In 2024, University of Washington student, Labor Studies Minor, and activist Vanessa Alvarez participated in the Harry Bridges Center's Building a Movement Internship.
As an intern with Workers United, the fast growing union of workers at the coffee giant Starbucks in the United States, Alvarez had the opportunity to interview Anotonio Paez, a 16-year barista in Santiago and union leader in Chile, where Starbucks workers have been organizing for over a decade.
As of 2025, there are 175 Starbucks stores in Chile that are operated by the Mexican-based restaurant conglomerate Alsea Cono Sur. Similar to the U.S, Starbucks in Chile has also sparked a union fire in workers. Baristas in Santiago formed their first union in 2009, and the baristas of Sindicato de Starbucks Coffee Chile (Sindicato SBK) are still going strong today.
Alvarez's interview with Antonio Paez, translated from Spanish and edited for length, was recently published by Labor Notes. The full, unedited interview appears below.
History of the Union and 2022 Contract
When did the union start? Why did baristas in Chile begin organizing?
The union was created in 2009, as a result of various concerns that workers had at that time, especially because of the economic crisis that had occurred in the United States. It was not clear how it was going to impact Chile. We noticed that stores were closing [in the U.S] and we didn’t know what could happen here. Those concerns pushed the initial group [in Santiago] to form the union and in 2010 the first negotiation took place.
When we started negotiating with them, it was immediately shown that they were a very anti-union company. We thought: "Oh, Starbucks is a progressive company, they will negotiate with us… they will not give us so many problems.” But in reality, when we started negotiating with them, it was immediately shown that they were a very anti-union company. That caused a shock to all the workers, but they did not want to risk their jobs just to be part of the union. The anti-union practices caused the workers to feel demoralized and many people left. But the events in 2011 did not stop us. A negotiation was carried out, though it did not have any favorable results for us as workers. Starbucks at that time was controlled by the corporation in the United States. They stated directly that they were not going to negotiate with unions, that they did not negotiate with unions and that, therefore, no matter how much we asked, how many we were, they did not care at all, they were not going to give in.
It was a rather traumatic experience that caused the union to go from 51% representation to less than 10%. Then, there were two unsuccessful processes of negotiation again in 2013 (when Starbucks locations in Chile were bought out by Alsea Cono Sur) and 2015 that also ended in failure. In 2015, we managed to sign a sort of agreement with the company to stop repeating the strike processes every 18 months. The company would have to recognize that the union existed, and in 2019 we were supposed to negotiate collectively. We stopped having any relationship with Starbucks in the United States, and between 2015 and 2019 we began the process of reorganizing the union. At the end of 2015, 70 baristas were represented by the union. At the beginning of 2019, however, the numbers increased to 200. This was also important for us because we managed to rebuild some of the representation we used to have, but the previous anti-union practices were hard to recover from.
In 2019, we were able to negotiate some things, but in 2020, during the pandemic, the company decided to take advantage of a law passed by the Chilean government that was originally intended for small businesses, but Starbucks quickly made use of it. This law means all workers would immediately stop working at Starbucks and that our salaries would be paid through unemployment insurance, which is comprised of savings that workers make and is supposed to be for periods of unemployment. But Starbucks used it so that we would have to pay our own salaries for the first three months and that amount then decreased as the months went by, until we ended up receiving about 30% of the original salary that we received for working at Starbucks. This caused massive indignation among the workers, which led to the vast majority of them joining a union. We went from being approximately 270 in February 2020, to being more or less 1,100 in April of 2020.
Throughout the outbreak of COVID-19, we sued Starbucks to pay our wages. I think the pandemic was critical because baristas were fed up with being sent home with the insurance wages. Fighting against unfair labor practices during an uneasy period generated a lot of prestige for the organization. Workers caused real change and we saw how unions work to defend us. It truly changed their lives.In fact, the campaign slogan was “Starbucks, pay me!” Online meetings and social media were utilized heavily. We also associated with organizations that were talking about the problems of COVID, and we took their feedback about any safety concerns for service workers. We helped show the public how serious this was and we did Instagram Lives at least once a week with various organizations that were following up on COVID traceability, among other things. Those livestreams were watched by no less than 400-500 people, which is a lot for Chile. Finally, through a court settlement, we managed to get them to pay us about six months of back pay, which was a huge victory for the union.
What also helped was that our assemblies became quarterly events with an emphasis on everyone being able to give their opinion. That has been very important because it allowed us to legitimize our organization. There was a time when the company was carrying out a dirty campaign against us saying that we were spending money and going on trips, which was never the case. We never left the country during that period, but they insisted that we were spending the money from the workers' contributions on sneakers, cell phones, things like that. This is false, and our democratic process was helpful in fighting back, especially at a complex time. Assemblies allow baristas to express their concerns about their workplaces. For example, working mothers can organize a fight for proper working conditions if they are pregnant.
Now it is 2024 and we have resumed collective bargaining. We have already managed to negotiate some favorable points for the workers and we hope that next year [2025] we can also negotiate again with Starbucks.
What were the things that you managed to negotiate in 2022?
Notably, we achieved a salary increase of about 12%, which was de-indexed in our salary. In Chile, the national minimum wage goes up, more or less once a year. The problem we had with Starbucks is that every time we negotiated a salary increase, that salary increase was eaten up by the minimum wage; that is, it was lost when the minimum wage went up because it was calculated on the new salary. So, what we managed to do now is that when the base salary of the worker goes up, the salary negotiated with the union is also increased. So that represents a certain stability in terms of salary increases. We also negotiated an extra incentive for meals and transportation.
There are other things. For example, there are paid permits from Starbucks (Alsea) to go to meetings, which is mandatory in Chile, but many companies manage to get away with ignoring this fact. Usually, the company assigns you fewer hours of a work shift than you are going to use as a permit, and those hours that are left over are distributed to you throughout the rest of the week. Instead of taking a normal shift, they give you a smaller shift. We regulate that and now it has to be an 8 to 10 hour shift. Another thing that we also regulate is the hours of rest between shifts, which means you cannot work a new shift in a range of less than 10 hours, which also includes 1 hour of transportation, 8 hours of rest, and 1 hour of transportation.
Present Day and Union Strategies
What contributed to your union’s growth despite the fluctuations in all these years?
I have a hypothesis that could be interesting and that has to do with the student movement. In Chile, there is a very organized student movement with a tradition of organizing mobilization assemblies. In fact, in 2011, during our union’s first negotiation, there was a huge student mobilization, which for me made organizing familiar to student employees that attend state colleges. So, I think that these two factors came together to favor the issue of unionization in addition to the first round of negotiations in 2011.
I think it would be very similar for the stores here, especially in Seattle, where there are two very large universities and there are many people who work at Starbucks, but they are also students and the conditions are simply unacceptable.
Of course. However, we have encountered difficulty expanding the union to other parts of Chile. Starbucks has more resources than we do, so there are locations outside Santiago that aren't organized yet. There are quite a lot of stores in my city, and considering the size of the country, there are 17 million inhabitants and basically there are nine regional capitals where it is viable to open a business like Starbucks. The rest are very small towns or cities. In Santiago there are more than 100 stores. Some regions of the city might have a few locations. In my region, in Valparaíso, there are seven Starbucks. Our union has fortunately managed to position ourselves in the important regions. We are also strategically able to organize in regions where Starbucks has been opening new stores where current union members are hired in those locations. That way, stores are immediately unionized. I’m glad to say that today we have about 98% of workers from all the stores with union members affiliated with us.
What is the process to join the union? And how do you convince your coworkers of the benefits of joining the union?
Simply put, a worker must fill out an individual form, which means any barista can join instead of whole stores. There are also anti-union practices that cause a worker to leave the union when the manager slanders the organization. Also, unionized workers can disaffiliate from the union at any time. As for convincing other baristas, we focus on talking to workers about their concerns. For example, with recent sympathies to Palestine, we consider it important to raise flags at stores in solidarity of the Palestinian people, and many workers agree with the union. We are also deeply tied with the feminist movement. Groups of women in the union have their own space for organization, who are obviously financed by the union. They hold meetings, meetups, and other events. The union is dedicated to improving working conditions, but it is also a space for workers to engage in community social justice.
What impact does being a part of the union have on your coworkers?
It really strikes me that even after unionized baristas stop working at Starbucks, they don’t forget the importance of organized labor. Workers affiliated with a union at Starbucks understand that above all unions are important, they have the right to organize, and they are capable of doing that everywhere they work. Organizing workers so they stay passionate for the rest of their lives is the real win we strive for.
That’s an incredible mindset, and I’m really inspired to hear it. I’m curious about your union’s strategy. What’s your process?
We have done strikes, like in the United States, I believe. In Chile, you can only strike during a collective bargaining period. The entire strike process outside of that process is considered illegal and is penalized by law, and is grounds for direct dismissal. So, in general, we can only strike during collective bargaining, since these are the special negotiation periods that we have. When we have been on strike we have made pickets, many pickets outside the doors of the premises to prevent customers from entering, even having to prevent customers from coming in to avoid people crossing the picket line. There are other opportunities where we have made “boycotts” within the premises themselves. We have spoken with workers who for various reasons could not join the strike, but they help us by slowing down work. We have marched, we have asked for support from other organizations, as I said, we have done a bit of everything.
But yes, pickets are very useful. In stores that require more strategic action, pickets are what has given us the most strength when carrying out the mobilizations. For example, in Bandera, which is a fancier location, it was particularly moving. We gathered a lot of people there and we managed to get the store closed because there were too many people outside protesting, making noise. Now, what impact does that have on the structural level of the company? It is very marginal because in Santiago there are more than 100 stores. But it still makes an impact with the workers.
Was there ever any retaliation from Starbucks Chile to your union’s organizing?
In Chile, labor regulations are defined in the labor code, which defines around 20 or 30 anti-union practices. Starbucks violated all the regulations that are in the labor code. All of them without exception. They range from threatening workers to leave the union, financing groups within the union to break up the union, interfering in the union’s communication, infiltrating the union, and even managing to fire people. I was actually fired at one point. Firing workers, offering money to workers to leave, ignoring the union, sitting down to negotiate in bad faith, that is, without any kind of proposal or willingness to actually want to negotiate. There are so many violations that I can’t even remember them off the top of my head.
Yes, it sounds like classic anti-union practices, such as making false promises to partners (what Starbucks calls its employees)!
Yes, it was exactly the same here! Many people were promised promotions, they were promised pay raises, but none of that was fulfilled. However, most of those practices worked, I mean, they had an effect and many people in the union stopped belonging to the union. We were pushed down, but we ultimately got through it together and prevailed. Setbacks always occur, and most of the workers at that time were in the union from 6 months to a year because they would resign from the company and we had to start all over again. Turnover within the union has been a problem for many years, but we resist it.
Have there been any attempts to connect Starbucks Chile customers to your union’s movement?
Fortunately, there is no law that prohibits or limits it. However, it’s difficult to find solidarity from customers at this moment. It has never been easy for us to talk to clients. One time, we tried approaching them with an over-consumption angle. We have also tried creating sympathy for fired workers. The latter was more effective. In fact, I think the most successful campaign we had in this regard was one at the Santiago airport. There was a store that was outdoors, it was on the street outside the airport and the workers were exposed to very low temperatures and the store was not closed, that is, the counter was completely exposed. There we managed to carry out a campaign to denounce this situation and airport workers, pilots, flight attendants, cleaning workers, who are not necessarily just customers, began to record videos in support of the Starbucks workers who were denouncing the situation and all that. That was good.
How did you organize baristas in airport locations?
Well, there is a specific strategy for this. Say that you are in need of organizing your workplace. What we are trying to do is to get the rest of the workers to mobilize in solidarity with you. So we collectivize a problem that, for the company, is an individual problem.
In terms of organizing an airport: your union needs to make the collective efforts meaningful. In other words, to find out what makes sense as airport baristas. It's not just about appealing to a moral issue or whether it's good or bad to be unionized, but rather, how the union helps them achieve goals long-term. So, I'll give you another example: if there are many people of sexual diversity, they need a union that will properly defend their identity. If there is a male or female colleague in that place who is sensitive to the issue of Palestine, they should see that the union stands in solidarity with Palestinians. If workers care about the environment, the union should look for how to promote campaigns that strengthen a decrease in carbon emissions. It makes sense for people to say, "My union represents me and cultivates my community.”
That’s profoundly inspirational. Now that you have explained these strategies and ideologies, I’m curious to know, what are the union's goals in Chile going forward?
We have several goals, but probably the most important one right now is to be able to negotiate a better collective contract than the one we won last year [2022] because the salary scale in Chile is very low compared to other countries. Also in the fast food sector, Starbucks in Chile pays the minimum wage, which is very low and does not allow a family, for example, to get out of the poverty line. There is also the subject of trans workers’ rights, because here in Chile it is very difficult for trans people to work, and even within Starbucks they suffer various types of discrimination. We also tackle the subject of trying to generate gender equality policies, such as parental rights, which today the law only requires in the case of the mother, and extending the parental leave that we already obtained last time for fathers to more than a month. The idea would be to extend it perhaps for two to three months paid by the company, among other economic things that are also relevant.
This has been an amazing discussion! Thank you for all of this. Is there anything you’d like to say to fellow baristas in the United States?
Good luck and never stop fighting. Here in Chile, we are obviously always willing to support you, so count on us for that.