For years Starbucks has prided itself as a company that puts its partners first. As a fellow barista I am grateful for great healthcare benefits, the opportunity to pursue college for free, and free food and drink mark outs during my shifts. While these are great benefits, we are not compensated fairly for the amount of work put into our stores and communities every single day, often barely making a couple dollars more than minimum wage. Meanwhile, our CEO Kevin Johnson received $19 million in compensation for 2019 and is expected to receive a $50 million bonus by 2022 if the company outperforms competitors. 

 We go in everyday pushed beyond our limits. We are told to move faster, achieve more, and meet company goals with minimal staffing and increasing pressure from upper management.  We love our communities but we are treated as less valuable compared to the customers we serve. Many of us are living paycheck to paycheck, unable to pay our bills, pay off student loan debt, and provide for ourselves and our families. 

With the recent events of the COVID-19 pandemic, Starbucks partners have a new pressure added. We risk our lives every single day going into our stores and providing for our customers and front-line workers. Starbucks has announced that the $3/hour service pay they have recently been offering the past few weeks due to COVID-19 will expire on May 31st in the U.S. We as Starbucks partners insist that this $3/hour pay be extended past May 31st. Furthermore, we insist that this pay be permanently added to our current base pay for all retail hourly partners including baristas, shift supervisors, and assistant store managers even past the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure all workers can make a living wage. 

We want to be a beacon of light and hope for our communities but this is hard to do when we don’t make a living wage. We as partners deserve this $3 raise across the board so we can serve our communities and inspire and nurture the human spirit without having to struggle to pay our bills and put a roof over our heads. It's time to truly put #partnersfirst.