Starbucks baristas walked off the job in major cities in Massachusetts, Texas and Oregon on Monday, expanding the dayslong holiday strike to 12 cities nationwide, according to the union Starbucks Workers United.
Workers went out on strike in Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, joining baristas in cities spanning from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.
Striking baristas brought business to a halt in almost 50 stores nationwide on Sunday across multiple cities, Workers United said.
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“The holiday season should be magical at Starbucks, but for too many of us, there’s a darker side to the peppermint mochas and gingerbread lattes,”Arloa Fluhr, a longtime Starbucks employee in Illinois, said in a statement to ABC News.
Fluhr, a mother of three, struggles to support her family with the wages received from Starbucks, she said. “That’s why we’re steadfast in our demands for Starbucks to invest in baristas like me,” she added.