Starbucks Workers Stage Labor Walk-Out At 5 NYC Stores

NEW YORK CITY — Workers at five New York City Starbucks abruptly walked off the job Wednesday morning on one of the busiest business days for the coffee conglomerate.

“Corporate needs to know why we’re doing a work stoppage: we feel overworked and understaffed for the wages we are making," said Raquel Moran, a Starbucks worker in Brooklyn. "We want a better environment for both the workers and the customers."

Dubbed the "Red Cup Rebellion," a reference to the annual day where customers can receive a free red cup from the coffee chain taking place on Wednesday, the work stoppage is part of a larger effort to unionize Starbucks shops across the nation.

The five stores which participated in Wednesday's action include one in Staten island, two in Astoria, the Williamsburg Reserve in Brooklyn and the Astor Place café in Manhattan.

The national Starbucks union, Starbucks Workers United, said that thousands of workers across the country were expected to participate in Wednesday's strike.

"Red Cup Day (November 16) is Starbucks’s biggest sales event of the season — and also one of the most infamously hard, understaffed days for the baristas that work them," the union said.

While the walk-outs are intended to draw attention to the unionization efforts, the "Red Cup Rebellion" action also demands that the coffee giant to turn off mobile ordering on future promotion days, which the union says company executives are scheduling with increasing frequency.

Starbucks Workers United says that the company continues to illegally refusing to bargain with baristas over fairer hours and better staffing nationwide — despite the chain announcing record fourth quarter sales, they said.

In August, workers staged another day of action, targeting over 200 stores across the country.

The union says that they currently represent over 360 Starbucks stores and about 9,000 workers nationwide.