The Power of the Starbucks Model The Power of the Starbucks Model How does labor organize at scale? The Starbucks organizing campaign offers an alternative to the conventional staff organizer model of how to lose the class struggle, one laborious organizing drive at a time. As I write, SBWU claims it represents about 11,000 Starbucks workers, which is about 5.5 percent of the non-management workforce. This is the model that the Starbucks campaign creatively challenges. Indeed, in the Starbucks organizing campaign, gender nonconformity is a modality through which class is lived.