New York City, USA – Hundreds of people gathered passionately on New York City’s heavily trafficked Fifth Avenue, holding picket signs and calling on coffee giant Starbucks to negotiate a contract with its union.

Pickets held signs on the sidewalk that read “No Contract, No Coffee” and “Baristas Strike,” blocking the Empire State Building’s front door. The company has an office in the Empire State Building, one of America’s most iconic landmarks, alongside a high-end signature store called Starbucks Reserve.

Several demonstrators were arrested. Two men who called themselves “T-bone” and “Elon” spoke to Al Jazeera about the reasons for their protest.

“Stop dragging out contracts, negotiate with workers and sign a contract with fair wages,” Elon, one of the detained baristas, told Al Jazeera as he was being loaded onto an NYPD bus.

The United Starbucks Workers told Al Jazeera that 12 people were arrested, but the NYPD did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request to confirm the number.

Starbucks representatives said that based on their “rough estimate,” only 25 people in the crowd were actually team members.

Representatives from the Starbucks Workers Union disputed this and told Al Jazeera that more than 100 baristas were in attendance.

This is the third consecutive week of indefinite strikes, which began on November 13 when the union called on Starbucks to offer them a contract.

war of words

These tensions are not new to the company, which operates 18,300 stores in the United States and Canada. They come from long-standing coffee shop history The chain is at odds with its employees. In December 2024, workers took to the picket lines as contract negotiations that began in April stalled.

At the time, the union rejected a proposal that guaranteed a 2% pay rise but did not include any improvements to health care options, which workers said was not enough. Starbucks hasn’t made any changes.

“We are committed to continuing to offer the best jobs in retail, including wages of more than $30 an hour and hourly partner benefits. The facts speak for themselves: partner engagement is up, revenue is nearly half the industry average, and we receive more than 1 million job applications annually,” Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson told Al Jazeera.

The United Starbucks Workers noted that starting wages (not including tips) are $15.25 an hour in 33 states. Al Jazeera found this on Starbucks’ job boards: barista positions in Elko, Nevada, start at $15.25 an hour, supervisor positions in Kansas start at $19.37 an hour, barista positions in Brooklyn, N.Y., start at $17.25, and shift supervisor positions start at $22.25 an hour.

The union says many baristas work less than 20 hours a week, which is below benefit standards; Al Jazeera cannot independently verify these claims.

Starbucks said the union is asking for a 65% raise in the near future and a 77% raise over the next three years, as well as higher wages for other jobs, including weekend hours, morning or evening shifts, stocking up and work on promotional days, such as Red Cup Day in stores, which typically bring greater traffic.

The Starbucks Workers Union pushed back, saying it was a misrepresentation of their demands and merging several proposals into one.

Michelle Eisen, spokesperson for the Starbucks Workers Union, told Al Jazeera: “There is no truth to this allegation. We presented a series of economic proposals as negotiating options that would ultimately lead to greater wages and benefits. Starbucks simply said ‘no’ to all of these proposals and then dishonestly added up all the options as if they were one cohesive demand.”

“It’s like going into Starbucks, adding up the entire menu, and saying it costs $1,000 to order a drink at Starbucks.”

political pressure

Starbucks is also facing growing pressure in New York City, where the chain has 300 stores. Both outgoing Mayor Eric Adams and incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani put pressure on the company to meet the union’s demands.

This week, the current Adams administration reached a $38.9 million settlement with the coffee shop chain, accusing it of violating the city’s fair workweek law, which requires employers to provide predictable schedules, advance notice and give existing employees the opportunity to work more hours before hiring new employees. The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) said the company has committed more than 500,000 violations since 2021.

The settlement covers people who worked at one of 300 New York City locations between July 4, 2021, and July 7, 2024.

Also this week, Mamdani and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders joined striking workers outside a Starbucks store in Brooklyn, New York.

While Mamdani responded to Al Jazeera’s questions at a press conference on Tuesday, his news team did not respond to a request for comment following the arrest of union members who marched with him two days ago.

Sanders, who confronted then-CEO Howard Schultz in March 2023 over union-busting accusations, told Al Jazeera the momentum was now on the side of workers.

“The difference I’m going to tell you is that over the years, four years later, hundreds of stores have voted to unionize, 12,000 workers have voted to unionize. And yet Starbucks refuses to sit down and negotiate a fair contract,” Sanders told Al Jazeera.

It’s unclear what the next steps will be. At the federal level, under President Donald Trump, the National Labor Relations Board — the federal agency to which workers file labor rights complaints — has been scaled back.

Since Trump took office, the agency has lacked a quorum, meaning there are not enough members to make key decisions related to unfair labor practice charges. Earlier this year, the Trump administration fired board member Gwynne Wilcox and fired general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, both Biden-era appointees who took pro-labor positions.

chronic tensions

The nationwide movement to unionize for higher wages has been years in the making, ever since a store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize in 2021.

Allegations of union-busting under then-CEO Schultz included surveillance of workers and so-called “captive audience” meetings in which workers were required to listen to anti-union messages from the company.

In 2024, the NLRB ruled that Schultz made threats to employees during a 2022 town hall in which he said, “If you’re not happy at Starbucks, you can go work for another company.”

“New Yorkers are exhausted by the stark contrast between these workers who cannot afford to live in this city and the CEOs who make $96 a year for the labor of these workers,” Mamdani said.

Mamdani was referring to Brian Niccol, who will take over as CEO from Schultz in September 2024. and provide compensation plans Nearly $96 million, or 6,666 times the median employee salary. That’s the largest pay gap between CEOs and employees among S&P 500 companies, according to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Pay Tracker.

With sales declining, Nicol was brought in with the hope that he could turn around the company after Laxman Narasimhan’s brief tenure. Laxman Narasimhan was ousted from the board amid looming pressure from activist investors and slowing sales.

The Starbucks Workers Union says the former CEO is at the negotiating table.

“It was under his (Narasimhan’s) leadership that negotiations really started,” Eisen added.

new CEO

Eisen said Nicol’s appointment was a step backwards.

“We had a very good bargain for nine months in 2024, but it came to an abrupt end when the current CEO came on board,” said Eisen, whose Buffalo store became the first to vote to unionize.

Nicol has been grappling with declining sales. Driven by international markets, global same-store sales increased by 1% in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with the previous quarter. North American same-store sales remained flat.

In September, the Seattle-based coffee chain announced it would close 1% of its U.S. stores. While this will not affect store staff, 900 corporate employees have lost their jobs as part of a $1 billion restructuring plan.

Nicol comes from Chipotle, which faced a series of union-busting accusations and settlements during his more than six years leading the company. In 2023, the company closed its first union store in Augusta, Maine, and later agreed to pay the store’s employees $240,000 as part of a settlement.

Chipotle also faces similar penalties from New York City, just like this week’s settlement with Starbucks. In 2022, the company agreed to pay $20 million to resolve city labor law violationsincluding failing to provide predictable schedules and paid sick leave. The settlement covers 13,000 workers.

Under Nicholl’s leadership, the chain was also accused of violating child labor laws and paid settlements across the country. In 2022, the company settled with the state of New Jersey for $7.75 million after state agencies found more than 30,000 allegations of child labor violations. In Massachusetts, the company paid nearly $2 million to settle 13,000 charges of violating child labor laws.

Workers hope that new pressure from lawmakers and the participation of more demonstrators in a settlement reached this week will be enough to push contract talks forward.

“I think this company recognizes that there are some serious systemic issues here. I think they do recognize that the people who are in the coffee shop every day offering solutions, we’re just waiting for them to be receptive to the conversation so that we can finalize a contract,” Eisen said.

A spokesman for the company said it also came amid heavy attacks from picket line strikers.

“We have made it very clear that we are ready to negotiate when the union is ready to return to negotiations. Instead, they have focused on staging and promoting protests in New York City, where they represent only 200 of the 4,500 partners in New York City,” Anderson said.