Starbucks is aiming for a $15 minimum wage, as the coffee giant makes a major investment in worker pay.
CEO Kevin Johnson told The Wall Street Journal that, over the next three years, he wants to raise wages for all US store workers to at least $15 per hour.
Starbucks is in the process of giving all employees at least 10% raises, with pay hikes rolling out across the US by Dec. 14. In an internal memo viewed by Business Insider, Rossann Williams, the president of Starbucks' company-owned US stores, said that the company is "making one of the most substantial investments in pay in our company's history."
On Wednesday, Johnson released a public letter he sent to Congress, calling for "immediate bipartisan action to pass new COVID relief legislation." In the letter, Johnson highlights financial investments that Starbucks made during the pandemic and the recent wage hike.
"With these investments, more than 30 percent of our U.S. retail partners are currently at or above $15/hour and we continue on our path to ensure all U.S. partners will be making at or above $15/hour within the coming two to three years," Johnson writes.
Starbucks workers have been pushing for a $15 minimum wage, with nearly 10,000 people signing a CoWorker.org petition on the topic. While the company has made significant investments in its workforce in 2020, some employees feel they deserve greater compensation during the pandemic.
"If we're labeled as essential workers, we should get paid essential," Jay Josef, who has worked at Starbucks for nine years, told Business Insider. "That's why [we want] a $15 minimum wage increase."
Higher pay is an expensive proposition for Starbucks. Stifel analyst Chris O'Cull said in an October report that Starbucks, along with Chipotle and Shake Shack, are among the three restaurant stocks that would be most impacted if a federal $15 minimum wage were to pass.
Unlike many major chains, Starbucks is not franchised. As a result, higher wages directly impact the company's bottom line. Roughly half of the chain's US locations, or 9,600 stores, are owned by the company.
