Thousands of Starbucks baristas will walk off the job on Tuesday, expanding the dayslong holiday strike to 300 stores in dozens of cities and towns nationwide, the union Starbucks Workers United said.
In all, 5,000 Starbucks employees will go on strike in more than 25 states on Tuesday, from Maryland to Montana to California, Workers United said.
The union said that workers in Columbus, Ohio; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Buffalo, New York; and a host of other locations are set to join the strikes.
The work stoppages on Christmas Eve mark the final wave of a five-day strike meant to disrupt Starbucks during one of the busiest times of the year for the coffeehouse giant.
"These strikes are a first demonstration of power, and we're just beginning," said Lauren Hollingsworth, a Starbucks barista in Ashland, Oregon, in a statement to ABC News.
Starbucks Workers United and Starbucks announced in January that they would collaborate on a "foundational framework" to achieve a collective bargaining agreement for stores, a goal the union says it has yet to achieve.
"We were prepared to take the foundational framework home this year, but Starbucks wasn't," Lynne Fox, President of Workers United, said in a statement to ABC News.
The strike started on Friday and has intensified each day since. On Monday, about 60 stores were forced to close as a result of work stoppages, the union said.
According to reports, when asked to give a comment on the protest by ABC News, Jay Go Guasch at Starbucks mentioned that it only minimally affected a few among its stores in the US.
"Around 170 only of Starbucks stores were affected, out of the total over 10,000 company-operated stores as 98% of all its stores and over 200,000 green apron partners continue to maintain operations and serve their customer during the holidays.".
Sara Kelly, Starbucks' executive vice president and chief partner officer, downplayed the impact of the strikes in a public letter to employees late Monday.
"The overwhelming majority of Starbucks stores across the country have opened as planned and are busy with customers enjoying the holidays," Kelly said, noting that the company operates 10,000 stores and employs 200,000 people nationwide.
Anticipating that the strike will expand on Tuesday, Kelly said work stoppages in hundreds of stores would cause "very limited impact to our overall operations."
"The union chose to walk away from bargaining last week," Kelly said. "We are ready to continue negotiations when the union comes back to the bargaining table."
According to statements from both sides regarding the other's proposal, the union and the company are far apart on the key issue of potential wage increases.
Starbucks proposed no immediate wage increases for most baristas and a guarantee of only 1.5% wage increases in future years, Workers United said in a statement to ABC News.
Meanwhile, Starbucks said in a statement that the union had proposed an immediate increase in the minimum wage of hourly partners by 64%, as well as an overall 77% raise over the duration of a three-year contract. "This is not sustainable," a Starbucks spokesperson told ABC News.
Starbucks United contests those figures as a disingenuous characterization of its proposal, the union told ABC News.
The baristas have unionized over 100 Starbucks stores this year, expanding a union campaign that has spread to hundreds of stores across 45 states since an initial victory three years ago at a location in Buffalo, New York, the union said.
The union has brought hundreds of charges against the company to the National Labor Relations Board alleging illegal anti-union activities by Starbucks, including bad-faith negotiations over a potential union contract setting terms at the unionized locations.
Starbucks denied wrongdoing and faulted the union for breaking off negotiations. The company said it offers better pay and benefits than its competitors, according to Starbucks
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