Starbucks Illegally Denied Raises to Union Members, Labor Board Says

The next month, the company announced a series of new benefits — including additional career development opportunities, better tipping options and more sick time — but only for stores that hadn’t unionized or weren’t in the process of unionizing. The benefits were to begin in the coming months.

The company unveiled wage increases as well, some of which had already been announced and which the company said would apply to all workers. But other increases were new and would apply only to nonunion workers.

For example, according to Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, all employees stood to benefit from a companywide $15-an-hour minimum wage, but nonunion workers hired by May 2 would get a 3 percent raise if that proved higher than $15.

The wage policy appears to have sown confusion, with some employees briefly receiving a pay increase that was then withdrawn. Colin Cochran, a worker at a store near Buffalo that initially voted to unionize and then voted against the union in a rerun election decided this month, provided pay stubs showing that his $16.28 hourly wage had increased to $16.77 the first week of August, when Starbucks began the pay increases nationwide. But Mr. Cochran’s pay stub for the second week of August showed his hourly pay dropping back to $16.28. (The union is challenging the election loss at this store.)

Mr. Borges said that the reversion to the previous wage had resulted from an inadvertent error and that unionized stores would get wage increases in September.

Workers involved in union campaigns at other Starbucks locations said the denial of pay and benefit increases to unionized stores had slowed their organizing efforts.

Kylah Clay, a Starbucks worker in Boston who helped organize several stores in the area, said inquiries from employees at other stores who were interested in unionizing had dropped off substantially not long after the company’s pay and benefits announcement in May. But they picked up recently after the pay and many benefit changes took effect, she said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/business/economy/starbucks-union-howard-schultz-nlrb.html