Regular day at Worcester Starbucks after workers end strike

WORCESTER — Customers lined up Monday morning, ready to order a caffè Americano or pink drink at the Starbucks at 11 East Central St. for the first time since workers went on strike last week.

After striking over unfair labor practices, the unionized employees returned to work after being unable to address their demands with the Starbucks corporate office, an organizer said.

"We've returned to work unconditionally, so our demands were never answered or addressed by Starbucks," said Jacob Roessler, an employee and one of the strike organizers. "It can be disheartening when Starbucks still won't see us with a voice...They hear us, but it's disappointing nothing was ever addressed truly."

More: Unionized Starbucks workers go on strike in Worcester, 'sip-ins' staged elsewhere

Roessler said that it was unclear what another week of striking would have accomplished and that the workers decided to return to work because people "need to get paid."

A Starbucks spokesperson released the following statement to the Telegram & Gazette: "Starbucks has great partners and we value their contributions. We respect our partners’ right to engage in any legally protected activity or protest without retaliation. We are grateful for each partner who came into work and we always do our best to listen to the concerns of all our partners.”

Roessler said that the district manager, who has yet to address the strike, called around to employees who are not strongly tied to the union to ask if they wanted to return to work Monday.

"I'm not sure what the intention was, but I definitely think it was intentional," he said. "It was strange."

The workers were "excited to see a lot of friendly faces," again, Roessler said.

"Without that victory, it's a little bittersweet," he said. "I think, symbolically, I'm really proud of what we did."

There are mixed feelings overall, Roessler said, about the results of their strike, or lack thereof.

"My fear is that this is just giving another bullet point in the line in the sand for management versus unions," he said. "But so far today has been positive. Everyone is excited to be back. They missed serving customers."

Roessler said the group was particularly thankful for the support they received from the Massachusetts Nurses Association, carpenter unions, local Teamsters and even random passersby who stopped and picked up a sign during the strike, despite having no connection to any type of union.

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This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Regular day at Worcester Starbucks, 11 East Central St., after workers end strike