The Non-Financial Ledger

Before this becomes a story about supply chains and corporate liability, it has to be a story about people. The plaintiffs in this case do not have public names. The court calls them John Doe I through John Doe VIII, and Jane Doe I, the mother of a child. They live in communities called Quilombos in the Jequitinhonha Valley of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Their ancestors were African slaves who escaped Brazil’s coffee and sugar plantations. They settled in the hills, built communities, survived. Their descendants are still there. And they are still harvesting coffee.

The Gato came to them with promises. Good wages. Decent housing. Real work. This is how the system operates: an illegal labor broker travels to poor, isolated communities, targets people with no other options, and sells them a future that does not exist. The Gato often advances money for food and travel, immediately putting workers into debt. By the time they arrive at the plantation, they owe the person who brought them there. They cannot leave until the debt is cleared. The debt is never cleared.

What they found at the farms bore no resemblance to what they were promised. Workers described sleeping in small rooms with multiple mattresses on the floor, shared with many others. Single bathrooms, if there were any at all. No clean drinking water in some cases. One farm stored the water workers used for drinking and bathing in an old fuel tank. Workers collected firewood from the surrounding woods to heat their living quarters. Mice moved through the spaces where they slept and ate. Video documentation exists of these conditions, recorded by investigators from OXFAM Brasil and Repórter Brasil, organizations that actually visited these places.

Work began at 4 a.m. Workers harvested coffee by hand and with mechanical pickers called derriçadeiras, machines that, until 2022, were sold without basic safety features like locking buttons. Workers in the state of Espírito Santo lost fingers, arms, and legs to these machines. A 24-year-old worker was pulled into a coffee picking machine and killed. The workers who used these machines were charged for them, a hundred dollars deducted from wages each month, and another hundred for the fuel. They never owned the machines. They were charged to use equipment that could kill them.

Payment was calculated by weight of coffee picked. But workers were not paid for what they actually picked. ADERE, the organization that documents labor abuses in the coffee sector, reported workers being paid for 60 liters when they had harvested 80 liters. Investigators found workers at the Alvorado do Canto Galo farm were paid $3.43 for every 60 liters of beans picked, an amount that could represent an entire day’s labor. To earn anything at all, workers had to hit daily quotas. To hit those quotas with falsified bag counts, they had to work longer hours. The system is designed so that workers can never fully pay off their debt, can never fully earn their wages, and can never leave without consequences.

Among these plaintiffs is a minor child. He is represented in court by his mother, Jane Doe I. The complaint does not tell us how old he is beyond identifying him as a minor. It tells us he was trafficked by a Gato to a coffee plantation in Minas Gerais that supplies coffee directly to Starbucks. Brazil’s government found that plantation used “slavery-like conditions.” In a separate documented case involving two boys aged 14 and 15 rescued from Minas Gerais farms in 2015, investigators noted one of the children missed an entire month of school. These boys lived without access to clean drinking water in a space housing 17 people. They worked without safety equipment. They were not paid.

In Guatemala, a boy told Channel 4 investigators that he had been picking coffee almost every day since he was five years old. He was not picking coffee for a family farm. He was picking coffee for farms that carried the Starbucks logo on their cooperative walls, farms that told investigators they would receive advance notice before Starbucks came for certification reviews.

These are people who were offered a way out of poverty and handed a more sophisticated form of captivity instead. The betrayal is not incidental to this story. The betrayal is the product. Every cup of coffee sold with a promise of ethical sourcing is the monetized form of that betrayal. The plaintiffs in this case are not seeking charity. They are seeking accountability from a corporation that earned $3.2 billion in net profit in 2022 while the people at the bottom of its supply chain lived in spaces with moldy walls, no kitchen, and fuel cans as fire hazards next to where they slept.

Starbucks knew. Not in the abstract, speculative sense of “a corporation should have known.” In the specific, documented, repeated-notifications sense of knowing. Brazilian labor prosecutors filed complaints against Cooxupé, Starbucks’ largest Brazilian coffee supplier, in 2022. ADERE and Conectas Human Rights filed formal complaints against Starbucks with the OECD’s National Contact Point in 2018 detailing violations on farms in its supply chain. Repórter Brasil published investigations in 2016 and 2023. Thomson Reuters Foundation published an investigation in 2019. Channel 4 Dispatches documented child labor in Guatemala in 2020. Coffee Watch documented labor abuses in China in 2024. Each time, Starbucks contested the findings, declined interviews, or issued statements claiming it had rules in place and would investigate. No evidence exists that the investigations led to compensation for a single worker.

The plaintiffs are filing this lawsuit in the United States because Brazil has no civil law that allows victims to sue Starbucks’ parent company directly. They are filing under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act because the United States created that law specifically to address situations like theirs. They are filing because they have well-founded fears of violent retaliation from the Gatos who trafficked them and the farm owners who profited from their labor. They are filing anyway.

Legal Receipts

The following quotes come directly from the court filing and the sources cited within it. These are not allegations by outside critics. These are findings by governments, journalists, and Starbucks’ own partners and suppliers.

“Starbucks is responsible for massive trafficking, child slavery, and forced labor, as well as extremely poor working conditions, in its coffee harvesting around the world, including in Brazil, China, Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia, Uganda and Guatemala.” Class Complaint, Case No. 1:25-cv-01261, Para. 4 (D.D.C. Apr. 23, 2025)

• This is the central claim of the lawsuit, filed in U.S. federal court. It is supported by documented findings from Brazil’s Ministry of Labor, Channel 4 Dispatches, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Coffee Watch, China Labor Watch, Repórter Brasil, OXFAM Brasil, and ADERE, among others.
• The complaint names seven countries where labor violations have been documented in Starbucks’ supply chain. This establishes the pattern as systemic, not a one-off failure in a single region.

“Starbucks confirmed during an investigation by Danwatch that it purchased coffee from cooperatives and middlemen, including Cooxupé, that conducted business with Brazilian plantations that placed workers in ‘slavery-like conditions’.” Class Complaint, Para. 72, citing Danwatch investigation (2015)

• This is Starbucks confirming, in response to a journalist investigation, that its supply chain included entities connected to slavery-like conditions. The company has known about the Cooxupé connection since at least 2015.
• Starbucks continued to list Cooxupé as a Tier 1 Supplier in both 2023 and 2024, the first years it publicly disclosed supplier information. Cooxupé member farms appear on Brazil’s Dirty List as recently as April 2025.

“Every single one of the seven farms visited by these investigators in 2022 had children under the age of 14, with some as young as 11 years old, working ‘excessive hours’ in ‘grueling conditions’. Five of those farms were linked to Starbucks.” Class Complaint, Para. 38, citing Channel 4 Dispatches (2020)

• Every farm visited, not some, displayed child labor. Five of seven had confirmed links to Starbucks. This is not a statistical anomaly; it describes the norm on Starbucks-connected farms in Guatemala.
• The coffee cooperatives at these farms displayed the Starbucks logo on their walls and told investigators they received advance notice before Starbucks certification reviews. This directly undermines any claim that Starbucks’ certification audits are meaningful accountability mechanisms.

“While C.A.F.E. Practices claims to conduct surprise audits on farms, these audits are announced at least 24-48 hours in advance.” Class Complaint, Para. 90, citing Repórter Brasil (2023)

• Starbucks markets C.A.F.E. Practices as a rigorous third-party verification system with surprise audits. The audits are, in documented fact, announced in advance. Farm owners have at minimum one to two full days to hide workers, clean up violations, and instruct trafficked laborers to flee if inspectors arrive.
• The complaint also notes that plantation supervisors sent WhatsApp messages to workers ordering them to “flee at the first sight of authorities” during government inspection raids, a tactic that mirrors what pre-announced audits would enable.

“The Brazilian Ministry of Labor has found with respect to the Plaintiffs, these workers endure ‘slavery-like conditions’ and live in squalor while, in sharp contrast, Starbucks is thriving based largely on its ill-gotten gains.” Class Complaint, Para. 6

• This is a finding by a government agency, not a plaintiff’s attorney. Brazil’s Ministry of Labor reviewed the specific plaintiffs in this case and concluded they were subjected to slavery-like conditions.
• Each plaintiff was included in an official Brazilian government report. The legal standard for “slavery-like conditions” under Brazilian law, Article 149 of the Brazilian Criminal Code, requires documented evidence of debt bondage, forced labor, degrading conditions, or exhausting hours that restrict freedom.

“Starbucks reduced its tax bills in the U.S. and other countries by shifting $1.3 billion in profit into a subsidiary in Switzerland over the span of a decade. This subsidiary, Starbucks Coffee Trading Company (SCTC) owns and manages Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices.” Class Complaint, Para. 36, citing CICTAR report (Mar. 8, 2025)

• The same Swiss subsidiary Starbucks used to shelter $1.3 billion in profits from taxation is the entity that owns and operates its ethical sourcing certification program. The program designed to legitimize Starbucks’ supply chain is housed inside a tax avoidance structure.
• Starbucks was booking the cost of unroasted coffee beans that never physically passed through Switzerland, then selling those beans at a 3 to 18 percent markup between 2005 and 2014. Workers at the base of that supply chain were paid $3.43 per 60 liters of harvested coffee.

What Starbucks Told You vs. What the Evidence Shows

Starbucks built its brand on a specific promise to consumers. Every claim below is taken from Starbucks’ own public statements. Every rebuttal is sourced from government findings, investigative journalism, and the court record.

A Global Pattern: Country by Country

The lawsuit documents that violations in Starbucks’ supply chain are not limited to Brazil. Across seven countries, the same dynamic repeats: reports emerge, Starbucks contests or deflects, no workers receive compensation.

• Brazil: Brazil’s Ministry of Labor rescued 316 workers from conditions analogous to slavery in coffee cultivation in 2023 alone, the highest of any economic sector. Between 1996 and 2023, 3,700 workers were found in such conditions on coffee plantations. Cooxupé, Starbucks’ confirmed Tier 1 supplier, has had multiple member farms on Brazil’s Dirty List including in the April 2025 update.
• Guatemala: Every single farm visited by Channel 4 Dispatches investigators in 2022 employed children under 14, some as young as 11. Five of the seven farms were linked to Starbucks. Children reported their waists hurt from carrying bags of coffee close to a hundred pounds. The cooperatives displayed the Starbucks logo on their walls.
• China (Yunnan Province): In 2024, China Labor Watch conducted three undercover investigations across 26 farms linked to Starbucks’ certified supply chain. They found child labor and adults working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for three consecutive months. Workers earned the equivalent of approximately $421 USD per month with no health insurance, no paid leave, and no protective equipment.
• Kenya: BBC reporters uncovered widespread sexual abuse at the James Finlay tea plantation, where Starbucks sourced its tea. Supervisors forced women to exchange sex for work. Between 2,000 and 3,000 workers filed a class action in Scotland over grueling conditions and weekly pay equivalent to $30 for 12-hour days, six days a week. Starbucks stopped buying from the estate only after public exposure. It has done nothing to compensate the workers.
• Mexico: A February 2025 report from Coffee Watch, Empower, and ProDESC found Starbucks trapped Mexican coffee farmers in poverty through “unfavorable trading conditions.” One Starbucks importer hired armed civilians to violently suppress farmer protests. Mexican coffee farmers supplying Starbucks earn an average of $106 USD a month.
• Uganda: Child labor prevalence in the coffee farm industry in eastern Uganda, where Starbucks sources, was 48 to 51 percent for young boys and 42 percent for young girls, according to the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery.
• India: Bonded labor has been well-documented in Karnataka’s Coorg district, which produces around 70 percent of India’s coffee. Tata Coffee, the exclusive arabica supplier to Starbucks in India as of at least 2016, was alleged to violate labor rights through compulsory overtime, verbal threats, and wages below the legal minimum.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health

Workers on Starbucks-linked coffee farms face documented, recurring, and life-threatening health hazards as standard features of their jobs, not accidents.

• Workers harvest coffee beginning at 4 a.m. with no access to personal protective equipment, exposing them directly to pesticides and agrochemicals. Starbucks’ own C.A.F.E. Practices program requires safe chemical storage; inspectors found these requirements violated at the Pedra Preta Farm in 2015, where pesticides were improperly stored without ventilation and adjacent to workers’ eating areas.
• Coffee harvesting machines called derriçadeiras were sold without safety locking buttons until 2022. Workers in Espírito Santo, Brazil suffered amputations of fingers, arms, and legs. A 24-year-old worker was pulled into a machine and killed. Workers who suffered these injuries were the same workers being charged $100 a month for the machines that maimed them.
• Workers on Cooxupé member farms were denied access to drinking water, bathrooms, and places to eat while working on the plantation. At one farm, the water used for drinking and bathing was stored in an old fuel tank. At another, workers lived in spaces with moldy walls, no kitchen, and fuel cans stored as fire hazards in their sleeping areas.
• Children as young as 11 in Guatemala and 13 in Minas Gerais were found carrying bags of coffee weighing close to 100 pounds, with no safety equipment and no protection from sun or rain. The ILO’s list of Worst Forms of Child Labor specifically prohibits these activities for workers under 18. Starbucks’ certification program covered some of these farms.
• Workers on Yunnan, China farms linked to Starbucks’ certified supply chain worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for three consecutive months during harvest season with no health insurance provided by employers and no access to protective gear despite exposure to agrochemicals and physical hazards.
• At the James Finlay plantation in Kenya, where Starbucks sourced tea, BBC reporters documented systematic sexual abuse. Supervisors forced women to exchange sex for work. Between 2,000 and 3,000 workers were affected. Starbucks stopped buying from the estate after media exposure but has offered no remediation to survivors.

Economic Inequality

The economic gap between those who profit from Starbucks coffee and those who produce it is one of the most extreme documented in any consumer product supply chain.

• Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol received approximately $96 million in compensation in his first four months on the job, as of January 27, 2025. Mexican coffee farmers supplying Starbucks average $106 USD per month. A Mexican coffee farmer would need more than 7,000 years at that wage to match Niccol’s four-month take.
• Workers at the Alvorado do Canto Galo farm were paid approximately $3.43 for every 60 liters of beans picked, a process that could consume an entire day’s labor. They were also required to pay for rent, gas, food, and water out of that same payment.
• Workers at Cooxupé member farms had the cost of harvesting machines and fuel deducted from their wages, at $100 per month each, for machines the workers never owned. In addition to this, farm owners committed fraudulent bag counts, paying workers for 60 liters when they harvested 80, systematically undercounting their output to reduce wages owed.
• An estimated two-thirds of all coffee farm workers in Minas Gerais are hired informally, meaning they have no legal right to minimum wages, overtime pay, or retirement benefits. In 2020, a 41 percent gap existed between average wages paid to coffee workers in Minas Gerais and the income needed for a basic decent life in Brazil.
• Starbucks shifted $1.3 billion in profit into a Swiss subsidiary over a decade, specifically the subsidiary that owns its ethical sourcing program, to reduce its tax obligations in the U.S. and other countries. The workers at the base of its supply chain who generated those profits were living without beds, clean water, or registered employment contracts.
• Brazil amended its labor law in 2017 to remove workers’ right to union support during severance negotiations, disproportionately harming low-literacy rural workers. Without understanding what they are signing, many coffee workers have signed documents confirming payment was received when it was not, forfeiting their ability to sue for those wages. This law remains in force.
• The NLRB recorded 2,160 cases filed against Starbucks over a 24-year period, including 1,280 unfair labor practice charges. A federal appeals court ruled in December 2024 that Starbucks had illegally fired two baristas attempting to unionize in Philadelphia. The pattern of wage suppression documented in Brazilian supply chains mirrors the union-busting Starbucks practices against its own U.S. workers.

The Cost of a Life

What Now?

The lawsuit is filed. The evidence is documented. Here is where accountability has to go next and what you can do about it.

Corporate Leadership Accountable for These Decisions

• CEO Brian Niccol (current, joined September 2024), who has collected approximately $96 million in four months while supplier farms remain on Brazil’s Dirty List.
• The current Starbucks Board of Directors, which governs the company’s sourcing and supplier accountability policies.
• The leadership of Cooxupé cooperative, including its president Carlos Augusto Rodrigues de Melo, whose own family farms (Pedreira Farm, Palmital Farm) were found in violation of labor laws in 2021 and 2022 and whose cooperative supplied 40 percent of Starbucks’ Brazilian coffee imports from 2021 to 2023.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies with Jurisdiction

• DOJ / U.S. Attorney’s Office: The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) under which this case is filed is a federal law. DOJ has jurisdiction over forced labor and trafficking violations involving U.S. companies operating abroad.
• U.S. Department of Labor (ILAB): Already documents Brazil coffee as involving child labor and forced labor on its official reports. Apply pressure to expand the scope and enforce import restrictions under the Tariff Act of 1930, which prohibits importation of goods made with forced labor.
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP): CBP has authority to issue Withhold Release Orders (WROs) on goods produced with forced or child labor. Coffee from Cooxupé member farms documented on Brazil’s Dirty List is a candidate for a WRO.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Starbucks actively markets its coffee as “100% ethically sourced.” The National Consumers League already filed suit on this basis in D.C. Superior Court in January 2024. The FTC has authority over deceptive marketing claims.
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): Already has 2,160 cases filed against Starbucks over 24 years. A December 2024 federal appeals court ruled Starbucks illegally fired baristas for union activity. Continue filing complaints and supporting Starbucks Workers United.
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): Starbucks makes public statements about ethical sourcing and ESG commitments that directly contradict documented government findings. This may constitute material misrepresentation to investors.

Direct Action and Mutual Aid

• Support International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates): The law firm representing the plaintiffs in this case is IRAdvocates (iradvocates.org). They are a nonprofit legal organization. Their March 2025 investigation directly enabled this lawsuit. If you can donate or volunteer, do it.
• Support Repórter Brasil and ADERE MG: Repórter Brasil (reporterbrasil.org.br) and ADERE have been documenting and reporting these violations since before 2016, at personal and professional risk to their investigators and sources. Investigative journalism in this space is the frontline.
• Organize locally around Starbucks stores: Starbucks has over 16,000 retail outlets across all 50 states. Starbucks Workers United (the workers’ union) is active and public. Making connections between the conditions facing U.S. baristas and the conditions facing coffee farm workers in Brazil is organizing work that already has a foundation to build on.
• Demand transparency from your grocery store: Starbucks products are sold in national supermarket chains across the country. Retailers have supply chain accountability obligations. Ask your store manager in writing what due diligence their buyers require from Starbucks regarding verified forced-labor-free sourcing.
• Track the court docket: Case No. 1:25-cv-01261 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is public record. PACER (pacer.gov) allows public access to federal court filings. Follow the case. If a settlement is proposed without meaningful compensation for workers, that is a story.