Starbucks Again In Hot Water For Breaking Labor Laws

Trouble keeps brewing for the world's largest coffee chain. Starbucks, which faced intense backlash in June for prohibiting Pride Month décor, a controversy that led thousands of workers to strike, ended the month on a low note when the National Labor Relations Board determined that the company committed "serious and widespread ULPs [unfair labor practices]." This is just the latest episode in Starbucks' long history of anti-union efforts, with the company coming out on the losing end of multiple legal battles in the past year. The ruling, issued on June 30, 2023, by Judge Robert A. Ringler, concerns four Starbucks locations in the Pittsburgh area where employees say they were threatened for their efforts to unionize.

At a location on South Craig Street, Ringler determined that store manager Adrienne Busch unlawfully interrogated employees about their opinions regarding unionization, threatened to take away their right to transfer locations, threatened to deny managerial assistance, threatened to take away benefits and raises, threatened to fire employees, and implied the location could close if workers unionized.

A nearly identical sequence played out at a Starbucks location on Liberty Avenue in the Bloomfield neighborhood, where manager Jesse Maxwell threatened to freeze employee benefits and withhold raises. Ringler ruled that Starbucks violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act on 17 counts through its many threats to employees as well as promising to reward workers if they didn't unionize by increasing the security at their locations. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though.

At another Starbucks location on Market Square in Pittsburgh, employees Tori Tambellini and Kim Manfre alleged that they were fired in retaliation for starting a union. The company claimed that both were fired for being late to work, but Judge Robert A. Ringler disagreed. He noted that both employees had indeed been late on occasion, but other workers at the same location had done so many more times, including one who was late 170 times and only received documented coaching as punishment. At the fourth location, at Penn Center East, two other employees, Jimmy Greene and Brett Taborelli, were fired after participating in unionization efforts. Starbucks claimed they were fired for not making themselves available for weekend shifts.

Ringler ruled that Starbucks violated Section 8(a)(3) of the Labor Relations Act on four counts, one for each of the four employees fired for their role in unionizing. He ordered Starbucks to reinstate Tambellini, Manfre, Greene, and Taborelli within two weeks, and to pay damages for the income and benefits they lost, with interest added. The company must also expunge the unlawful violations from all four employees' records. The Penn Center location, which was cited for forcing employees to work weekends, was also ordered to restore workers' original schedules. Lastly, the judge issued a cease and desist order to Starbucks to stop its anti-union efforts, and made the company subject to inspections by an NLRB agent over the next 60 days.