Abi Scheppmann remembers the first Red Cup Day she worked at a Starbucks six years ago.
“It was crazy,” she said.
Red Cup Day is one of Starbucks’ biggest annual events. The company gives out free reusable plastic red cups to customers, if they buy a holiday-themed beverage. The cups feature that year’s holiday season design. Thursday was Red Cup Day 2024.
“Starbucks has plenty of customers who go wild for these cups,” Scheppmann said, standing outside the downtown Iowa City Starbucks on Clinton Street on Thursday morning. She wasn’t there to get a red cup or to hand one out. Scheppmann and a half-dozen of her coworkers, all members of Starbucks Workers United, were on a picket line, protesting Starbucks’ unfair labor practices.
Starbucks Workers United, a union affiliated with SEIU that formed in 2021, held a nationwide day of protest and picket lines on Thursday, calling it the Red Cup Rebellion. Since a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, became the first store who workers voted to join the union in December 2021, another 321 stores nationwide have unionized. When the workers at the Clinton Street Starbucks voted in May to join Starbucks Workers United, it became the first, and so far only, unionized Starbucks in Iowa.
Scheppmann, who has worked at the downtown location for two years, and other Starbucks before that, was one of the leaders of the unionizing effort in Iowa City.
Starbucks has earned a reputation as a fiercely anti-union company willing to stretch the law, and to violate it, in its attempt to stop workers from unionizing. Federal regulators have repeatedly cited the company for its activities. Most recently, an administrative law judge at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found the company had broken the law by discriminating against union members when giving raises or benefit increases. That ruling came six months after another NLRB judge found the company was illegally interfering with unionizing activities, including firing workers who unionize.
There are over 70 complaints of unfair labor practices by Starbucks still pending before the NLRB. Since the unionization effort began, NLRB administrative law judges and federal district court judges have ruled 38 times that Starbucks has acted illegally.
Locally, the company has been dragging its feet in dealing with the Iowa City workers.
“We’re still waiting on our contract,” Scheppmann said.
But the Iowa City workers have had some success in getting the company to make changes. On the first day of classes at the University of Iowa in August, the Clinton Street workers walked out and picketed to protest a manager who they said had been harassing them. The manager was removed.
Scheppmann described that change as “a small win.”
“That’s one of the great things about unionizing, being able to make a change like that, because we went on strike and showed a united front,” she said. “And showed that we had Starbucks Workers United behind us, which was really cool.”
The store closed that day because of the strike, and it was closed on Thursday as well because the workers were on the picket line.
Thursday was chosen by Starbucks Workers United as a day for labor action nationwide, not only because Red Cup Day is one of the company’s highest-profile marketing events, but also because the way Starbucks treats its workers during special promotions is a major point of contention between the union and the company.
Starbucks Workers United says the company deliberately fails to adjust its work schedules on promotional days to ensure there are enough baristas in place to handle the surge of customers, or properly compensate workers for the heightened stress the days create. A Starbucks spokesperson rejected the union’s claims, saying the company makes adequate staff available on promotional days. The staffing issue is the subject of one of the unfair labor practice complaints currently pending before NLRB.
The workers on the picket line said their experience of Red Cup Days matches the union’s characterization of understaffed and over-stressed, and not the corporate claim that all is well.
‘They’re coming after this movement that is way bigger than us’
The Iowa City union members were unexpectedly thrust into the national spotlight when a tweet of their union X page played a central role in a lawsuit Starbucks filed against the national union.
On Oct. 9, two days after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters on Israeli communities near the Gaza border and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise to exact an “unprecedented price” in response, with President Biden’s unequivocal support, the Iowa City Starbucks Workers United account quote-tweeted a post from the Des Moines chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America about a protest scheduled the next day.
“The Israeli apartheid regime has just begun its onslaught against Gaza,” the DSA tweet said, above an image of a flyer for the protest. “Join us tomorrow at 6:30 PM, at Cowles Commons, to stand for a just peace and demand an end to US support for Israeli apartheid.”
DES MOINES, IOWA. Tues 10/10, 6:30pm. https://t.co/tviAyOIP2s
— Iowa City Starbucks Workers United (@IowaCitySBWU) October 9, 2023
The only thing the Iowa City Starbucks Workers United account added was a repetition of the time and location of the protest. There were no other tweets related to this protest announcement.
On Oct. 18, Starbucks sued Starbucks Workers United — the national union — for trademark infringement, citing that tweet as an example of how the union’s actions are damaging the company’s reputation. The company claims the Oct. 9 Iowa City tweet was an example of the union’s “reckless and reprehensible behavior.” By making the tweet a central feature of its lawsuit, Starbucks was able to file its lawsuit in federal court in Davenport, even though Starbucks Workers United is headquartered in Philadelphia.
Starbucks wants the court to order the union to remove “Starbucks” from its name, and stop using a logo featuring a green circle, which it claims is too similar to the company’s trademarked logo.
Starbucks first made its demand for the union to change its name and green circles using the tweet as an example of objectionable behavior in a Oct. 13 letter to the union’s national leadership in Philadelphia.
“Starbucks is seeking to exploit the ongoing tragedy in the Middle East to bolster the company’s anti-union campaign,” Starbucks Workers United President Lynne Fox said in her response to the company.
There is a long history of unions using the name of a company whose workers they are organizing and using imagery similar to corporate logos, and well-established legal precedence supporting the practices. In response to the lawsuit, the union filed a petition in federal court in Pennsylvania seeking a declaratory judgment that it is not violating any trademarks.
Scheppmann said she and her fellow workers were surprised that their social media post was being used as the basis for a lawsuit.
“It was pretty shocking at first. Then it kind of set in that this was against the union, and they weren’t really coming after us. They’re coming after this movement that is way bigger than us, so it’s not like we’re alone in this. The union is handling the lawsuit.”
“It just made it that much more clear that we need to come together at this point, and that unionizing is something that will protect us when we do decide to stand up for what we think is right,” she said.
