‘Revenge of the Rust belt’: Starbucks film-maker on Baristas vs Billionaires

Director Mark Mori attends a Baristas vs Billionaires special gathering on 19 November 2025 in New York City. Photograph: Johnny Nunez/WireImageView image in fullscreenDirector Mark Mori attends a Baristas vs Billionaires special gathering on 19 November 2025 in New York City. Photograph: Johnny Nunez/WireImageStarbucks‘Revenge of the Rust belt’: Starbucks film-maker on Baristas vs BillionairesDirector Mark Mori followed coffee chain workers’ struggle to unionize: ‘These young kids are so inspirational’

As the food service industry was pushed on to the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, workers at Starbucks stores in the Buffalo region of New York went public to announce their union-organizing campaign.

Their efforts, and Starbucks’ responses, have culminated in one of the most expansive union-organizing campaigns – and one of the most aggressive union-busting campaigns – in modern US history.

In the new documentary film Baristas vs Billionaires, Starbucks workers in Buffalo recount their experiences with the billionaire Howard Schultz descending on the city to attempt to quell the unionization efforts.

Narrated by the actor Susan Sarandon, with Alec Baldwin serving as a contributing producer, the film was directed and written by Mark Mori, who received an Academy Award nomination in 1991 for the documentary Building Bombs and received an Emmy award for a 2001 documentary on the Kent State shootings.

View image in fullscreenA protest at Starbucks. Photograph: Courtesy of Barista vs Billionaires“Even though the Starbucks workers’ fight for a living wage was so public, I had no idea of the twists and turns and heartbreak connected to their struggle,” said Sarandon.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mori said his former background as a steelworker and a union member with the United Steelworkers – and in political activism – had informed his decision to take on the project. He began reading about the union drive at Starbucks and spoke with a friend who would shoot the film for him.

“We just went out and started interviewing baristas,” Mori said. “To me, I looked at it as the beginning of a long upsurge in the labor movement. I looked at this as we were in the 1930s, the 21st-century version of that.”

Mori sees the Starbucks union-organizing drive as a counter to the drastic decline of the manufacturing industry in the US midwest in recent decades that has decimated the working class.

“I call it the revenge of the Rust belt. Many of these kids are the children or grandchildren of the steelworkers from Bethlehem Steel in Buffalo, the grain silos in Buffalo, all of these factories across the Rust belt that were shut down. Their parents and grandparents lost their pensions, lost their homes, and these kids don’t see any future,” said Mori.

View image in fullscreenMark Mori with Alec Baldwin at a fall 2025 screening event. Photograph: Isiah Babilonia/Courtesy of Barista vs Billionaires“These young kids are so inspirational, and they’re showing one way to deal with what’s going on, and there are many other ways. But the real number one thing about this is these young people taking matters into their own hands and inspiring other people to stand up against these billionaires.”

He explained the Starbucks workers who led the union-organizing drive reminded him of Vietnam war activists in the 1960s and 70s.