More than 1,000 Starbucks baristas go on strike to protest new dress
code
[May 15, 2025] By
DEE-ANN DURBIN
More than 1,000 Starbucks baristas at 75 U.S. stores have gone on strike
since Sunday to protest a new company dress code, a union representing
the coffee giant's workers said Wednesday.
Starbucks put new limits starting Monday on what its baristas can wear
under their green aprons. The dress code requires employees at
company-operated and licensed stores in the U.S. and Canada to wear a
solid black shirt and khaki, black or blue denim bottoms.
Under the previous dress code, baristas could wear a broader range of
dark colors and patterned shirts. Starbucks said the new rules would
make its green aprons stand out and create a sense of familiarity for
customers as it tries to establish a warmer, more welcoming feeling in
its stores.
But Starbucks Workers United, the union that represents workers at 570
of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned U.S. stores, said the dress code
should be subject to collective bargaining.
“Starbucks has lost its way. Instead of listening to baristas who make
the Starbucks experience what it is, they are focused on all the wrong
things, like implementing a restrictive new dress code,” said Paige
Summers, a Starbucks shift supervisor from Hanover, Maryland. “Customers
don’t care what color our clothes are when they’re waiting 30 minutes
for a latte.”
Summers and others also criticized the company for selling styles of
Starbucks-branded clothing that employees no longer are allowed to wear
to work on an internal website. Starbucks said it would give two free
black T-shirts to each employee when it announced the new dress code.
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Starbucks baristas stand on stage, March 20, 2019, during an annual
shareholders meeting in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, file)
 Starbucks said Wednesday that the
strike was having a limited impact on its 10,000 company-operated
U.S. stores. By the union's own count, less than 1% of Starbucks
workers are participating in the strikes, and in some cases the
strikes closed stores for less than an hour, the company said.
“It would be more productive if the union would put the same effort
into coming back to the table that they’re putting into protesting
wearing black shirts to work," Starbucks said in a statement. "More
than 99% of our stores are open today serving customers — and have
been all week.”
Starbucks Workers United has been unionizing U.S. stores since 2021.
Starbucks and the union have yet to reach a contract agreement,
despite agreeing to return to the bargaining table in February 2024.
The union said this week that it filed a complaint with the National
Labor Relations Board alleging Starbucks' failure to bargain over
the new dress code.
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