A rolling strike of Starbucks baristas has grown since kicking off Friday to include about 300 of the coffee giant’s shops across the U.S., according to the union organizing the work stoppage.

The strike, set to end after Christmas Eve, seeks to pressure Starbucks during the busy holiday season to offer a better wage proposal over what would be a first contract for its workers. Employees also aim to push Starbucks to resolve outstanding unfair labor practice charges filed by workers in recent years.

Starbucks Workers United, the union that represents about 10,000 workers at a few hundred of the ubiquitous chain’s nearly 16,500 U.S. locations, said that baristas in Boston, Philadelphia, Portland and Tucson walked off the job Monday as part of a plan to grow the number of striking employees over the course of the five-day action. They joined baristas in Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle who launched the strike and were followed by others in Denver, New York, St. Louis and other cities.

“My co-workers and I made the difficult decision to launch unfair labor practice strikes in hundreds of stores across the country because we know that investing in baristas is the only way to turn things around. These strikes are an initial show of strength, and we’re just getting started,” said Lauren Hollingsworth a barista from Ashland, Ore., in a news release from the union.

The union said the strike is the largest in Starbucks history. The final days before Christmas are traditionally some of Starbucks’ busiest customer traffic times.

Starbucks downplayed the significance of the strike, saying it would make little impact on its overall operations. “The vast majority of our stores (97-99%) will continue to operate and serve customers, and we expect a very limited impact to our overall operations,” said Sara Kelly, executive vice president and chief partner officer, in recently published blog post on Starbucks’ website about the strike.

On Monday, more than 60 store locations were forced to close amid the ongoing strike, the union said. And on Tuesday, Starbucks said 170 of its more than 10,000 company-operated stores in the United States did not open as planned.

The company has criticized the union, saying it “prematurely” ended bargaining sessions last week.

“It is disappointing they didn’t return to the table given the progress we’ve made to date,” the company said in a statement.

Initially, five stores in Southern California were involved in the strike including in Van Nuys, Santa Clarita, Highland Park and Anaheim, said Evelyn Zepeda, organizing director in California for Workers United. That number has expanded to include locations in downtown and elsewhere.

The work stoppages mark a major turning point for Starbucks Workers United, which formed in 2021 and steadily has made headway in its campaign to persuade baristas at Starbucks around the U.S. to join. Hopes that the two sides would be able to hammer out a deal had been high since February, when the company pledged publicly to work with the union and take a more neutral approach toward the drive to organize workers.

The conciliatory stance was an about-face for a company that previously had intensely resisted the campaign to organize its workers. Federal regulators found Starbucks repeatedly violated labor laws by disciplining and firing workers involved in unionizing activity, shutting down stores and stalling contract negotiations.

The National Labor Relations Board has conducted a total of 647 union elections at Starbucks stores, with 109 of them falling short, several others with challenged ballots and 528 currently with certified bargaining units, according to NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado. In California, 66 stores have held union elections and 44 of them have had their bargaining units recognized by the labor board.

Blado said workers have filed more than 700 unfair labor charges against Starbucks, its subsidiary Siren Retail Corp., or its law firm Littler Mendelson, alleging a range of violations. The union has not filed any new charges against Starbucks since late February.

Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America are being sued by the embattled Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over alleged unchecked fraud on the Zelle payment app — setting up a legal showdown that the incoming Trump administration could quash as soon as next month.

The three financial institutions, which co-own the app along with four other large banks, were accused in a lawsuit filed Friday of rushing to launch the service in 2017 without putting in place proper consumer safeguards in order to compete with popular payment apps such as Venmo. The result, according to the lawsuit, were fraud-related losses of more than $870 million over the last seven years.

“Zelle became a gold mine for fraudsters, while often leaving victims to fend for themselves,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.

The 91-page federal lawsuit claimed that hundreds of thousands of consumers at the three banks made complaints about being defrauded but were “were largely denied relief, and some were even told to try getting their money back by contacting the person who had defrauded them.” The CFPB said the three banks accounted for 73% of Zelle activity last year.

The lawsuit was immediately attacked by Early Warning Services, which operates the app on behalf of the banks, as “legally and factually flawed” and claimed the lawsuit could be counterproductive by “incentivizing” criminals to make bogus fraud claims that institutions would have to pay — raising the app’s costs and driving away credit unions and community and minority-owned banks offering Zelle. Some 2,200 financial institutions use the service.

“Zelle is relied upon by 143 million enrolled American consumers and small businesses, and we are fully prepared to defend this meritless lawsuit to ensure their service does not suffer,” said Jane Khodos, a spokesperson for Early Warning, which was also named as a defendant.

Bank of America, in its own statement, said that “more than 99.95 percent of transactions across the Zelle network go through without incident. When a client has an issue, we work directly with them.”

JP Morgan Chase also denied the allegations and alluded to political overtones raised by Early Warning, saying the CFPB’s action was a “last ditch effort in pursuit of their political agenda.” Wells Fargo did not return messages for comment.

The CFPB, established in 2011 in the aftermath of the financial crisis, has long been criticized by Republicans as a “runaway” agency whose actions are heavy handed and stifle economic growth.

The first Trump administration sought to rein in the bureau and redrafted proposed rules aimed at tightening regulations on payday lenders. Consumer advocates considered the final regulations watered down. The new Trump administration could terminate the Zelle lawsuit when it takes power next month.

Some critics want to abolish the agency altogether. Billionaire Elon Musk, who is leading an effort to streamline the federal government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, criticized the agency in a November post on X that said, “ Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.”

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court turned down an effort by a payday lending trade group to declare the bureau’s structure unconstitutional because it is funded by bank fees instead of congressional appropriations.

The bureau, which boasts it has gotten consumers more than $21 billion in relief, has stepped up its enforcement actions recently ahead of the change in administrations.

On Monday, it filed separate lawsuits against Walmart and Rocket Mortgage over alleged financial wrongdoing. And earlier this month issued landmark rules that could lower the costs of bank overdrafts to as little as $5.

Separately, the Federal Trade Commission, led by outgoing chair Lina Khan, sued Los Angeles cash app Dave Inc. last month, accusing it of misleading its financially vulnerable customers about fees it charges and the amount of money it gives out. The company denies the allegations.

The CFPB in its lawsuit claimed that without adequate safeguards Zelle allows fraudsters to create multiple email addresses and mobile phone numbers in signing up for the service that it can link to the same or different bank accounts, leaving consumers unaware of who they are sending their money to.

It claimed the banks allowed repeat offenders to hop between banks, with the banks not sharing information about fraudsters and acting too slowly to restrict or track criminals. It also claimed that it did not act on the hundreds of thousands of complaints they received to prevent further fraud.

In response, Early Warning claimed it has “highly effective multi-layered fraund and scam prevention measures” that in 2023 resulted in reports of frauds and scams decreasing by nearly 50% despite a 27% increase in transaction volume.

The company said it had made “every effort to engage and cooperate” with the bureau before the lawsuit was filed, which it said is part of the agency’s “pattern and practice of regulatory overreach.”

The bureau’s lawsuit was applauded by the National Consumer Law Center, which said, “The CFPB is standing up for people who weren’t able to get the big banks to take their claims of fraud seriously and return their hard-earned money. The CFPB helps ordinary people who’ve been hurt by big banks.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who spearheaded the creation of the agency, came to its defense last week and called on Trump to work with the agency to help American families by temporarily capping credit card interest rates at 10% — a pledge he made on the campaign trail.

“That would be a real boost for millions of families across this country,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. “If he’s true to his word here, and I think we ought to take them at his word, then the CFPB can help him do that.”

The Container Store has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid steep losses, slumping sales and increased competition.

Business in its stores and online will continue as usual while it restructures, the Texas-based home goods, storage and custom closets chain said late Sunday. Customer deposits for in-home services will be honored, and merchandise orders will be delivered as normal.

“The Container Store is here to stay,” Chief Executive Satish Malhotra said in a statement. “Our strategy is sound, and we believe the steps we are taking today will allow us to continue to advance our business.”

The Container Store peaked in its 2021 fiscal year, when the company exceeded $1 billion in sales for the first time and posted record earnings as consumers spent heavily on home remodeling and redecorating projects during months of pandemic quarantine. A national de-cluttering craze, set off by organization expert Marie Kondo, also benefited the chain.

But since then, the Container Store has struggled.

Part of the company’s struggles are due to competition from rivals including Target, Walmart and Amazon, which often sell storage items that are similarly stylish at a lower price point. And with housing prices and mortgage rates remaining stubbornly high, many prospective home buyers have been forced to wait on the sidelines, dampening demand for a wide range of products and services that come with outfitting a new property.

For the three months ended Sept. 28, the Container Store reported a loss of $16.1 million. Sales totaled $196.6 million, down 10.5% compared with the same quarter a year earlier. Same-store sales fell 12.5%.

Founded in 1978, the Container Store operates more than 100 stores around the country. In Los Angeles County, it has locations in Century City, El Segundo, Pasadena and Woodland Hills.

It filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of Texas, two weeks after the New York Stock Exchange notified the company that its shares would be suspended for failing to maintain an average global market capitalization of at least $15 million over 30 consecutive trading days.

The Container Store said it expected to confirm a plan of reorganization within 35 days and emerge from bankruptcy soon after as a private company. The company said at least 90% of its term loan lenders had pledged $40 million in new money financing.

The Chapter 11 process does not include Elfa, a separate customized closet business based in Sweden, which is owned by the Container Store.

In an email to customers Monday, Malhotra said the company had felt “the impact of the challenging macro-economic environment” but reassured them that “our obligations to you will be fulfilled as expected.”

“You can feel confident that any orders, deposits or business you have with us are safe,” he said.

It has been a tough month for large-format retail chains. Last week Party City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and said it would close all of its roughly 700 stores nationwide, and Big Lots said it would begin going-out-of-business sales at about 870 stores after a deal to sell the company fell through.