Baristas of the world, unite. That seems to be the Marxist mantra motivating the spiraling strike of Starbucks staffers. The whipped cream on top of this frappuccino of labor unrest, though, is the impending mayoralty of the socialist Zohran Mamdani, who is urging the strikers on. For a candidate whose main talking point was affordability, though, what’s the logic in raising the price of New Yorkers’ daily dose of caffeine?

On Monday, the mayor-elect, with Senator Bernie Sanders, joined Starbucks employees on the picket lines at Brooklyn. The demonstration is part of an escalating campaign, dubbed by union agitators the “Red Cup Rebellion,” against the caffeine purveyor. Nearly 3,000 Starbucks employees from scores of locations across 85 cities, the Brooklyn Paper reports, have joined the strike. Mr. Mamdani claims the strike is a reminder that “this is a union town.”

The Democratic Socialist was propelled into Gracie Mansion by the disgruntled demographic that columnist Michael Barone calls the “Barista Proletariat.” Now he croons that he aims “to build an administration that is characterized by being there for workers every single step of the way.” Yet Mr. Mamdani also linked the Starbucks strike to his campaign promise to address New York City’s crisis of “affordability.” 

Ay, there’s the rub. Starbucks has offered its staffers raises of at least 2 percent, the New York Post reports. That doesn’t seem to be enough for the striking baristas, who, per the Post, demand “higher wages” and “improved working hours.” That’s shorthand for letting the employees dictate work schedules to management, a recipe for diminished customer service and less efficiency. All of which, if granted by Starbucks, would boost the price of a cup of java.

Plus also, too, caution is warranted over the strikers’ demand for resolution of probes into alleged “union busting.” That’s a reference to Starbucks holding the line amid aggressive efforts to unionize its work force. The Supreme Court in 2024 waded in on this dispute, ruling that the National Labor Relations Board needed to be held to a stricter legal standard when the agency sought to meddle in a barista-led drive to unionize a Starbucks at Memphis. 

That ruling didn’t bar New York City from its own interference with Starbucks’ management. The city on Monday announced it had settled a dispute with the coffee chain over allegations of unfair working conditions. Starbucks will be forced to fork over nearly $40 million in response to staffers’ gripes that their schedules were irregular. Heaven forfend. Such pecksniffery by the city traverses the right of contract between employers and their staffers. 

Hmmm. Maybe it’s time to revisit the Lochner era. In 1905, the Supreme Court, citing the 14th Amendment, ruled for baker Joseph Lochner by voiding a New York law capping the workday. “There is no reasonable ground,” the Nine held, “for interfering with the liberty of the person or the right of free contract, by determining the hours of labor, in the occupation of a baker.” Lochner staved off, for a time, the predations of the regulatory state.

Constitutional niceties aside, one can expect more heavy-handed overregulation under a Mamdani mayoralty. Raising labor costs for city businesses, though, is no way to improve affordability for New Yorkers. Far be it for us to tell the baristas how to run their union, but, per the laws of economics, it is the customer who ultimately pays their salaries. To modify Marx’s slogan, the belligerent baristas have nothing to lose but their jobs.