Barista Rebellion: Blue Bottle Workers Walk Off the Job

“Nestlé puts their profits first, give your workers what they’re worth!”

These words rang through Piedmont Avenue on Black Friday morning, after the Blue Bottle Independent Union launched its first strike the day before Thanksgiving. One-hundred workers in the East Bay and Boston, MA jointly withheld their labor to pressure Nestlé-owned Blue Bottle Coffee to the bargaining table to negotiate a first union contract. 

“Honk your horn, ring your bell! Nestlé sucks, give them hell!” Picketers took turns on a megaphone, pulling from the classics, as well as improvising their own chants. A crew of Blue Bottle workers and community supporters talked to customers about supporting the strike and encouraged them to get coffee elsewhere.

Management relented and announced they would be closing the store at 1pm. Picketers celebrated the win, and then made plans to transfer the picket line to the Old Oakland store.

This follows workers shutting down the Berkeley, Piedmont and Old Oakland locations successively on November 26, the first day of the strike. According to the union’s social media, workers in Boston were also successful in closing down stores, leading to over $100,000 of lost profit to Blue Bottle over the course of the four day strike. Building the union to this point, however, meant fighting against isolation on the job, and showing up for each other.

“My coworker Ashley got fired on Tuesday” said Max Plotkin, a barista in the Berkeley location at the picket in front of the Old Oakland location. “She was denied union representation. That’s a violation of the Weingarten Rules. She was just fired because of allegations [of theft], [but] there was no evidence presented.” Since the announcement of the strike on November 23, Blue Bottle has fired three workers: one in East Bay and two in Boston. All were active members of the union, and one fired worker was on the national bargaining team.

"We get two-thirds of the living wage for here in the East Bay. So it’s very hard to make our bills. And then I can’t get EBT or any kind of assistance because according to the government, I make too much.”

Blue Bottle, which was founded in Oakland in 2002, was acquired by Nestlé in 2017 at a valuation of $700 million. But workers say that profit hasn’t trickled down to them. “Even a year in with the union they still haven’t bargained with us in fair reasoning,” said Doe, a worker who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The union won recognition in May 2024, and has been bargaining with the company since January of this year for their first union contract, an agreement between the workers and a company on how the workplace will run. After trading proposals for several months, the union claims on its website that Blue Bottle has yet to give good-faith counter offers on issues like promotions, uniforms, scheduling, or any economic proposals such as wages. Blue Bottle did not respond to a request for comment from Current.

“The last time they went to the table,” Doe continued, “they offered us really nothing but a cork board. That’s it. No raise, no incentive, no lower healthcare. A lot of us are paying like $220 a month for healthcare alone. Blue Bottle considers 28 hours full-time. [So] we get two-thirds of the living wage for here in the East Bay. So it’s very hard to make our bills. And then I can’t get EBT or any kind of assistance because according to the government, I make too much.”

Conversations about unionization had always been in the background, says barista Alex Reyes, who works in the Berkeley location. Reyes recalls an incident that kickstarted organizing. “We share a building with WeWork upstairs, and they would flush documents down the toilet, they would flush brown paper towels down the toilet, and it caused the system to back up. It was just raining in the back of house. And management says it’s just condensation from the AC units, no big deal, happens all the time. It was brown! Mop and bucket out, collect it, it was brown and stinky! Later in the day we just said we can’t work in these conditions, we’re leaving.” Reyes reported that OSHA shut the store down for two weeks as a result.

Of the workers Current interviewed, all emphasized the importance of their relationships with each other, and with the wider labor movement. “People saw that, hey, if that happened to us [the Berkeley store] and the response from management was so poor, it could happen to any of the cafes,” Reyes remarked. And so the union has been building itself through genuine relations amongst workers. “Just being authentic with each other, instead of just having fleeting conversations, or just being so closed off while we’re working. It helps really fight alienation.”

Plotkin discussed how the firing of a coworker affected the workers.  “Our manager just tried to act the whole day like it was a normal day. And meanwhile, the rest of us are like, we just lost a team member, we just lost a friend at this location. None of us are that detached from each other, like the way that management is detached from the baristas.”

Plotkin is a former software engineer at NASA, laid off due to the Trump administration’s federal spending cuts, and specifically sought out work at Blue Bottle because it was unionized. “I want to go to work with people who have each other's back. I want to know that people are taking care of each other and being unionized is a great way to make sure that we're taking care of each other, that we're combining our diverse skills and our strength.”

“A hundred more people are connected in this labor movement. A whole community of people are sharing this experience, learning from each other, supporting each other.”

Workers at the picket line shouted slogans in solidarity with Starbucks workers, who recently launched a strike effort. Reyes mentioned being inspired by workers unionizing at Starbucks, as well as at Dandelion Chocolate. “This concept of mutual aid that other groups put out there, we see. We appreciate the help with knowledge that other groups, other organizations, other coffee shop workers have. It’s mutual aid and camaraderie,” Reyes said.

In one incident on the picket line, someone briskly rushed into the store while picketers implored them to not enter. Plotkin noted they were a worker crossing the picket line to assist management. Although the union is having to navigate the tensions coming from some workers helping managers keep stores open during the strike, Reyes remains optimistic. “You know, the people who are crossing the picket line, if they’re reading this, know that we are the same union, we are fighting for their rights [too].”

For Reyes, this is just one chapter in the longer struggle against Nestlé. “A hundred more people are connected in this labor movement. A whole community of people are sharing this experience, learning from each other, supporting each other.”

When asked what their hopes were beyond the strike, which ended December 1st, workers again emphasized the connections that they had built with their co-workers. “I hope people ahead of me will have the union, and it’ll be strong,” said Doe, “and they’ll have a contract for fair pay for future baristas. We’re the front faces that [customers] see when they come into the store. You know, it’s not corporate faces that are up there. It’s us that are helping make their bottom-line dollar.”

Correction, Dec 3, 2025: An earlier version of this article stated that Blue Bottle, owned by Nestlé, is valued $700 million. However, that was the company’s valuation at the time it was acquired by Nestlé in 2017. The article has been updated.