Laid Off and Back Again: The Highwire Workers’ Ongoing Fight

“You have been laid off from Highwire Coffee Roasters. A final check including tips and PTO balance will be delivered to your home address by midnight” read the email that seven Highwire baristas working at the Montclair location in Oakland received minutes after 5:00pm on Monday, March 2nd. 

The email, written by Highwire CEO Jeff Weinstein, was sent on the same date that Highwire workers had previously set as the deadline for the company to respond to their demands addressing harassment in the workplace. Yet, the only response given to the union was in the form of an announcement of the complete closure of the Oakland-based coffee chain’s “second-highest grossing store,” according to workers.

“We gave the company a letter the Friday [February 27, 2026] before, asking them to address discrimination and harassment claims to HR that have not been followed with thorough investigations,” said Hylah Reyes, a barista at Highwire Montclair who has also worked in the roastery and as a manager over her four years with the company. “Instead of responding to any of those concerns by the deadline, they decided to close the store and lay all the employees off.”

The next day, Highwire Montclair’s doors were locked with a “Temporarily Closed” sign out front — directly next to a “Now Hiring” sign advertising open positions at other Highwire locations — all while seven of the company’s laid-off baristas sat in complete shock.

Beyond the posted signs, bags of coffee were visible atop counters inside, collecting dust. 

“Montclair is sitting there, door locked, bags of beans, milk, everything just going bad,” described Scott Schulman, a production supervisor for Highwire’s roastery in Emeryville. “It makes you think, you know, is this about the community? Is this about Oakland? Is this about caring about the people that come here and the people that work here? Because the actions don’t show that. The actions show: What can we do and get away with?”

Schulman noted that the roastery even received a call from a delivery driver who had shown up Tuesday with a truckload of fresh coffee beans — completely unaware that the storefront had closed.

“No one told anyone at the roastery, ‘Hey we’re closing Montclair,’ so I mean, that’s thousands of dollars of coffee that comes here twice a week [...] Is it about the money? Is it about the optics? I don’t know. It definitely seems like a cutting your nose off to spite your face scenario,” Schulman added.

Besides the delivery drivers and roastery workers, the Montclair Highwire baristas themselves were given extremely limited information about their own layoffs. CEO Jeff Weinstein’s March 2nd email states that the Montclair location was closing “because we do not have a manager for the store,” yet on social media workers have noted a “company history of running stores without a manager,” including the San Pablo location, and a manager-on-duty scheduled at the Montclair site through the following week. 

Workers say they saw right through the company’s manager claim: The email and subsequent layoffs came on the heels of the one year anniversary of difficult — and ongoing — first union contract negotiations with Highwire management, with most of the bargaining team members hailing from the Montclair site. To the bargaining unit, the layoffs were nothing short of blatant anti-union retaliation. 

“There has been disproportionate discipline on employees that work here versus other stores for similar violations of policies, and we’ve been the most organized historically [...] They were trying to kind of get rid of that problem, it feels,” Reyes explained. “[Highwire Montclair is] usually flip-flopping between the second and third highest-grossing location [...] it doesn't make sense for this one to close.”

Thus, the workers took to the streets: In the days immediately following the email, they tabled in front of Highwire Montclair with fresh coffee, greeting former regulars and informing the public of Highwire’s recent actions.

It only took nine days — and quite a few angry emails from the public — for Highwire management to respond. Not to workers — but on Instagram.

“Please know that all of our Montclair employees have been offered transfers to our other locations until these issues are resolved,” read Highwire’s post. The full response from Highwire claims “all our Montclair employees have been offered transfers to our other locations” and promises customers, again not workers, that Highwire will share “a timetable on reopening Montclair.” Due to customer concerns, management also claimed to “continue to negotiate with the union in the spirit of good faith.”  

Workers scoffed.

“The fact that it took an outcry of public support to receive even the slightest hint of a message regarding the status of Montclair from our leadership is an additional level of disrespect and alienation of [Highwire] employees. And even then, it is an update aimed at the customers rather than the people serving your coffee,” stated the Highwire bargaining unit in a response post uploaded by the Highwire Workers Union’s (HWWU) Instagram on Wednesday, March 11th. 

Beyond the temporary placements, workers were also told that their complaints to HR were being looked into — by none other than infamous anti-union lawyers from Littler Mendelson. 

“The company has brought on additional legal support and will begin conducting investigations into claims made in our letter, but they are being very vague,” Reyes stated. 

The interviews by legal support and third-party representatives began the week of March 15th, yet workers say they remain uncertain of what results the ongoing interviews will yield. 

The first of the laid off workers returned to temporary placements on Wednesday, March 18th, and the rest will follow as the company’s availability allows. 

“Third-party investigation and reinstatement of workers are two things we’ve been asking for, so we are taking those as wins, but there has not been a response internally or externally by the company on the workers and customers response to the perceived spinning of the narrative in the company’s statement,” Reyes explained. “At this point we’re going to keep testing their so-called ‘open door policy’ by bringing up concerns in group settings like bargaining because they seem to want to address concerns with folks one on one, which we know is just to be emotionally manipulative. They completely ignored both the internal and external response to their statement.”

To workers, communication from Highwire continues to be few and far between. 

Highwire management has not responded to our request for comment.

Despite the outstanding uncertainty, Highwire workers have grown in their confidence as the negotiations continue.

“The funny thing though is, doing this, it just makes people more inclined to want to support us,” Schulman emphasized. “Now, other stores are going to step up more.”