Providence Starbucks workers vote to unionize, joining Workers United

Baristas at the Starbucks on North Main Street in Providence’s University Heights neighborhood voted to unionize and join Starbucks Workers United, giving Rhode Island its second unionized Starbucks store. For workers at the counter, the vote does not settle pay or scheduling on its own, but it gives them a formal seat to press for the issues the union says matter most: pay, hours, staffing, protections and just-cause standards.

The June 10 result extends a campaign that has already taken hold in parts of Providence. The first Rhode Island Starbucks to unionize was the 1 Financial Plaza store in downtown Providence, which voted 13-0 in December 2023. A failed organizing attempt at the Pace Boulevard store in Warwick showed how narrow some of these fights can be, but University Heights now adds another local point of pressure in a state where Starbucks workers have already shown they can win.

That local gain lands in the middle of a much larger and still unsettled contract fight. Starbucks says it has reached more than 30 tentative agreements with Workers United in bargaining and says its commitment to bargaining has not changed. Workers United says the company still has not agreed to a fair contract and says bargaining stalled after it rejected a foundational framework package in April 2025, one year after talks began. The union’s organizing drive has become a test of whether store-by-store wins can turn into a first contract that changes day-to-day life in the stores.

The national backdrop has only raised the stakes. Workers United says more than 1,000 union baristas launched the Red Cup Rebellion unfair labor practice strike on Nov. 13, 2025, to push on the same core demands around staffing, pay and working conditions. A June 2026 labor update estimated the union had won 699 elections covering 15,122 employees, and said roughly 4 percent of Starbucks’s about 16,900 U.S. stores are unionized.

For partners in Providence and beyond, the practical significance of the University Heights vote is immediate: union status changes who workers bargain with, how disputes are handled and how openly questions about hours, discipline and staffing can be raised. It does not automatically rewrite wages or schedules, but it gives University Heights workers another path to force those issues onto the table, while adding one more Rhode Island store to Starbucks’s widening organizing map.