Workers at more than 300 Starbucks across the country went on strike on Christmas Eve, union organizers said, as baristas escalated a national walkout that began in three cities on Friday.

Workers at a store in Oviedo and another in Tampa were among those that picketed Tuesday, said Glitter Felten of Central Florida Jobs for Justice.

About a dozen Oviedo workers stood outside Tuesday morning in front of the store on East Mitchell Hammock Road, she said, joined by a half dozen supportive community members. The store closed for the day.

Kevin Beljan, a shift supervisor at the Oviedo store, said the one-day strike at the busy cafe aimed to “raise awareness” of the dispute between unionized Starbucks workers and the company.

Like counterparts at unionized Starbucks stores nationwide — about 5% of the company’s more than 10,000 company-owned stores in the United States — Beljan and his coworkers want the company to reach an agreement with the union for a better wage package than what has been offered.

The strike comed as the union said contract negotiations with the coffee giant have broken down, saying Starbucks had offered union baristas a wage package that would include no immediate raises and a guaranteed increase of 1.5% a year in the future, which it said would amount to less than 50 cents an hour for most baristas.

Starbucks has emphasized the 1.5% raise guarantee would be a floor for future raises, not a ceiling. Baristas make an average wage of more than $18 an hour, the company said.

The company last week accused the union of “prematurely” walking away from the bargaining table. “We are ready to continue negotiations to reach agreements,” company spokesperson Jay Go-Guasch said. “We need the union to return to the table.”

The strikes began with walkouts in Chicago, Los Angeles and the coffee giant’s hometown of Seattle last week, could spread to hundreds of stores if the company did not meet the baristas’ demands at the bargaining table.

By Monday, the strikes had shut down close to 60 U.S. stores, the union said.

In a statement posted on the company’s website Monday, Starbucks Executive Vice President Sara Kelly said the “overwhelming majority” of Starbucks stores were still open, and that the company expected “very limited impact” to its operations even during the planned escalation Tuesday, which baristas have said is slated to the be the last day of the strike.

Kelly also said that some stores that had shut down over the weekend had reopened.

In the Chicago area, workers at nine cafes walked out Tuesday, joining workers at five cafes that have been on strike since Friday, organizers said.

The first Starbucks baristas to unionize did so at a cafe in Buffalo, New York, in December 2021. Since then, baristas at more than 530 cafes in more than 40 states and Washington, D.C. have also voted for union representation.

But the union and the company have yet to finalize a first collective bargaining agreement — a contract that will lay out agreements on pay, benefits and working conditions for union baristas.

Starbucks initially pushed back against the union drive, but in February, the two sides said they had agreed on a “foundational framework” to finalize a first contract together and resolve ongoing litigation between the union and the company.

The escalating national strike came as union organizers accused the company of walking back that agreement.

“The company has met us halfway on a lot of the non-economic stuff,” Teddy Hoffman, a bargaining delegate for the baristas’ union, said from the picket line last week. “So it makes it all the more clear with their response to our economic package that it’s not that they can’t, they just won’t.”

Leslie Postal of the Sentinel staff contributed to this story.