Last September, 50 workers at Quills Coffee, another Louisville staple, unionized. “We saw Sunergos get their contract and within a month, [we were] trying to gauge interest in unionizing,” barista Joel Wafford said. Heine Brothers and Sunergos paved such a smooth path that Nathan Quillo, the owner of Quills, decided to neither fight the union effort nor force a vote; he voluntarily recognized it.
Contract negotiations went smoothly too. Quills workers took their cues from the Sunergos contract and built upon it. They secured an end to a longstanding wage cap, four weeks of paid family leave as well as bereavement leave, minimum staffing commitments, and fairer scheduling.
Between the campaigns at these local chains and the five Starbucks locations in the city that have unionized, a majority of café workers in Louisville are now union members. Workers at some of the remaining nonunion shops have already reached out to Wafford to talk about unionizing too. “It’s definitely a barista movement here in Louisville,” Harrington said.
But the movement goes beyond Louisville. Workers at over 30 coffee shop companies across the country have successfully unionized, at both massive chains like Starbucks and Peet’s to beloved local cafés. Workers are not just seeking better pay and benefits; they want to change these jobs into ones that can provide stability and longevity.
The movement began in 2017, when 22 baristas at four Gimme! Coffee shops in Ithaca, New York, formed the first barista union in the country. Two years later, more than 130 workers at SPoT Coffee in Buffalo followed suit, becoming, at the time, the largest coffee shop union.
Soon baristas across the country were following suit. Workers at Colectivo Coffee Roasters, which has locations in Illinois and Wisconsin, started talking about unionizing in March 2020, inspired by SPoT workers, after the company kept its to-go orders and warehouse running during the early pandemic. Colectivo workers got on Zoom calls with SPoT representatives, who shared knowledge and warned about the coming hurdles. Colectivo’s workers prevailed, taking SPot’s mantle as the country’s largest unionized coffee chain in August 2021.
That title wouldn’t be theirs for long. Four months later, workers at a Buffalo Starbucks became the first to officially unionize. The campaign spread like wildfire; this June, Starbucks Workers United notched its 600th win.
Noah Dixon started working at a Philadelphia Starbucks two and a half years ago. As he saw his coworkers struggle with the same things he did—pay that failed to keep up with the cost of living, understaffing that left them overstretched—he decided to unionize. “Of course, I had heard about the Starbucks [union push],” he said. Noah Dixon leading a picket outside of a Starbucks Coffee in Philadelphia.
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He believes the Starbucks campaign has inspired other coffee shops too. “People are seeing us go up against this behemoth of an employer,” he said. “They’re seeing us winning.”
While winning a union inspires other workers, securing a contract generates even more excitement. “It gives a very concrete example of what workers can achieve,” said Sharon Block, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy.
Nearly two years after forming their union, Colectivo workers secured their first contract in mid-2023, notching a 4% raise in the first year and a 2.7% one the following, just cause protections, and paid sick leave. The contract immediately drew the attention of Intelligentsia workers, who had unionized the year before. Just as SPoT workers paid their success forward to Colectivo, “they paid it forward to Intelligentsia,” said John M. Jacobs, business manager and financial secretary at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 494, which represents Colectivo workers in Wisconsin.
Colectivo workers have also been able to build on their own success: This May they secured a second contract, which was “a lot easier,” Jacobs said. The new agreement has higher average wage increases, an additional holiday, and new safety training.
Other shops have managed to secure a crucial first contract, including baristas at Blank Street in New York City and Reanimator Coffee in Philadelphia.
Baristas aren’t just unionizing to secure better pay and protections; they want to help customers too. Overstressed baristas don’t have time to clean stores and might space out important things like allergies. “Half of what we’re providing people is humanity and connection,” Dixon said. “Our ability to do that is severely hampered by the incredible limitations put on us by our employer.”
Despite the union election momentum among Starbucks baristas, the company is a major holdout against reaching a contract that improves conditions. There were signs of hope last year, when Starbucks and the union announced a framework and held their first bargaining session last April. But the union alleges that in December the company backtracked on the framework. Workers are demanding that the company return to the bargaining table and address their core demands of better hours and staffing, higher pay, and resolving past allegations of unfair labor practices. They plan to strike on Red Cup Day, one of the company’s busiest days, on November 13 to demand progress toward finalizing a contract.
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As long as Starbucks stalls, it will dampen union activity in coffee shops elsewhere, whose owners could feel undercut by Starbucks’s lower wages. Some baristas may feel deflated watching Starbucks employees notch union victories without ratified contracts to show for it. “It’s certainly not good for the effort for workers to see that the law is so weak,” Block said.
Other coffee shop owners have exploited weak US labor laws to dodge union campaigns, some going as far as to close down rather than allow workers to unionize. That was the case for Wydown Coffee in Washington, DC, OCF Coffee in Philadelphia, Adda Coffee & Tea House in Pittsburgh, and Great Lakes Coffee Roasting in Detroit. At least two, White Electric in Providence, and Darwin’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were bought out from recalcitrant owners and turned into worker co-ops. So was Gimme! Coffee, where the union was decertified four years after being voted in.
Workers have even less wind in their sails now. President Trump fired the Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board, leaving it without a quorum to adjudicate complaints of unfair labor practices. A recent court decision found the National Labor Relations Act to be unconstitutional, putting an injunction in place in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas that keeps the NLRB from holding union elections in those states.
But Starbucks workers are undeterred. “They think that by making it chaotic and difficult that it’s going to scare us,” Dixon said. “But really it’s just putting us through the ringer so we’ll come out stronger on the other side.”
Ultimately, coffee shop organizers want to make this a job that can offer a decent income and even become a career. “Wages and benefits are of course important,” Dixon said. But, perhaps even more important, is securing “respect and dignity in our workplace.”