STRONGSVILLE, Ohio — As thousands of Starbucks workers take part in a strike Thursday, some employees in Strongsville are among those joining the “Red Cup Rebellion.”
The Associated Press reports the union chose Thursday – Red Cup Day – to host the walkout “since it’s usually one of the busiest days of the year” as the company gives out reusable red holiday cups to customers who order a holiday drink.
Lexi Hunter, who talked with 3News amid the Strongsville strike, said she works at a Starbucks kiosk in the mall.
“I really hope that stuff like this makes a difference,” Hunter said. “It is a nationwide thing, so I think that in striking it’s definitely going to have a negative impact on Starbucks’ profit for today, which clearly is all that they’re worried about. Maybe if they see how much this can actually tank their profit, they’ll take us a little bit more seriously.”
During our conversation, Hunter was holding a sign that declared: “People over profit.” Another sign told customers to “Go to Dunkin!”
We streamed live video from the strike in Strongsville, which you can see in the player below...
“This isn’t an attack on store managers or anything,” Hunter said. “This is more of just a big warning to corporate Starbucks that we are serious. We are not just money-milking machines, and we mean business.”
Starbucks addressed the strike with the following statement submitted to 3News:
We are aware that Workers United has publicized a day of action at a small subset of our U.S. stores today. We remain committed to working with all partners, side-by-side, to elevate the everyday, and we hope that Workers United’s priorities will shift to include the shared success of our partners and working to negotiate contracts for those they represent.
Starbucks has a long history of surprising and delighting our customers with periodic offers and promotions such as Double Star Days, Thurs-yays, and Red Cup Day.
We understand that these promotional days may change store patterns and traffic, and that’s why our retail leaders have the flexibility to build and adjust staffing schedules to reflect the unique and dynamic needs of each store — balancing store resources and expected customer demand to ensure partners (employees) are on the floor when they're needed most. Notably, our store schedules are created three weeks in advance with our partners’ availability and preferences at the forefront and our stores are often provided additional labor hours to augment staffing in support of planned promotional days.
Starbucks is dedicated to partner-centric scheduling and providing partners with hours that align with their individual needs and preferences is a top priority. This is reflected in Starbucks commitment to diligently create work schedules that carefully balance the availability of our partners with the staffing needs of individual stores. To achieve this, Starbucks collects a range of preferred, minimum, and maximum hours to build a complete picture of partner preferences and assist store managers in scheduling and managing their workforce. This improved scheduling protocol will enable partners to contribute to the personalization of their ideal schedules. Together, these efforts will help Starbucks improve the stability, flexibility, and consistency of schedules.
We call on Workers United to respond to our invitations to bargain contracts for the stores they represent - Workers United hasn't agreed to meet to progress contract bargaining in more than five months.