Starbucks workers across the country are walking off the job Thursday in protest of staffing, scheduling and mobile ordering – and at least three locations in the Twin Cities are among those whose workers are speaking out.

The protest comes on Starbucks’ Red Cup Day, one of the company’s busiest days of the year.

Locations included in the strike are the stores on the 3700 block of Silver Lake Road in St. Anthony, 300 block of Snelling Avenue in St. Paul as well as the one located on the 4700 block of Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis.

Baristas say promotion days such as Red Cup Day prompt droves of customers to stores, but they say there’s no additional staffing to help with the influx in orders.

According to baristas, lines on those days – including Thursday’s Red Cup Day – will be out the door and drink orders will pile up.

“This algorithm is built to keep us working at these slimmest staffing possible so they can have the highest profit margins,” said Lola Rubens, a worker at the St. Paul Starbucks location affected by the strike. “I would just like (the algorithm) to see it altered so it is not calculating for skeleton crews, it is calculating for staffing that improves both partner experience, behind the bar, and also less wait times for customers, better customer interactions.”

In a handful of unfair labor practice charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board, workers say Starbucks is refusing to bargain around promo days. With workers demanding the company to turn off mobile ordering on all future promo days to help lighten the workload, now, at least 363 Starbucks stores in 41 states have voted to unionize since 2021.

“It’s about solidarity for workers across the country. St. Paul is a big union town and at the end of the day, these workers want to be represented and Starbucks should do the right thing, come to the table and support them,” said tom Erickson, the President of Teamsters Local 120.

However, the company has said it opposes the unionization effort and has yet to reach a labor agreement with any of the stores that have unionized, saying the union isn’t scheduling bargaining sessions.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reached out to Starbucks for comment and was provided with the following statement:

“We are aware that Workers United has publicized a day of action at a small subset of our U.S. stores today. We remain committed to working with all partners, side-by-side, to elevate the everyday, and we hope that Workers United’s priorities will shift to include the shared success of our partners and working to negotiate contracts for those they represent.

Starbucks has a long history of surprising and delighting our customers with periodic offers and promotions such as Double Star Days, Thurs-yays, and Red Cup Day.

We understand that these promotional days may change store patterns and traffic, and that’s why our retail leaders have the flexibility to build and adjust staffing schedules to reflect the unique and dynamic needs of each store – balancing store resources and expected customer demand to ensure partners (employees) are on the floor when they’re needed most. Notably, our store schedules are created three weeks in advance with our partners availability and preferences at the forefront and our stores are often provided additional labor hours to augment staffing in support of planned promotional days.

Starbucks is dedicated to partner-centric scheduling and providing partners with hours that alight with their individual needs and preferences is a top priority. This is reflected in Starbucks commitment to diligently create work schedules that carefully balance the availability of our partners with the staffing needs of individual stores. To achieve this, Starbucks collects a range of preferred, minimum, and maximum hours to build a complete picture of partner preferences and assist store managers in scheduling and managing their workforce. This improved scheduling protocol will enable partners to contribute to the personalization of their ideal schedules. Together, these efforts will help Starbucks improve the stability, flexibility, and consistency of schedules.

We call on Workers United to respond to our invitations to bargain contracts for the stores they represent – Workers United hasn’t agreed to meet to progress contract bargaining in more than five months.”

Starbucks