In Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood on Tuesday, the sound of holiday songs filled the air outside the closed Starbucks at Forbes Avenue and Atwood Street. But the carolers weren’t fueled by holiday cheer.

They were actually striking baristas from various stores in the Pittsburgh area demanding a union contract alongside their brethren across the country.

Singing to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” the carolers changed the lyrics to “we won’t go until we get one.”

Striker Allee Peters, a shift supervisor at the Shadyside location on Penn Circle South, said she was fighting for higher wages, guaranteed hours, fair scheduling, better health care and bigger raises.

“We’ve experienced a lot of understaffing through the years,” Peters, 23, of Braddock said. “That’s been something that’s kind of driven our campaign.”

Peters was among roughly 200 Starbucks employees at 10 coffeehouses in the Pittsburgh area who walked out for the day as part of a national strike effort by unionized workers.

She said Starbucks needs to ensure its employees are making a living wage and change how it handles scheduling, which she says is capricious and up to the whims of the bosses. Peters said some colleagues have not been scheduled despite being available to work, making it difficult for them to earn enough money to pay bills.

Starbucks workers are on strike here at the intersection of Forbes Avenue and Atwood Street in Oakland.

Pittsburgh is one of many cities where workers are striking before Christmas. Stay tuned for more live coverage @TribLIVE ☕️ pic.twitter.com/mQX2bBhuiG

— Megan Swift (@mgswift7) December 24, 2024

Supporting the workers through their strike Tuesday was coffee from Starbucks’ main competitor — Dunkin’ — and other local coffee shops that organizers brought, according to Peters.

“We all need our caffeine still,” she said, laughing.

Strikers last Friday shut down stores in Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago, and the effort has grown to affect more than 300 locations in what Tori Tambellini, a field organizer with the Starbucks Workers United international labor union, called a “crescendo strike.”

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Workers at some Pittsburgh-area stores joined the walkout on Saturday. But on Christmas Eve — the fifth and final day of the national strike — the job action spread to all unionized workers at Starbucks locations in the Pittsburgh area, according to Tambellini.

Tambellini said the striking workers came from various locations, including stores in Bloomfield, the South Side, Robinson and South Hills Village.

Those stores, according to Tambellini, were forced to shut for the day. TribLive could not independently confirm whether all the stores closed.

Starbucks media representatives did not return messages left Tuesday by TribLive.

Safety concerns

The union represents Starbucks employees at over 500 company-owned stores across the country, which is about 5% of the U.S. total, according to the New York Times.

Workers United called the strike because Starbucks had yet to resolve more than 150 unfair labor practice charges on issues such as retaliatory firings and cuts to hours, and because Starbucks had not offered a substantial wage increase during contract negotiations, the Times reported.

In the most recent bargaining session last week, the company offered the union a guaranteed wage increase of at least 1.5% for baristas, according to the Times.

In Pittsburgh, the average Starbucks barista makes about $14.17 an hour, less than the national average wage for Starbucks baristas of approximately $15.50 an hour, according to Indeed.com.

Starbucks locations in Pittsburgh were previously on strike in July 2o23 as part of the union’s 13-city national bus tour protesting stalled contract negotiations and allegations of union busting.

That followed a June 30, 2023, National Labor Relations Board ruling that found that Starbucks had illegally fired four workers in Pittsburgh who supported joining a union. The board ordered their reinstatement.

One of those workers was Tambellini, 25, of Bloomfield, who worked at Starbucks for four years before she said she was illegally fired.

Harper Blackstock has been working at Starbucks for a little over two years in various locations around Pittsburgh. She’s a shift supervisor at the shop on 6th Street Downtown. She said she wants her company to address safety issues.

“Some of the things that we’ve been proposing in our contracts for ages (are) more rules and policies surrounding ways to deal with safety concerns and unsafe situations,” Blackstock, 23, of Brookline said.

Drug users have overdosed in the shop’s restroom, she said.

Blackstock said workers at her store joined the picket line, where a guitarist accompanied the group’s chants, songs and holiday-themed strike signs. Passing cars honked in support.

“Pittsburgh’s a union town,” Blackstock said.

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On Thursday, Pittsburgh-area Starbucks locations are expected to resume business as usual.

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