Starbucks workers have claimed that a series of bans on this year’s Pride Month decorations have been implemented in stores across at least 21 states in the United States. The Starbucks Workers United union stated that it is the first time a company that publicly promotes support for the LGBTQ+ community has taken such a stance.
Starbucks workers claimed on Tuesday that stores in at least 21 states have placed a series of bans on this year’s Pride month decorations.
The claims were revealed in a Twitter thread posted by the workers’ union, Starbucks Workers United, asserting that since the start of June, bans on rainbow flags and other decor have been popping up in cafés nationwide. “This seems to be the first year the publicly ‘pro-LGBTQ+’ company has taken this kind of stance,” the union noted for context.
So far, workers have chimed in with various examples, although none of them establish that Starbucks has explicitly enacted a corporate-wide policy forbidding stores from hanging Pride decor. In one TikTok video, you see an Atlanta worker motioning at her store’s Pride flags, stowed in a bathroom bucket, and explaining that while they’ve gone up in previous years, workers this year have been told, “It’s unsafe—we don’t have a ladder to hang them up properly.”
Over in Madison, Wisconsin, the order for removal supposedly came straight from the district manager who, “despite the vast majority of the store’s workers being members of the LGBTQ+ community,” argued that Pride displays aren’t “welcoming for everyone,” local union organizers claimed.
Summing up the bans, Starbucks Workers United tweeted, “Taking a cue from Target, who bowed to anti-LGBTQ+ pressure and removed pride merchandise, corporate and district management are taking down the pride decorations that have become an annual tradition in stores.”
Starbucks told Fast Company that there is no ban on Pride decorations. “We unwaveringly support the LGBTQIA2+ community,” a representative said, calling claims to the contrary “false information” and then clarifying: “There has been no change to any policy on this matter, and we continue to encourage our store leaders to celebrate with their communities including for U.S. Pride month in June.”
Yet Fast Company has viewed messages from store managers to their employees suggesting that policy changes did, in fact, occur this year on at least the regional level, and it appears that these bans are being enforced at a number of union stores.
In early June, a store manager in one Southern state wrote a note to workers confessing that, no, they wouldn’t be decorating the café this year for Pride and adding, almost apologetically, that it was a decision made by regional leaders so that every store would look uniform in 2023.
Fast Company viewed texts from a store manager in a different state informing staff that the “mid-Atlantic leadership team is leaning toward uniformity in store to create consistent experiences.”
Interestingly, it appears that the two stores mentioned in the previous text are located in regions of the United States where there is a growing anti-LGBTQ sentiment. This sentiment is particularly prevalent in the conservative Southern states, as well as in states where controversial bills targeting LGBTQ rights have been introduced, including Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and Indiana.
It is not implausible to consider that Starbucks management in some of these regions may have independently made the decision to prohibit Pride decorations, possibly due to concerns about potential backlash from anti-LGBTQ individuals or groups. Similar to how Starbucks holiday cups have varied in their Christmas-themed designs based on the level of criticism from Christian groups, district leaders within Starbucks may have privately concluded that avoiding a backlash similar to what Target or Bud Light faced was simply not worth the risk.
On Tuesday afternoon, it was reported that Starbucks plans to send a message to its U.S. stores reminding them that Pride decorations are allowed, which aligns with internal messages sent in late May. However, Starbucks Workers United expressed skepticism about the claim that policies haven’t changed, citing documented instances of bans on Pride decorations in over 20 states. The group also criticized the company, stating that it appears to be targeting union stores and then denying doing so, which they see as a typical pattern from Starbucks.
LGBTQ workers have been strong supporters of the Starbucks union effort, largely due to their perception that Starbucks has recently been less supportive of them, despite its historically high level of support. Last year, transgender workers expressed concerns to Fast Company that their health benefits could be at risk in the following year, with Starbucks advocates themselves warning them about potential changes.
Source: Fast Company