Dear Brian Niccol,

We’re writing to you as we file our petitions to join the growing group of baristas who have organized and won their union with Starbucks Workers United, and who are making progress right now at the bargaining table. We, the partners at the below signed stores across the country, are joining together with the 490+ stores who’ve already won their union and, with it, a voice on the job. Starbucks calls us partners because we share in the success of the company. As baristas in our stores, we are all unique people working to create, serve, and uplift our unique communities around the world, and we are all united across the globe when we put our aprons on. We want to welcome you into this company in that spirit. As you enter the CEO role, we thought you should know about some of the things that have been making our jobs difficult–at times impossible. 

In many of our stores, we experience issues with leadership. When we ask our leaders for support, the blame is shifted back onto us and we get micromanaged instead. Starbucks tells us we are supposed to express our concerns, but when we do, we often find we are ignored or even retaliated against. The channels we are given to escalate these concerns seem to favor management with secure salaried positions instead of the hourly partners who are impacted by these issues. We are the partners who generate all the profits of our stores, and we know best how to run them and make them successful. As our new CEO, will you listen to your partners and help us solve the problems we face? Will you listen to your customers, who have also been vocal in their concerns?

Further, we find ourselves working short staffed at the same time we are pressured to deliver more results. We are told over and over that we can’t afford to have more people working, yet it is our consistent experience and our customers’ experience that there are simply too few people working to fulfill the demand. We love connecting with our customers, something the company always says it values, but we cannot achieve this goal when we’re spread so thin. As a leader, how will you contribute to rebuilding the partner and customer experience? We would recommend starting with ensuring that every shift in every store is properly staffed. If the company wants to build back to its former success, it needs to listen to us and invest in us– the heart of Starbucks.

In addition to the store experience, we also need better staffing so that we can call out when we are sick or have emergencies, and we need better healthcare coverage to take care of our well- being. It’s especially frustrating to work so thin when we have no guarantee we will be scheduled enough hours to qualify for benefits or pay our bills. It’s demoralizing when our pay does not reflect the amount of work we do or the economy we live in. These are the issues our partners who are meeting with the company at the bargaining table are working to solve- staffing and scheduling, living wages, and better benefits. We’re optimistic to hear the progress Workers United and Starbucks have been making on a foundational framework for store contracts, and we look forward to joining them. 

We think it’s important to focus on the partners who make Starbucks run. Our strength and foundation as a company is that we all come from different backgrounds. Though our lives may be very different, we all have the common experience of working at Starbucks, and we should all be equal and united when we wear our green aprons. Starbucks’ ultimate success in rebuilding hinges on whether we as baristas have the support we need to do our jobs well so that, in turn, we can ensure customers enjoy their Starbucks experience and keep coming back. We’re excited at the possibility of joining our fellow baristas represented by Workers United, meeting you at the bargaining table, and continuing to build on the progress we have made so far.

In solidarity,

The Partners at

• SR 535 & Vistana Centre – Orlando, FL 
• Hillsboro Pike & Graybar Ln – Nashville, TN
• Holcomb Bridge and Nesbit Ferry – Atlanta, GA
• Oakton & Lee – Des Plaines, IL 
• 1315 West Lane Ave – Columbus, OH
• 13th & Simpson – Sugar House – Salt Lake City, UT
• Old Fairhaven Parkway & 30th – Bellingham, WA
• Airline & Beene – Bossier City, LA
• Highland & Willoughby – Los Angeles, CA
• and more to be announced

For information on actions being held from September 20th through 23rd, click here!

For Starbucks Workers United media/press requests, please contact Starbucksmedia@workers-united.org