Starbucks Union to greet its new CEO Laxman Narasimhan with 100-cafe strike

Unionised Starbucks baristas plan to welcome their new chief executive officer with strikes at about 100 cafes on Wednesday, demanding that the company drop its alleged anti-union coercion.

The work stoppage comes one day before Starbucks’s annual shareholder meeting, the first for new CEO Laxman Narasimhan, who officially took the reins from Howard Schultz this week.

The work stoppage, which organisers said will involve stores in more than 40 US cities, is the union Starbucks Workers United’s latest effort to force a pivot by the coffee giant. Since scoring an initial landmark victory 15 months ago in Buffalo, New York, the union has prevailed in elections at around 290 of the company’s roughly 9,000 corporate-owned US cafes.

But the pace of new unionisation petitions has slowed down, as workers allege the company has been retaliating in stores and stonewalling them at the bargaining table. The company has said repeatedly that all claims of anti-union activity there are “categorically false.”