This fight isn’t just about coffee

 - by Zakk Flash
   OpEd

As of December 17th, 2025, more than 3,800 Starbucks baristas are now on strike in the longest national work stoppage in the company’s history. Workers across more than 130 cities have walked out to demand fair pay, stable hours, and real democracy at work.

Starbucks has been found guilty of hundreds of labor law violations, yet the corporate suite has decided to stall while baristas struggle to make ends meet.

The company’s answer to this public relations fiasco? A billion-dollar store makeover program. An $80 million party for store managers in Las Vegas. They have money for everything but the people who make the coffee.

And really, this fight isn’t just about coffee — it’s about who holds power in our economy, and whether working people get a say on the job.

Howard Zinn taught us: you can’t be neutral on a moving train. It’s easy to see why baristas at Starbucks have been organizing in the first place: illegal store closures; workplaces that are alternately dictatorial or abandoned by management; constant surveillance and terminations without cause. Baristas are overworked and underpaid – and coming to work sick, because they are often uninsured.

It takes courage and strength to work for a multinational corporation at war with its own employees. Fact is, folks know things don’t have to be this way. Instead of being told to “quit, find a better job if you don’t like it,” they have the fortitude to stay and force the company to make this job a better job — not just for themselves, but for everyone who takes the job next.

Do you already make your own at home, or drink locally brewed coffee? I hear you. Gray Owl Coffee [Norman, OK] is a locally owned worker cooperative that gives voice to its member-owners. If I go out for chai, I spend my money there, making the most significant investment in Norman’s Java infrastructure. Otherwise, with a house full of kids, I’m drinking ‘the best part of waking up’ and going to work.

By now, though, you know that this isn’t a struggle over coffee. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol makes $50,000 an hour while baristas are struggling to pay their rent and get the hours they need to qualify for health insurance. In 2024, Brian Niccol was paid $96 million for just 120 days of work — that’s 6,666 times what the average barista made.

This fight, like most David-and-Goliath struggles in the labor movement, is about whether a wealthy corporation can starve working people into giving up their rights.

Working people are fighting back—and winning all the time. Amazon Teamsters organize more of the logistics giant’s hubs each day; SBWorkersUnited baristas reach more workers and stores; ILA Longshoremen beat back job-killing automation schemes on the coast; and nurses with National Nurses United use power across the Deep South to secure safer nurse-patient ratios.

I’m a fourth-generation Oklahoman and a third-generation member of the labor movement. I’m a proud second-generation Teamster. I’ve worked to raise seven children in Norman, and I’ve had the opportunity to foster kids. I see the struggle that working people in our state face with stacks of bills, inflated grocery costs, and dead-end prospects.

And I am not neutral.

I stand with the working people who drive our economy and make this a decent place to live—not the fast-food magnates who extract hoards of cash from our communities to send to Wall Street shareholders. I stand with the working people who are willing to put it all on the line, the picket line—and not with treacherous scabs who would cross it to take bread from the mouths of hungry children while their parents fight for their future.

I stand with working people — not union-busting rats like Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol.

Which side are you on?

Zakk Flash lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

The Gayly online. 01/12/26 @ 4:54 p.m. CST.