The tattoo petition is said to inspire similar successful efforts at Skechers, Publix and Jimmy John’s. Since then, more Starbucks employees have launched nearly a hundred campaigns. Nearly 80,000 baristas have taken action against Coworker in one way or another, and 43,000 are currently active. While numerous petitions have failed, Starbucks employees have claimed victory for several notable changes, ranging from a six-week wage-paid store closure during the pandemic to extended paid parental leave to needle disposal boxes in the bathrooms.
Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges denies that Starbucks based any of its policy changes on petitions from colleagues. He says the company gets feedback from employees through a number of channels, including weekly meetings, surveys, a hotline and a social media platform for managers. “Of course they said they were already considering it, and it had nothing to do with my petition,” Williams said. “But I’m like ‘sure.'”
It comes as no surprise to Casey Moore, a barista in Buffalo, New York who has worked with both the unions and Coworker, that Starbucks employees have made changes. “They are known for hiring LGBTQ people and those who see themselves as activists outside of the workplace,” she says. “We also want to have a say in the places where we work.”
Even if they don’t lead to tangible change, petitions from colleagues can raise awareness. In 2016, Starbucks employees noticed their hours were being reduced and their stores were understaffed. The timing couldn’t have been worse; Summer was coming, and with it the unquenchable thirst for complicated Frappuccino drinks. A California barista named Jaime Prater wrote a letter to CEO Howard Schultz about the matter and published a petition about colleague titled “Starbucks, Lack of Labor is Killing Morale.” A colleague conducted a poll for baristas on his platform and found that the labor shortage was a consistent experience.
Shortly after installing his screed, Prater received a call from Schultz himself. “It was exciting,” Prater says. He thought, “If the CEO of this company calls me, Mr. Nobody, action will be taken. But it didn’t.” Prater says Schultz kindly listened to his concerns and then referred him to Cliff Burrows, president of Starbucks’ Americas Operations. The company returned Prater’s wages for a promotion he allegedly got, but never resolved the staff shortage, he says. “It was as if the messenger was silent and dropped the message.”
The petition will remain live on Coworker, where 25,000 signatures have been collected, 17,000 of which are from Starbucks employees. It continues to collect signatures to this day. Some workers cite staff shortages as motivation for unions.
Borges disputes that Starbucks was understaffed in stores and attributed the alleged shortage to seasonal fluctuations, though Prater published his petition well before Starbucks normally cuts its workforce in late summer. Borges says store managers can shut down different ordering channels, such as mobile orders, in the event of staff shortages.
While Prater’s campaign was unsuccessful, it helped bring more attention to Coworker and expand its network of baristas — more than 10,000 self-proclaimed Starbucks employees signed the petition in just under six weeks. Prater appeared on news channels such as CNN and gained fame among Starbucks employees. Through the connections he built, he crowdsourced a document outlining key employee concerns and their impact on shareholders, employees and customers and delivered it to the company. Despite leaving the company in 2018, he still receives emails about Starbucks almost weekly.
