Starbucks strike escalates a fifth and final time, reaching 300 stores as company’s stock wraps up a dismal year
A union representing Starbucks workers said its members at over 300 stores will walk out on Christmas Eve after the company failed to budge on their contract demands.
Tuesday marks the fifth and final day of an escalating strike that began Wednesday with 10 stores, and has now reached over 300 locations and 5,000 workers. Starbucks and the union, Workers United, were supposed to reach a contract by the end of the year but have hit an impasse over pay increases.
While the strike is hitting Starbucks during a season of high sales, 300 stores represents fewer than 2% of its 18,400 locations in the US. That said, Starbucks has had a rough year, and missing analyst expectations by 1% to 3% can be enough to trigger a sell-off.
The company has been plagued with declining sales and rising costs of coffee beans. It poached a new CEO, Brian Niccol, from Chipotle earlier this year. Investors got giddy on that news, adding over $20 billion in market cap to the coffee giant.
But Niccol has yet to drastically change Starbucks’ fortunes, and investors have erased about half the gains from when his appointment was announced.
