Starbucks Union Files 34 Federal Complaints, Signaling Renewed Hostilities
(Bloomberg) -- Starbucks Corp.’s union filed 34 US labor board complaints against the company this week, signaling rising tension between the coffee chain and the labor group that had agreed last winter to try to end their hostilities.
The complaints were filed with the National Labor Relations Board by Starbucks Workers United, which has organized around 500 of the company’s roughly 10,000 corporate-run US cafes over the past three years. The filings accuse Starbucks of violating federal labor law at stores in 16 states, including by singling out and firing employees over the last several months because of their union activism.
They follow a prior labor board complaint that the union filed on Dec. 20 accusing Starbucks of refusing to fairly negotiate and a five-day strike that was mounted at hundreds of cafes in the lead-up to Christmas.
Starbucks called the allegations baseless. “Taking time to file such claims is a tactic that brings distraction from the progress we could be making,” company spokesperson Phil Gee said in an emailed statement. Cases filed with the NLRB are investigated by regional officials; if the labor board’s prosecutors find merit in the allegations, they can bring them before agency judges, whose rulings can be appealed to NLRB members in Washington and from there into a federal appeals court.
The complaints and walkouts echo the sort of labor controversy that dogged Starbucks in 2022 and 2023, as prominent lawmakers, government enforcers, institutional investors and employees voiced concern over the company’s response to the union campaign and the lack of progress toward negotiating collective bargaining agreements. The controversy began fading in February last year, when the union and Starbucks announced they had agreed to work together to resolve hostilities.
The two sides then reported making substantial progress over a series of multi-day negotiating sessions about union contract terms, before talks broke down at the end of 2024 over the issue of pay. The union said Starbucks offered no immediate raises and future pay hikes of only 1.5% a year. The company said Workers United made unsustainable proposals and prematurely shut down bargaining.
“We’re ready to do what it takes to show the company the consequences of not keeping their promises to baristas,” Buffalo Starbucks barista Michelle Eisen said in an emailed statement from Workers United, accusing the coffee chain of refusing to offer “viable economic proposals.” In its own statement, Starbucks said it was “ready to continue negotiations when the union is ready to return to the bargaining table they walked away from.”gerat
Prior to last February’s détente, labor advocates had deployed a slew of tactics to keep pressure on Starbucks, including urging universities to stop serving its coffee, nominating labor-friendly candidates for its corporate board and continuing to organize more of its cafes. Regional directors of the NLRB had issued over 100 complaints accusing Starbucks of violating labor law, the US Senate had held a hearing about the company’s behavior, and white-collar Starbucks staff had signed an open letter protesting alleged union-busting in the cafes.
The new NLRB filings are a sign that Starbucks’ relationship with its union is once again headed in the wrong direction, said former NLRB chair Wilma Liebman, who prior to the February accord had been one of the people union allies were urging be added to Starbucks’ board. Both sides would benefit from bringing in an outside mediator, she said.
“Rather than have this fester, I think it’s crazy not to look for some way to get it back on track and get the deal closed,” said Liebman, who’s also a former deputy director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. “They’ve made a lot of progress. What they could use is some extra oomph and extra skill in helping them get over the hurdles and close the deal.”
--With assistance from Daniela Sirtori.