On Nov. 13., Starbucks Workers United (SWU) initiated a strike and national boycott against Starbucks. The Claremont Student Worker Alliance (CSWA) supports this fight and has made recent efforts to pressure Starbucks-affiliated stores on campus to terminate their contracts with the supplier. Their latest action was delivering a petition with over 570 signatures to the Pomona College administration.
SWU announced their strike, which is open-ended, in an Instagram post last Thursday.
“It has been nearly a year since Starbucks has offered us a single proposal to finish the remainder of our union contracts,” SWU’s caption read. “The company knows where we stand: we need fair wages, better scheduling, and an end to union-busting. Instead, Starbucks is fighting US, their workers. That’s why union baristas voted 92 percent to authorize this open-ended strike.”
CSWA representative Lina McRoberts PO ’27 told TSL that the group is supporting the strike in three main ways: communication, organization and pressure.
Regarding communication, CSWA is in constant contact with National Students Against Starbucks organizers via calls and briefings.
“These have helped us understand the scale of the strike, the hundreds of unfair labor practices Starbucks is charged with and the exact way that students can support workers on the ground,” McRoberts said. “We’ve been relaying those updates to Pomona students and explaining why baristas are striking and what it means to not cross the picket line.”
According to SWU’s website, an Administrative Law Judge for the National Labor Relations Board found that Starbucks committed over 400 labor law violations.
Alongside communication with national organizers, CSWA’s petition has been a primary vehicle for their recent organizing against Starbucks. The group, alongside other activism-based groups on campus, hosted a teach-in last month at the Motley Coffeehouse explaining why community members should sign the petition and support boycotts and strikes targeting Starbucks and Nestle.
According to a video shared with TSL, CSWA approached the Pomona administration “in favor of shared governance.”
“We believe that we can advance shared governance by passing this petition forward with [Pomona Assistant Vice President of Facilities Bob Robinson],” one CSWA representative said upon delivering the petition. “We think that he would really appreciate the sentiments of students that are expressed, and we believe it is in his realm of responsibility to consider the students’ voices in the decision making processes for our future contracts.”
Pomona introduced their 2025-26 Shared Governance Initiative and accompanying task force last spring. According to the initiative’s “Purpose and Goals” section on Pomona’s website, it aims to “examine the current state of shared governance at the College, identify areas for improved clarity, communication and collaboration and develop recommendations to support a more transparent and inclusive governance culture.”
Beyond organizing the petition, McRoberts said that they are coordinating with ASPC’s food committee to understand Pomona and Nestle’s contract, as well as to cultivate as much transparency around it as possible. Furthermore, CSWA is applying institutional pressure, most recently by meeting with Robinson on Nov. 14 following their deliverance of the petition earlier in the month.
“We requested contract information and we advocated for an ethical, sustainable alternative vendor,” she said. “By doing this, we make it clear that Pomona students refuse to normalize union busting alongside a handful of other things, but specifically union busting.”
“By doing this, we make it clear that Pomona students refuse to normalize union busting alongside a handful of other things,” CSWA representative Lina McRoberts PO ’27 said.
According to McRoberts, administrative representatives told CSWA that Café 47 sales are down “20-30 percent” despite extending operating hours past 4 p.m., which allegedly had not been done prior in the cafe’s history.
One Café 47 worker also affirmed in an interview for a TSL article last month that business has slowed since students began boycotting Starbucks.
“Starbucks is a massive corporation with enormous financial and legal power,” McRoberts said. “So building enough pressure to meaningfully challenge a brand takes a lot of sustained organizing.”
In a statement emailed to TSL, a Pomona correspondent wrote that the college “fully supports the rights of employees — on our campus and elsewhere — to organize, collectively bargain, and advocate for improved working conditions.”
According to the email, dining and cafe employees at Pomona are unionized, “and the college is committed to maintaining a respectful, collaborative relationship that ensures fair wages, strong benefits, and a supportive work environment.”
The email statement clarified that Pomona “does not operate a corporate Starbucks on campus.”
“Café 47 uses Starbucks-branded products supplied through Nestle Professional as part of the Global Coffee Alliance, which is separate from Starbucks’ company-operated retail locations impacted by the ongoing national strike,” the statement read.
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