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More than a thousand Starbucks employees went on strike on Thursday on what is one of the company’s busiest days.
Members of the Starbucks Workers Union are picketing outside more than a hundred stores across the country on what they say is the group’s largest single-day strike. The walkout falls on what’s known as Red Cup Day, when the coffee giant hands out limited-edition holiday reusable cups. They’re considered collector’s items and customers line up at the crack of dawn to get their hands on a decorated cup. It’s one of the coffee giant’s most profitable days on the calendar.
But baristas such as Josie Serrano say it’s emblematic of one of the union’s fundamental requests: a call for better staffing.
« It’s honestly one of those days that a lot of … baristas try to … ask for off because it’s always always a very insane day, » said Serrano, who works at a store in Long Beach. Calif.
Serrano says she has worked at Starbucks for about four and a half years. The store she works at is one of the 264 that have voted to unionize over the past year and joined the nationwide strike on Thursday.
