Quick Take
Verve Coffee Roasters workers across six Bay Area cafés have reached a tentative union contract after nearly 10 months of bargaining, with guaranteed hours, advance scheduling, wage increases and other workplace protections. The agreement also includes what union leaders call industry-first provisions for an extra $5 per hour in sick pay to offset lost tips and limits on how Verve can use AI to make decisions about employees.
After nearly 10 months of bargaining, workers at Verve Coffee Roasters cafés in the Bay Area reached a tentative agreement on Monday with the Santa Cruz-based company. If the majority of workers vote to approve the contract in October — as union leaders expect they will — it will represent an historic win for employees within the specialty coffee industry.
In September 2025, workers at the Pacific Avenue and Fair Avenue cafés in Santa Cruz and the Market Street location in San Francisco declared their intent to unionize, seeking more equitable pay, consistent hours and a greater voice within the company. Since then, three more cafés – at the headquarters of Meta, Slack and Levi Strauss & Co. – joined the bid.
All six cafés, which employ around 60 total workers, are represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, a Bay Area-based labor union that is involved in a growing movement of workers seeking union protections within the specialty coffee industry that Starbucks workers began in 2021. The union is also helping Santa Cruz’s Cat & Cloud and Bay Area companies Highwire Coffee and Philz Coffee negotiate agreements, and has worked with Peerless Coffee on a successful contract.
Verve workers were able to secure historic protections because of their diligence and commitment, said Jim Araby, UFCW 5’s director of strategic campaigns. “We had a very engaged bargaining committee from the moment we organized to the end of the contract,” he said.
The agreement includes guaranteed hours for full-time workers and a promise to post full-time job openings internally and offer them to current qualified employees before outside candidates are considered. Schedules also have to be posted at least 14 days in advance, and workers have the ability to decline changes to their hours if the schedule is changed within seven days.
It also establishes a wage progression system based on the local minimum wage. Once the contract is ratified, all workers will receive a one-time bonus of $250 for part-time and $500 for full-time.
The contract includes two protections for sick pay and artificial intelligence.
Verve workers who take sick leave will receive an additional $5 per hour to their base pay to help compensate for lost tips — a first in the industry, according to Araby.
“Most of these workers are getting between 25 and 35% of their income on tips. When someone takes a sick day, they don’t get those tips,” he said. “A lot of these workers forgo taking a sick day and come to work sick because they’re losing about a third of their income.” A worker making $18 per hour would receive $23 per hour as paid sick leave.
The contract also prevents Verve from using artificial intelligence to make decisions with data collected about employees, guaranteeing that there will be no “robo-bosses.” The company can consult the data, as long as final decisions are made by humans.
“This is essentially getting a commitment from the company that while they can use AI and other tools as a part of understanding data, they can’t have those tools make decisions, and they cannot make decisions based solely on that data,” said Araby.
During the bargaining process, café workers became concerned about how the company used information gathered by AI through the point-of-sale system about worker performance and productivity, said union organizer Sasha Pavy, a shift lead at the Pacific Avenue location.
“That was a really big issue for us because people were getting their hours cut thanks to AI data that is not always correct. I think we all know that AI can be helpful, but oftentimes it misses the nuances of a human job,” said Pavy.
She said she was most proud of her work to include a $50 reimbursement for parking for downtown Santa Cruz workers after years of requests from Pacific Avenue employees. Pavy asked all of her coworkers to write personal anecdotes of their difficult parking experiences to shift the company’s perspective.
Represented workers are slated to vote electronically on the contract on Oct. 9. If the majority of workers who vote agree to ratify the contract, the protections will immediately go into effect, with financial changes going into place a couple of weeks later.
The affordability crisis, coupled with the rapid expansion of regional coffee chains funded by private equity, is inspiring baristas to seek protections in the Bay Area and beyond, said Araby. “It’s really driving workers to say, we deserve better,” he said.
The contract is a win for Verve, and everyone in the industry, said Pavy. “We won these protections and support that all people working in the coffee industry deserve, and I hope that people in other unions or people who are thinking about unionizing can see what we’ve been able to accomplish, and even aim higher,” she said. “I think it’s possible.”
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.
