Starbucks Is Moving to Oust Workers in Buffalo, Union Supporters Say

Union supporters said they had not previously faced resistance when making such requests.

Many union supporters were also skeptical that 10 workers at the Elmwood store had asked to scale back their hours in ways that posed an unusual challenge for management. A recording of a meeting between Ms. Fleischer and her manager, provided to a reporter by the union, seemed to indicate that the number was lower.

“There’s your shift and a couple other people that really, with the hours that I — I just, I don’t have the quite the availability,” the manager told Ms. Fleischer. If fewer workers had sought significant reductions in availability, that would presumably be easier to accommodate.

The manager appeared to acknowledge in the recording that the refusal to grant the reduction in hours was a break with her previous approach. “There’s certain things that I have to take care of as well, that maybe I didn’t do the right way before, but I have to get on board,” the manager said.

Mr. Montanye, a graduate student at the University at Buffalo, said that he had worked at Starbucks since 2018 and at the Elmwood store for roughly one year, and that he had frequently adjusted his hours. He said he typically worked nearly full time during winter and summer breaks and only one or two days a week while school was in session. His managers had never taken issue with these requests, he added.

But at an initial meeting on Feb. 13, he said, his manager told him that his current schedule of one day a week no longer met the store’s “needs” and that he would have to provide 15 or 20 hours of weekly availability to stay on the schedule. At a follow-up meeting over the weekend, he said, the manager told him to decide this week whether he could provide the additional availability. He may seek a leave of absence instead.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/business/economy/starbucks-union-buffalo.html