Starbucks baristas win a 3 year fight

Next year, Starbucks baristas across the U.S. will begin receiving holiday pay for working on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Did you know there’s a Starbucks Union in some cities? It’s smaller than a short latte, with about 300 employee-organizers. They’re represented by the Industrial Workers of the World.

For the past three years the Starbucks Workers Union has been protesting what they say is the “company’s second-class treatment of Dr. King’s birthday.” They want Starbucks to pay the same premium that it pays workers on six other federal holidays. After Starbucks refused to change its policy, union workers and their supporters launched grassroots campaign against the company.

They say on their website:

While Starbucks claims to ’embrace diversity’, it doggedly resisted the SWU’s call for equal treatment of MLK Day for three years. The company based its refusal on the claim that its holiday policy was in line with the (abysmally low) standards of the food service sector. The SWU made the case that Starbucks’ commitment to diversity was illusory, citing the disproportionate number of workers of color in the lowest-paid positions in the company and its intense exploitation of coffee farmers including the Ethiopian workers who grew some of Starbucks’ most expensive beans but received just 2.2% of the retail price.

The baristas’ union says Starbucks employees who work on Dr. King’s holiday will receive time-and-a-half pay for the day.

Starbucks confirms they’re giving employees that holiday with pay, because it was “one of our partners’ most requested holidays.”