Blue Bottle baristas walk out in Boston

Boston

Baristas at Blue Bottle coffee shops in Boston are so fed up with their boss’s blatant union-busting bulls–t that they walked off the job at multiple stores twice last week. They are preparing for more job actions.

This time last year Blue Bottle workers in Greater Boston voted 38-4 in a National Labor Relations Board-conducted election to join the Blue Bottle Independent Union (BBIU). This came after years of low wages and disrespect from the San Francisco-based, high-end coffee chain, part of the Nestlé corporation’s sprawling global conglomerate.

The company at first recognized the union’s landslide and agreed to bargain, but Nestlé’s corporate lawyers have been stalling negotiations ever since. For months they have refused to substantively respond to the union’s demands for living wages, improved benefits and job rights — instead becoming fixated on their own language about AI surveillance technology at the coffee shops.

Workers at five of Blue Bottles’ six area stores locked the doors on May 6 at noon following the company’s absurd and unilateral declaration of an impasse regarding spy cameras – while refusing to address the union’s concerns about AI’s tendency under capitalism toward discrimination, write-ups and discipline. They marched on the boss’s office downtown and converged for a strategy meeting.

When Blue Bottle’s only response was to fire Chestnut Hill store barista Bella Roman, workers there hit the bricks again on May 9, demanding immediate reinstatement of their beloved co-worker. This walkout was live streamed at @bbiunion.bsky.social.

As a self-financed union where the workers have chosen to be independent of what they term “big business unionism,” the BBIU has published a fundraising site. BBIU is reaching out for international solidarity as baristas prepare to step up job actions against Nestlé S.A., the world’s largest publicly held food company based in Vevy, Switzerland.