The Nashville Central Labor Council (CLC) hosted a press conference with city council members to welcome Starbucks’ relocation of its headquarters to the city on May 19, in response to the monopoly’s April announcement of the move and a $100 million investment to construct the new headquarters. The CLC called upon the Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) union to join the press conference, where the Council welcomed Starbucks’ move and presented “demands” which conflicted with SBWU rank-and-file demands.
The CLC is the local anti-strike headquarters of the city’s business unions and is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO with strong ties to the local political machinery that supports monopoly interests. The CLC invited Metro councilwoman Delishia Porterfield to welcome Starbucks to Nashville at the press conference. After Porterfield made a few statements about workers’ right to unionize, she asserted that the city “[looks] forward to the new jobs and the increased investment that Starbucks’ presence will bring our city.”
SBWU organizers told The Worker the event was not really a “joint” press conference in collaboration with the union, contrary to the billing of the CLC, as the “demands” raised by the CLC and Metro Council members during the event conflicted with the rank-and-file workers’ demands and the SBWU platform. “The CLC says we need healthcare… That’s really not our most pressing need. People need schedules that work for them and to be paid a livable wage more than anything,” a union organizer said. The SBWU website lists demands around pay, hours, understaffing, discrimination, etc., but there are no demands around healthcare.
The organizer told The Worker, “I don’t feel Starbucks corporate is welcome at all… I think one thing that Nashville needs more of is the perspective of workers, because I do think there’s a misunderstanding of workers’ conditions.”
Starbucks is a multinational coffee chain with around 32,000 stores worldwide. The company is headed by CEO Brian Niccol, who took home $98 million from Starbucks when he left Chipotle for the company, according to The Guardian. The chain prides itself on offering customers highly customizable drinks with lightning-fast customer service—a set of demands that come at the expense of Starbucks workers.
For example, baristas at locations with drive-thrus are expected to get a customer’s order and serve them in under 45 seconds, according to an interview given to The Worker by a barista from Bowling Green, Kentucky. Last summer, the worker said their AC went out for a month and they were forced to work at the same speed in the extreme heat. Some workers vomited from the heat and had to leave their shifts, against management’s desire for them to remain at work.
Starbucks Workers United was formed in 2021 in Buffalo, New York, and exists under Workers United, an affiliate of the business union Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The union has unionized 700 stores across the United States but has struggled to secure a fair contract with the company, which has a history of union-busting and intimidating workers. SBWU organized country-wide strikes of unionized Starbucks workers at the end of 2024 and 2025 demanding progress on negotiations and that the company stop its union-busting.
Image: A Starbucks beverage. Credit: Dries Buytaert.
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