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Starbucks illegally withheld credit card tipping option from union workers, NLRB complaints allege | Orlando Area News | Orlando

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photo illustration by Daniel Rodriguez

The world’s largest coffee chain, worth billions of dollars, violated U.S. labor law by withholding a new credit card tipping option exclusively from unionized stores, and by providing pay raises that were less than those given to their nonunion counterparts, the U.S. labor board alleged in a complaint Monday.

The union workers affected include Starbucks workers at Central Florida’s first and only unionized Starbucks, at 305 E. Mitchell Hammock Road in Oviedo, where workers voted to unionize with Workers United last June. They’ve also rallied multiple times in protest of this issue.

The complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board Monday — as well as a separate complaint alleging Starbucks has illegally delayed contract talks with workers at unionized locations — is considered a victory by the union.

Or at least, it’s a step toward addressing what Starbucks Workers United has characterized as a flagrant disregard for workers’ rights under federal labor law.

“It’s really exciting and it’s heartening,” Clay Blastic, a shift supervisor at the union Starbucks in Oviedo, told Orlando Weekly in a text message Tuesday. “There’s genuine excitement on the team at the news.”

According to the NLRB complaint, shared with Orlando Weekly by More Perfect Union (which broke the news), Starbucks began rolling out a credit card tipping option for customers exclusively at nonunion stores in the U.S. last fall, after first announcing the news last May.

The company has argued that this tipping option — capable of adding an extra $200 to $400 per paycheck for baristas, workers previously told Orlando Weekly — was a benefit that, for unionized locations, needed to be negotiated through the collective bargaining process.

But the NLRB, which oversees private sector labor relations, ruled that this exclusion of union stores constitutes a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. The labor agency wrote in their complaint that, in violation of worker protections, this move by Starbucks was intended to “discourage employees from engaging in these or other union or protected, concerted activities.”

Exempting unionized Starbucks workers from credit card tipping and offering pay raises lower than those given to their nonunion counterparts is “inherently destructive” of rights granted to workers under the NLRA, the complaint reads.

As a result, the NLRB is demanding that Starbucks implement the credit card tipping at its unionized locations, as well as “make all affected employees whole” by compensating them for the wages they lost out on as a result of this move by the company.

This won’t happen right away. It’s a whole process. But it’s a start — and it’s validation for workers who have filed unfair labor practice charges against the coffee giant for its union-busting behavior.

“It’s good to see the wheels begin to turn,” said Blastic, the shift supervisor at the Oviedo store.

Since December 2021, Starbucks workers at nearly 300 locations nationwide, out of 9,000 corporate-owned locations total in the U.S., have voted to unionize, including a handful in Florida.

That’s despite open and aggressive opposition from Starbucks to the unionization effort — including retaliatory tactics such as firing pro-union workers, shutting down stores that have unionized, and withholding benefits from union workers that are afforded to nonunion workers.

click to enlarge Courtney Thompson (left) stands on the picket line with fellow Starbucks workers at Central Florida's only unionized Starbucks on March 22, 2023. - McKenna Schueler/Orlando Weekly

McKenna Schueler/Orlando Weekly

Courtney Thompson (left) stands on the picket line with fellow Starbucks workers at Central Florida’s only unionized Starbucks on March 22, 2023.

Starbucks Workers United has filed nearly 500 unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB, accusing the company of anti-union (and illegal) behavior. The federal agency itself has filed over 80 complaints against the company for violations of federal labor law.

Starbucks for its part has denied engaging in illegal anti-union activity, despite its clear position on workers’ unionization efforts. The company told Bloomberg that claims of anti-union activity are “categorically false.”

But the complaints by union workers and the NLRB have gotten politicians’ attention.

On Wednesday, former interim Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is scheduled to testify in front of a U.S. Senate committee regarding allegations of Starbucks’ union-busting.

That came only after a months-long push by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, who chairs the Senate committee that will hear Schultz’s testimony.

Sanders’ staff wrote in a Monday report that Starbucks has, under Schultz’s leadership, become “the most aggressive union-busting company in America,” blasting its “scorched-earth approach to blocking unionization activity.”



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