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Striking Starbucks baristas are calling on customers of the world’s largest coffee chain to delete its popular mobile app in solidarity with their demands for a first union contract.
Starbucks Workers United, which has been coordinating a strike for almost three months, is vowing to press ahead.
“We baristas are still fighting for a fair contract, and this fight is active and ongoing,” said KC Ihekwaba, a barista at Starbucks in Lafayette, Colorado, on a solidarity union call earlier this week. “Our fire for change is still burning. Our spirits still strong.
“What we’re asking for has not changed. We’re demanding livable wages, stable and predictable hours, and an end to union busting. Starbucks still has not delivered on any of that.”
Since 13 November last year, Starbucks Workers United began an unfair labor practice strike.
Since December 2021, workers won union elections at more than 600 Starbucks stores. With several stores hit by closures, Starbucks Workers United now represents about 11,000 baristas at 576 Starbucks stores in the US. A further 15 stores filed for a union election last month.
At the end of December, the union scaled back the scope of the strike, with most stores giving a return to work notice to Starbucks, with the aim to keep several hundred to 1,000 workers on strike in a rotational basis given the financial burdens of long strikes for low-income employees, and to put energy into increasing the number of unionized Starbucks stores.
About 1,000 baristas across nearly 50 stores are on strike. “We have definitely made it known that we deserve a fair contract and union busting has got to stop now,” said Christi Gomoljak, a Starbucks barista, during a solidarity call announcing the “Delete the App” campaign.
Gomoljak and her co-workers recently organized a union at the Downtown Disney Starbucks in Anaheim, California, and walked out on strike in November 2025.
“We are calling on Starbucks customers everywhere to delete the Starbucks mobile app off your phone,” Gomoljak added. “When baristas get a fair contract, you can reload the app on your phone and then finally, use any gift cards that you might have gotten from the holidays. But trust me, coffee with a union contract tastes so much better, and it is worth the wait.”
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, said on the call: “Supporting our baristas as they take on one of the most powerful companies in the world … is an incredible way to make an impact. This fight is about something way bigger than just coffee. It’s about whether we as working people get to live with dignity in this world that we make possible.”
Starbucks has downplayed the strike and its impact, claiming that fewer than 1% of the chain’s stores were ever affected, and more than half either continued operating, or reopened, shortly after the strike. They did not comment on the app deletion campaign.
“The union has called for an unconditional return to work at nearly all of the coffeehouses on its strike list,” said a Starbucks spokesperson, Jaci Anderson. “We see this as a positive step and hope it signals a willingness to return to the bargaining table.
She added: “With more than 30 tentative agreements already in place, we’re confident we can move quickly toward a fair contract – one that reflects that Starbucks offers the best job in retail, with pay and benefits averaging over $30 an hour for hourly partners.”
