Where Are All the British Coffee Unions?
While a wave of coffee unionising washes over the United States, across the pond there’s barely a ripple. Why is that?
I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to call the unionisation drive at Starbucks monumental. The movement—which began at a single store in Buffalo, New York, in December 2021—inspired not only other Starbucks employees but coffee workers around the United States to organise their workplaces and fight for fair wages and better treatment.
In the nearly three years since, workers at hundreds of Starbucks locations as well as dozens of independent coffee companies have unionised, including at top specialty brands like Intelligentsia and Blue Bottle. Battling union-busting bosses, high-priced “union avoidance” law firms, and right-wing pressure groups, these workers have secured victory after victory—and their success hasn’t gone unnoticed across the Atlantic.
In 2022, Unite Hospitality joined forces with the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers union, Organise Now!, Strike Map U.K., and Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project to launch Baristas United. The campaign explicitly targeted “the big four” U.K. coffee chains—Costa, Starbucks, Caffè Nero, and Pret A Manger—as well as smaller brands such as Black Sheep Coffee.
Baristas United was inspired by Starbucks Workers United, and to coincide with the first Red Cup Rebellion strike action in November 2022, it held rallies in 51 towns and cities across the U.K. and Ireland, during which campaigners distributed leaflets and spoke with workers.
But while organisers hoped that this would be the start of a nationwide movement to unionise the U.K.’s more than 20,000 chain and independent coffee shops, the outcome has been notably muted. If baristas across the pond are making hard-fought inroads and unionising successfully, why hasn’t the same been true here?
Rise and Fall
Labour unions have a long history in the United Kingdom, stretching back to the Industrial Revolution during the 18th century. As labourers moved from farming the land into cities and factories, they often endured terrible conditions and exploitation. Organising was a way for workers to protect themselves and each other. By the 1870s and 1880s, workers in key industries—including “gas workers, dockers, railwaymen, farm workers, builders, [and] labourers”—had unionised, and wielded significant political power.
Union membership grew over the course of the 20th century to a peak of more than 13 million in the late ’70s—more than half of all workers—only to fall steadily in the decades since. Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in 1979—she blamed the strike action of the so-called ‘Winter of Discontent’ on the Labour Party, and won the general election in a landslide. Her government, and those following, were responsible for a precipitous fall in union membership and reprisals against strike action.
“The five employment acts and one trade union act introduced by the Thatcher and John Major Conservative governments of 1979 to 1997 severely reduced the powers of trade unionism in Britain”, wrote Keith Laybourn, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Huddersfield, in an article in The Conversation. “They restricted the right to picket and prevented unions bringing their members out in support of other unions. They also required ballots for strike action (later enhanced to require 50% of members to vote), the failure of which would invoke a fine and seizure of assets”.
Today, six million people in the U.K. are union members, less than a quarter of all workers, and they are primarily concentrated in the public sector. Hospitality, of which coffee is part, is one of the least-unionised private-sector industries, with just 3.4% of workers belonging to a union in 2021 compared to nearly 15% in manufacturing and more than 30% in transportation.
Multiple studies have shown that hospitality is one of the most difficult sectors to organise for a number of reasons, including seasonality and insecurity of employment, high turnover, and a prevalence of younger and immigrant workers. Hospitality workers, one study noted, “are part of the ‘rough end’ of the labour market, where pay is low, employment insecure and employers have the whip hand”.
Underpaid, Overworked
Although those characterisations relate to the wider hospitality sector, they also perfectly describe the U.K.’s coffee industry. Baristas in Britain suffer from similar working conditions as their American colleagues—relatively low pay, unsafe environments, and precarious contracts. “The time is long overdue for companies like Starbucks to recognise a trade union and negotiate a fair deal with its workers that will see baristas receive better pay and conditions, and help them through these tough times and beyond”, Jeremy Corbyn told Huck Magazine at one of the Baristas United rallies.
“The coffee industry specifically faces the same barriers to unionisation as many other low-paid industries, both within and outside hospitality”, says Peter Whittle, a barista and certified rep for United Voices of the World. “Insecurity in employment makes unionising a more daunting prospect for workers, and high turnover makes organising a workforce more challenging—but not impossible”.
The coffee industry in the U.K. employs around 200,000 people, but despite their economic importance—coffee added £3.7 billion to the U.K.’s GDP in 2017 (the most recent year of data available)—workers are often underpaid and in precarious employment. Baristas earn an average of just £22,000 ($28,000) per year compared to the countrywide average of £35,000 ($45,000), while notoriously insecure zero-hours contracts, which fail to guarantee workers a set number of hours, are common.
“We surveyed our existing members in coffee, and their main issues were unsurprising: low pay, insecure contracts, and understaffing”, says Bryan Simpson, Unite’s national organiser for hospitality. And this doesn’t just apply to baristas—Simpson says that the cafe managers Unite represents are also overworked and missing out on overtime. “We’ve had an issue with middle managers being paid, in some cases, less than the minimum wage. [They are] contracted to do 45 hours a week and they’re doing 60—they’re doing 10, 15 hours a week unpaid overtime”.
Unite Hospitality is working to address these issues. But Simpson tells me that British workers face a huge hurdle that doesn’t exist in the U.S.
‘Ten to 15 Years Behind’
While Starbucks Workers United has been able to organise on an individual store level, filing for and holding hundreds of elections at locations around the United States, U.K. law prevents organisers here from doing the same.
“It’s important that baristas and customers understand that we have really archaic trade union legislation in this country”, Simpson says. “It’s incredibly difficult. We’re working under Thatcher trade union laws when it comes to coffee organising”.
Due to legislation going back decades, unionising a business in Britain requires a majority of the company’s total workforce to vote in favour. At a corporation like Costa Coffee or Starbucks, Simpson explains, that would mean recruiting thousands of members.
“There is a union in coffee, but there isn’t tangible union wins, and there’s no collective bargaining in coffee”, Simpson continues. “We would need several thousand members at Starbucks alone before the company would even legally have to respond to us. What SBWU have done in the States is genuinely inspiring. It’s amazing. But until we get rid of the Thatcher anti-trade-union laws that prevent us from organising, we are 10 to 15 years behind”.
Recruitment spiked in the weeks and months following the Baristas United rallies, Simpson says, although he acknowledges that it’s been hard to keep the momentum going in the face of such repressive legislation. Instead, organising is mostly done on an individual level, in WhatsApp groups and one-on-one conversations.
Less Power, More Power
Unionising Costa or Starbucks might seem like an insurmountable task, but the U.K. has thousands of independent and specialty coffee shops and cafes where workers face similar issues. Surely these are the places to target?
“There are always organising attempts, but I haven’t heard of much happening directly within specialty”, Whittle says. “Organising within hospitality is difficult, but anyone who wants to organise within their workplace should reach out to a union for help and advice from a rep”.
Simpson acknowledges that there haven’t been any major successes in the form of union victories or collective bargaining agreements at independent coffee shops, but notes that Unite has many individual members spread around such companies, and that this is an ongoing focus for organising. “They have less power on paper, because of how scattered they are, but actually they have more power than the Costa members do over collective bargaining”, Simpson tells me. “Say there’s a small chain of four or five cafes, we only need 30 members—and we’re much closer to that than we are to 7,000 members across Costa”.
Whittle, who also collates an annual coffee wage transparency report, notes that the recent rise in the U.K. minimum wage might have dampened some enthusiasm for organising as well, especially compared to the relatively stagnant wages in the U.S. “I think a lot of it comes down to a risk/reward thing. If you earn a minimum wage of £11.44 [$14.71] in the U.K. and live somewhere other than the most expensive cities, then it is actually livable”, he says. “Don’t get me wrong, people should be paid better than that, but if you generally like your job then it’s harder to risk it when your situation isn’t ‘that bad’”.
‘We’re Still Working Together’
As part of its successful general election campaign, the Labour Party published its “New Deal for Working People” in May. This draft legislation was to be introduced within the first 100 days of a new parliament, and the party promised that it would “boost wages, make work more secure and support working people to thrive”. One part of the draft included a pledge to “remove the antiquated rule that means that unions must show that at least 50% of workers are likely to support their claim before the process has even begun”.
However, unions, including Unite, have accused the party of “watering down” the proposed legislation in the face of pressure from business lobbyists. It remains to be seen whether scrapping the Thatcher-era legislation will make it into the final legislation, but Simpson is clear that it would be a gamechanger for organising the U.K.’s coffee industry.
“If we removed the legislative barrier, specifically the 50%-plus-one rule across the entire workforce, it wouldn’t be overnight but it would reduce that 10 or 15 years that it will take us to get to collective bargaining territory, it would reduce that to a year or two”, he says.
Being able to organise on a store-by-store basis, similar to how Starbucks Workers United does in the States, would allow Simpson and the rest of the Unite team to put a lot more pressure on the big chains to bargain with their workers. Unite already has thousands of members spread across the coffee industry, and they’re still communicating and doing what they can on an individual level.
Whittle points out that many British coffee workers are probably unaware of the unionisation push in the States, which might account for the comparative lack of interest on these shores. But several times during our conversation, Simpson makes the point that Starbucks Workers United is still inspiring organisers over here, and the dream of a robust British coffee union isn’t going away.
“Baristas United isn’t dead, we’re still banging the drum”, he says. “There’s no point pretending that it’s going 100 miles an hour, but there is a union, we are organising, we are getting small wins. We’re still working together”.