Starbucks union calls strike over Pride displays, but company calls it misinformation

Thousands of Starbucks workers are expected to go on strike until Friday in response to what the union says is the coffee company removing Pride Month decorations or preventing workers from displaying the adornments, but Starbucks says the claims are "misinformation." 

More than 3,500 employees across over 150 stores nationwide are going on strike at some point from June 23 until this Friday, Starbucks Workers United said. 

The union called for the protest after saying earlier this month that dozens of U.S. stores did not allow employees to display Pride Month decorations.

Many of the demonstrators carried signs and wore shirts with the phrase, "Workers rights are trans & queer rights."

"Starbucks is scared of the power that their queer partners hold, and they should be," Starbucks employee Moe Mills said. "Their choice to align themselves with other corporations that have withdrawn their 'support' of the queer community in the time we need it most shows that they are not the inclusive company they promote themselves to be."

Starbucks told The Associated Press: "Workers United continues to spread false information about our benefits, policies and negotiation efforts—a tactic used to seemingly divide our partners and deflect from their failure to respond to bargaining sessions for more than 200 stores."

In a statement on Starbucks' website, CEO Lax Narasimhan and North American President Sara Trilling wrote: "We must ALL have the same vision for how all people, including LGBTQIA2+ people, should be treated – with respect, support and allyship, because belonging is a core value. As such, we strongly disapprove of any person or group, seeking to use our partners’ cultural and heritage celebrations to create harm or flagrantly advance misinformation for self-interested goals."

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.