Beto Sanchez, 27, started his lunch break, opened his phone and saw, to his shock, that he and his co-workers at Starbucks had lost a United States Supreme Court case.
As his phone vibrated with texts from lawyers and friends, the irony of the situation sank in.
“I’m generating revenue for this company with my labor while the court is deciding that I should have just been fired,” he said, laughing.
It’s been over two years since Sanchez and six colleagues — dubbed “the Memphis Seven” — were fired after they tried to unionize their Poplar-Highland store. At the request of the National Labor Relations Board, the District Court of the Western District District of Tennessee issued a preliminary injunction against their firing and they were reinstated.
Starbucks appealed that injunction all the way to the Supreme Court. On June 13, the court ruled that the District Court should have employed a different standard of evidence before issuing an injunction. The court’s decision means it is now easier to fire workers for organizing.
The company has spent, perhaps, millions of dollars in legal fees to prove they shouldn’t have been reinstated. But if Starbucks’s goal was to break the union members or force them out, their efforts have backfired. Sanchez, a shift supervisor, and three other members of the Memphis Seven still work at Starbucks. The workers who remain at Starbucks sense their employer wishes they would get another job — and that’s why they won’t.
“If Starbucks really thinks they’re going to get rid of us, they’re not,” said Florentino Escobar, 21, a barista, trainer and another member of the Seven.
Neither Sanchez nor Escobar were activists before they worked at Starbucks. By contrast, Sanchez said that their firing turned them into “martyrs of Starbucks’ union busting.”
Now, Sanchez and Escobar have become well-known figures in a resurgent American labor movement. Working for Starbucks is no longer just about paying their bills.
“I know that if management and the corporation are so hostile to us, it’s because they know that there’s something in us that can make a change,” said Escobar.
Escobar used to love going to Starbucks.
He grew up in Collierville, a suburb he described as “very conservative.” Escobar is Latino-American and queer, and in Collierville, “being different is seen as quite literally being an alien,” he said.
Still, he felt comfortable in Collierville’s Starbucks. “It was so diverse,” he said. “There were a lot of LGBT employees, a lot of people of color and even people with disabilities. It was nice to be able to go there and talk to some of them.” When he started looking for a first job in high school, Starbucks was a natural choice. He became a barista in early 2020.
His story almost sounds like it could have been written by Howard Schultz.
Schultz, Starbucks’s former CEO, made Starbucks a national brand by emphasizing the social function of its stores. In 2008, a Starbucks manager told Fast Company magazine, “We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office. You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the window, surf the web… oh, and drink coffee too.”
Famously, Schultz also treated partners well; he distinguished himself from other CEOs by offering workers health care, stock options and payment above minimum wage. To Schultz, these benefits make a Starbucks union unnecessary. In 2023, Schultz insisted, “Starbucks is probably one of the best, if not the best, first job in America.”
It didn’t feel that way to Escobar. Shortly after he started his job, the COVID-19 pandemic began. “At first, the company was really supportive,” said Escobar. “But then it started going downhill.”
In 2021, Escobar moved from Collierville to the Poplar-Highland store, where he met Sanchez. During that period, workers were under enormous pressure. Shifts had fewer workers, making it difficult for baristas to keep up with customer demand. Workers felt inadequately protected from the virus. The ice machine was moldy, but management refused to replace it. Their paychecks were often inexplicably short.
Even before the pandemic, some Starbucks employees had become disillusioned with the company. Workers get benefits if they work at least 20 hours a week. Some, however, were scheduled inconsistently and unpredictably, which meant, in practice, that some employees never received any benefits. Meanwhile, Starbucks’s ever-growing list of drinks and modifications — currently, there are at least 170,000 possible drink combinations at Starbucks — has made the job of a barista harder.
On Jan. 17, 2022, Poplar-Highland workers announced they’d seek a union vote. A few weeks later, on February 8, seven of the workers were fired. Their firing led to the NLRB’s intervention — and, eventually, to the Supreme Court.
On May Day of 2022, Sanchez and another organizer were invited to give a speech in New York City at an event hosted by several labor unions in New York City. That afternoon, they marched to Howard Schultz’s Manhattan home and protested outside.
The Memphis Seven also thinks Starbucks is weaker than it used to be, despite the company’s court victory.
On July 30, Starbucks reported that its sales had declined for the third quarter in a row. According to Sanchez, worker turnover has increased. Meanwhile, younger consumers are boycotting the company.
On Aug. 13, Starbucks swapped its CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, for Brian Niccol, a former Chipotle CEO with a fraught history with unions. Unlike Schultz, Narasimhan seemed open to working with unions, but he failed to increase revenues at the company.
To boost sales, Starbucks has started offering more promotions. These deals “reek of desperation,” said Sanchez.
Starbucks Workers United is now in a stronger position than expected. Currently, the union is negotiating with Starbucks to create a “foundational framework,” a contract that functions as a set of guidelines. These guidelines will allow each unionized store to create its own collective bargaining agreement with Starbucks. The framework is expected to include health and safety protections, protected scheduling, standards for discipline and protections for workers who want to organize their stores.
Sanchez, the Poplar-Highland store’s delegate in negotiations, seems confident in their prospects.
“We’re hoping that what we build will make it easier for others to follow in our path,” he said. “Others will be able to see what they can win from organizing, to be able to see that it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Rebecca Cadenhead is the youth life and justice reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. She is also a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email her rebecca.cadenhead@mlk50.com.
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