Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick called on the Senate to pass the Faster Labor Contracts Act to expedite collective bargaining and protect the economic security of working families.
Page F7From§Eachthe noon edition — 6 September 2026
A congressman touts a bill to speed union contracts as Starbucks workers, contractless since 2021, widen their boycott.
As it ran on the front
The Chief pulled two dates off the wire and slapped them on the table: a bill in committee, a boycott in its fifth year.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick told the Senate this week that the Faster Labor Contracts Act would give workers a fair shot at a better life — expedited collective bargaining, protected economic security for working families. The bill has a job description. It does not yet have a floor vote.…
…(cont) The Planner walked the timeline first, because the timeline is the whole case. Baristas in Buffalo filed for a union in late 2021. The organizing spread to more than 700 stores. By late 2025, the union was asking customers to skip the coffee until Starbucks signed a first contract. In late August, with still no contract on paper, the ask widened: baristas told unions and other institutions to cut ties with the company entirely — no Starbucks coffee at the union hall — until a signature landed. Five years of bargaining, the Planner noted, and the ledger's line for "contract" still reads zero.
The Tinkerer laid the fix out in parts on the bench: a statute that sets a clock on first-contract bargaining, a Senate calendar with room on it, a sponsor already making the floor speech. None of the parts are hypothetical. The bill exists. The clock mechanism exists. What's missing is the vote that turns the parts into a machine.
The Muscle looked at the other structure on the lot: five years of bargaining sessions with no signature at the end of them, and a workforce large enough — 12,000 organized baristas — to have tried customers first and unions second. The Muscle doesn't have a renovation plan for that structure. The Muscle has a wrecking ball and a standing accusation of hundreds of labor violations already on the record. Some structures you don't fix with a punch list.
The Pilot flew the two facts side by side and let them sit there: a bill that could shorten a first-contract fight to months, filed the same week a first-contract fight is still running past its fifth year and asking its own union movement to stop drinking the product. The tool and the mess were never on different desks. They were on the same one the whole time.
That's the assignment as filed. The Senate has the calendar. The baristas have the boycott. This crew won't say which one moves first — only that both are sitting in the same building, waiting on the same thing.
“They wrote a bill that could shrink a first contract down to months and let it sit in a drawer while workers coming up on year five ask their own unions to stop buying the coffee. That's not gridlock, that's a choice about whose clock gets to run out. The person who made your latte this morning has been waiting since 2021 for a signature that keeps not showing up.”
“Look, five years sounds long until you remember how collective bargaining actually works — both sides have to agree, that's the whole point of a negotiation, you can't just legislate a signature into existence. The Faster Labor Contracts Act, sure, fine, fast-track it, but you don't want government picking winners in a private contract dispute — wait, did I just call a union contract a private dispute? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
You must log in or register to post a comment. August 27, 2026 / Jenny Brown Enlarge or shrink text login or register to comment Starbucks workers first asked customers to boycott Starbucks in late 2025. Now they’re asking unions and other institutions to cut ties.
· 12,000 Starbucks Workers Call for Boycott of Law-Breaking Coffee Chain from the morgue, 25 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.