Starbucks illegally withheld raises and tips from union workers, NLRB says
perfectunion.us
perfectunion.us
Second:
(1) any change to the contract has to be approved by the union. That includes raises and the like, yes. (2) that can literally be an email from Starbucks to the union's lawyer saying "we're making these changes" and an email back from the union lawyer saying "cool, sounds good". (3) union lawyers work for the union members. They almost never have a reason to reject a purely positive change, and turn-around for simple positive changes can be 24 hours easily (4) if the union wants more, they'll still accept the positive change and then separately negotiate an even larger change.
If there's an active strike negotiation going on, the company may not want to give an intermediate positive change because it weakens their bargaining power.
If the change is a mix of positive and negative, things may go differently.
Do you have anything to back this up? It appears to just be your opinion presented as fact. While I’d love to take your word on your opinion presented as a fact; I would prefer to see some data or documentation to back it up. Thanks!
It seems to me that Starbucks is pulling a “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!” here.
On one hand I can see why they’d do that, on the other hand they still need to operate within federal employment law and it sounds like the NLRB says they aren’t. Presumably they can challenge that in court if they disagree?
On the other hand, the entire job of a union busting consulting firm is to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about unions. The claim that unions would take actions, or fail to take actions, to make it less likely for their members to receive a pay raise, is the kind of claim that a union busting consulting firm would likely make. This is Public Relations 101.
Is the claim defendable, probably not, but the NLRB just found that Starbucks is trying to discourage stores from unionizing (which sounds like something they would do...) So I'm much more inclined to believe they're being unhelpful in union negotiations than a newly minted union is.
The union does not appear to be new at least to me. It seems like the StarBucks union is apart of a larger organization of unions.
So this isn’t a _new_ union or a union _moving fast and breaking things_ it’s a conglomerate of other much veteran unions.
> Starbucks Workers United is a national collective of Starbucks Partners who help organize workplaces alongside Workers United Upstate, a union with members across many industries, including the coffee industry.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/12/19/starbucks-union-...
Less than 2 years from your own article.
That counts as newly minted. Also how many of those locations have a contract at this point? That's the bigger and more relevant piece of this. The fact that other unions are helping them out, doesn't mean that those other unions have negotiated with Starbucks. That's it's own thing that makes every union negotiation different.
Nope, you’re just pro union so you don’t see it as anything but black and white.
In other news wolf says he doesn't prey on sheep.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166277326/starbucks-bernie-s...
Nope, you're just anti union so you don't see nuance against your worldview, you just trust what corporations tell you.
Wow, you're sooo edgy.
I don’t understand why people expect labor to be able to play hardball while also trying to benefit from a cooperative relationship with the adversarial partner.
> I don’t understand why people expect labor to be able to play hardball while also trying to benefit from a cooperative relationship with the adversarial partner.
I don't understand why people think it's not an adversarial relationship without a union. The workers are trying to get the most value for their labor, the company wants to get the most labor for its money. The difference is without a union the company has more power than you do.
Outside of the smallest businesses, most individual workers are disposable as far as the company is concerned. Their duties will be picked up by other employees and there's no rush to replace them. The company won't be substantially harmed by losing one worker, for the most part. There are of course exceptions, generally in small organizations or specialized skillsets, where individuals can be extremely hard to replace, but those cases are not the norm.
On the flip side most workers who lose their job have an immediate problem. Almost 2/3 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. If they lose their job they have at most a few weeks before they're missing payments. No longer having a job with no immediate prospect to replace it poses an imminent threat to the stability of their life.
This gives employers a massive amount of leverage to push for the absolute minimum they can get away with before employees start saying "I'd rather starve", while employees have little to push back with.
A union attempts to balance the scales by turning the workforce in to a combined threat. No longer is the company negotiating against an individual, it's one or more entire classes of workers that they stand to lose and have to replace if they don't come to an agreement.
A union meanwhile has a strong incentive to keep the company viable, otherwise they have a lot of out of work members
Look we know why unions got started and the human condition hasn't changed. There are people out there who would reintroduce child labour if they could get away with it. Guess who makes sure that they can't?
So...the question now becomes: How do you feel about illegal wildcat strikes? Would you support abolishment of the NLRB? Would you support reversal of the Taft Hartley act? Which side are you actually on?
No, it can’t. If it requires a contract amendment, it has to be ratified by the membership, not “union lawyers” (who probably wouldn’t be in the direct chain of contact; contract changes would usually go through the unions bargaining staff, who might consult with lawyers, as the main contact.)
This isn't obviously a purely positive change. Maybe some employees would prefer a current cash-only tip policy (maybe they think the tips are larger in cash; maybe less than 100% of those cash tips find their way onto income tax forms; maybe their paychecks are garnished or subject to a income sharing/alimony/child support arrangement while folding cash isn't; maybe they like getting the tip immediately and using it to buy lunch or gas that day rather than getting it later via payroll).
These are things that a union representing the employees must be consulted on and the story paints this as a purely positive change, but there are times in my life where I'd rather have gotten $10 in cash before lunch than $12 two weeks later in my paycheck.
Also you didn't take tips home directly after the shift you'd get it later as they usually shared tips across shifts so closing the store or working any other slow shift wouldn't hurt financially.
This is a lie and is peddled by pro union lawyers and activists. It goes both ways. Anyone who’s worked for a union or with one knows that they most certainly make negotiating directly harder. This is one of the main points of a union.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, labor or otherwise, so I'm not sure how the law works when you provide benefits to non-union shops but not to union shops, but that's what the NLRB is for.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...
A google search for "starbucks site:NLRB.gov" gives a ton of results and none of the first 10 were obviously related to this complaint. If anyone can find a link it would be helpful.
You might also be interested in reading about why the NLRB was formed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Board
Basically we have a lot of rules about the relationship between unions and companies because when we didn't do that there was a lot of violence.
That kind of violence...
Starbucks is not really set up to have the kind of slimy, lawful evil middle management that can be really good at union busting. Guile and misanthropy aren't exactly hallmarks of Starbucks staff. The stuff they're doing now is really obviously going to get them into trouble. This is not exactly subtle:
“At my store, it did have a negative impact — we had our election finalized right as they rolled out these new benefits,” says Alisha Humphrey, a Starbucks union leader in Oklahoma City. So as happy as we were that people won, we were told that since we won our election, we were not getting credit card tipping or the raises. Our manager met with everyone and told us that if we transferred to another store, you would make $1.50 more and credit card tipping. And some did transfer.”
They said it was a safety issue.
Then it was pointed out that they'd only removed them at the stores where they were unionized or were in the process of doing it, and they had very little explanation for why the mats were safe in non-union stores.
They didn’t keep tips, they withheld the convenience from customers. Shitty, but not exactly theft.
Sure, they're only withholding the convenience from the customers, but how much real impact does this have on the tips given? I know I've personally had to forego giving tips before due to lack of cash.
Strictly speaking, a century's worth of American labor law also matter. Since we're listing things that the average hn user is unfamiliar with.
the same for raises, etc. The contract should have all of that spelled out. If not then the union failed at the their job.
That's a violation of federal labor law.
Presumably the employees in unionized stores got some benefits from the union (higher wages, stability? Otherwise what's the point of the union.) So they must already have some baseline they negotiated and have been happy with.
Starbucks is rolling out a different model to it's not structured employee situations, this is both their right since the rigidity of the union isn't there, and perhaps it's needed there more.
As a layperson that "not relying on tips" is a goal that a union should provide (else what's the point?) So it's weird that they now want those too.
Totally get why the union doesn't like it but it's kinda one sided. You are either married or you okay the field.
And doubly so when in the midst of doing all this, Starbucks moves up the wages of their workers, but much less so if you're in the union.
i.e. Now you have a situation where unionized workers are being paid less than non-unionized workers, AND being denied access to tips.
I'm not sure how you can look at that scenario and say "I don't understand the union's grievance". I think it's more than "doesn't like it". Which is why the NLRB sided with them on all points of the issue. Starbucks is only union-hostile and petty about it too - around here they also got in trouble for removing padded foam mats behind counters (for reducing fatigue/foot pain), but only from the unionizing stores, and then tried to claim it was done for "safety" reasons (and had no real answer why, if so, it wasn't being done across the board).
>As a layperson that "not relying on tips" is a goal [...] So it's weird that they now want those too.
The goal is to benefit the worker. Tips are culturally embedded and a significant amount of money. It's weird to think the union wouldn't want that for their members. Would guaranteed higher pay be better? Yes. Is that an actual either/or option? No.
>Totally get why the union doesn't like it but it's kinda one sided. You are either married or you okay the field.
What does this even mean? What are the arbitrary rules you think should apply? Being in a union shouldn't mean its OK to be screwed with by SB management at every opportunity.
Chosing to be in the union means you want the negotiated salary, and you want to be shielded from the outcome of your work a bit (we all make the same regardless of how we perform, short of being so bad that you get fired)
The stability of compensation implies... Stability of compensation. You get the negotiated rate.
Tips are the opposite of that. Tips are performance based and someone providing great customer service (individual or on store level) is going to get more. That's not in line with the union mindset so I don't see why that would be expected.
I also don't see why SBUX should go out of its way to benefit the union. The unions explicit mission is to insert itself between SBUX and the employees, where the employee relationship is now more with the union rather than the company. There's no expectation of the company giving the union more power if it doesn't need to.
I guess this case will come down to whether this is really illegal or not. We'll see.
I take issue with this framing. This has some implication of a malicious, or rent-seeking, third party, interfering with SBUX and its employees. Except that it's a union -of- employees.
And the union wants a better/equal salary. But SBUX wants to pay a tip-dependent wage and then remove tipping options from those stores. You can't say, objectively, "Well, the union wants everyone paid equally/fairly, and they've got that now, what's the big deal?" when the wages being paid equally/fairly are predicated on tip income.
By your logic, if a restaurant workers union wanted to have everyone on equal wages and remove tipping from the equation, they should be happy to have tips removed and have everyone making $2.13/hr (well, it'd have to be $7.25/hr) because hey, it's equal, and all they need to do now is negotiate that rate up, right?
I am not prepared to argue the details of the barista labor market but SBUX has a reputation for taking good care of their employees, compared to other places that hire that type of talent (401k, tuition coverage, etc.) Meaning, it expects employees to work hard/go above and beyond and tries to do the same for them - at least in their own assessment and I bet many employees agree.
The employees who chose to unionize presumably didn't like what the company was offering them on its own and decided to lever up their demands. That changes the relationship from "taking good care of each other" to bounds by rigid rules. Once you bind me by rigid rules, I am not giving you anything extra (if for no other reason as I can use that as leverage in our next negotiation which is what you're forcing me to do)
Just sounds to me like they don't actually have the leverage they promised their members to extract better pay, and are now whining "no fair" for having to sleep in the bed they made.
If employees get "hardcore" about creating limits on how the company can hire/pay/whatever, it obviously changes how the company engages with those employees as well.
To wit, if you force me to sign in blood for everything I have to give you, I am not going to give you anything else.
This isn't the union failing to negotiate a good deal, or being sticklers about procedure and thus preventing union employees from getting what non-union employees are being given. Starbucks is deliberately using this as a way to sabotage the union, by refusing to even offer them the same terms as non-union employees. This is illegal.
Since the terms are already different, how do you compare if the union rate (no CC tips) is better than the non-union rate (with CC tips?)
It is painfully clear that this is a deliberate union-busting tactic on Starbucks' part. The only reason they gave any stores these benefits is in order to make the union look bad.
This is illegal.
So this is all pretty brand new. The union, I presume, wants ALL stores to be unionized, and wants ALL stores to have CC tip options, and for ALL stores to have those other union-negotiated benefits.
Rolling out the ability to accept CC tips as a strictly non-union perk is 100% a union-busting power play.
[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/22825850/starbucks-union-first-or...
Think of it as firing a whistleblower for poor performance: it's never a good look and ought to impose a supersized burden of proof on the employer even in the rare cases where it's true.
There is no need to perform mental gymnastics when Occam's razor perfectly applies.
On the margin at some point it's going to just be the same as a price raise (coffee is 5 bucks rather than 4) which obviously impacts business at least somewhat.
Credit card integration obviously generates more tipping, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.
This is because once they see the prompt, many people think of the tip as mandatory (vs may not have thought about it) - or they don't have cash but now can tip. A good thing. I always tip well.
Now coffee becomes a thing you tip for, for these people. Totally voluntary.
For those people, this raises the effective price of a cup of coffee.
Getting Starbucks now becomes a costlier habit. At the margins this can drive someone to go elsewhere, skip, etc (basic supply and demand.)
This may not apply to some given individual but across millions of customers over a long time price including tip obviously affects quantity demanded.
> From free coffee to competitive pay, Starbucks is proud to offer a comprehensive compensation and benefits package to our eligible part-time and full-time partners. Benefits include 100% tuition coverage through our Starbucks College Achievement Plan, health coverage with a variety of plans to choose from, and stock & savings programs like our equity reward program, Bean Stock. What’s more, Starbucks offers flexible scheduling and opportunities for paid time off. Visit starbucksbenefits.com for details.
This is a non union store to my knowledge.
Looking at this as pessimistically as possible, I'll guess nobody is getting 40 solid hours a week (aka they strategically cycle through 20 to 30 hour/week part time employees)
7 days a week, 25 hours a week, let's say you don't work 3 days (you are 100% off, not on call in case the store gets busy or something)
25 hours a week, 4 days a week. about 6.25 hours a shift. let's say it's $16/hr
$100 in a 6.25 hour day, 4 days a week, $400/week gross
Let's say you don't work at all 4 weeks of the year (store closed for holiday, you take unpaid vacation/sick time/call out, you don't use PTO, i don't know). 52 weeks a year, say you work 48 full.
$16/hr, 25 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $19.2k/yr before any tips
$16/hr, 30 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $23.0k/yr before any tips
$16/hr, 35 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $26.8k/yr before any tips
$16/hr, 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $30.7k/yr before any tips
$16/hr, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year: $32.0k/yr before any tips
so the upper bound for what you'll most likely ever earn gross as a barista at starbucks is $32k/yr
say the union comes in, negotiates. what does this upper bound increase to?
Reasonable sick time allocation without fear of being fired?
https://www.compt.io/hr-articles/how-to-reduce-worker-turnov....
then some articles from google say 140% turnover
"can employees in your non-union stores request 5 days off unpaid if they are sick without fear of being fired"
they would say "absolutely"
but you are saying "most likely not"
who is being dishonest?
if most of your employees are in that 20-35 hour range with no fear of overtime, aren't you able to say "so and so is sick, let me just call somebody else who is being under-utilized/has availability?"
If an employee is sick and can’t find someone to cover, it is typically considered a missed shift on their part.
You feelings might tell you one thing, but it’s worth actually checking that against the facts on the ground.
No, this isn't that simple, and asking this question makes me ask how much experience you have with service work to even question the justification of a union. People who are working part-time are usually juggling multiple jobs, childcare, or other life circumstances which makes their hours not that flexible. Additionally, in order to avoid being eligible for full-time benefits you are literally unable to call in someone else who might have availability. Calling in sick suddenly usually means the team has to work short that shift, or someone else agrees to work your shift in that you owe them later with the understanding cost that they won't be working a shift at another time, leaving the shift they aren't working also short a member, thus cascading the issue.
I'm curious though... What do you think the incentive is for people demanding benefits they already secretly have? Why do you think they're making it up? Its obvious why management would make it up but why the employee?
I've been one so here let me just tell you. You have to call up your coworkers on their days off and beg them to cover you. You promise or call in favors, you convince someone to give up time with their family or skip class or to work a double shift for you. If you can't get anyone to do it you work sick.
If you can't get it covered and actually don't go to work the manager will work the shift and hold it against you forever. They can fire you for it the first time and they really might, it all depends on your relationship with them. At the very least your relationship, whatever it was, is badly damaged. They make the schedule so I hope you don't need consistent hours, or a specific day off for class or anything.
> who is being dishonest?
Neither. Your hypothetical is wrong. Management would point you to the gargantuan employee handbook that all employees sign as a condition of employment. Somewhere in there it states that shift coverage is the employee's job and that company profits/image are of utmost importance. Management knows the hourly workers are easily replaceable warm bodies.
Personal single-point anecdote burned into my memory: at my last restaurant job, I did a great job, had perfect attendance, and great reviews. Upon injuring my back, I was let go on my 3rd day calling out and my manager enthusiastically "encouraged to reapply for the position when I was feeling better!".
It was the moment I realized I needed to make myself a better future.
> To maintain their profit margins and offset these costs, a business owner may need to consider increasing prices for their products, which could potentially impact their customer base. However, it's important to balance the financial considerations with the well-being of employees and the long-term health of the business. Prioritizing the health and safety of employees, providing flexible sick leave policies, and ensuring adequate staffing levels can also contribute to better customer satisfaction and long-term profitability.
they don't correlate well
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/pro...
they have 75% margins on their coffee as is, yet their net margins are 10% company wide. the average drink in my experience is $6-$8 before a tip. how much more do they need to charge their customers in order to make "starbucks will be less strict and more understanding about their employees needing unpaid time off randomly without having to worry about it counting as a missed shift/needing to get it covered"? they only have that policy because otherwise their bottom line would get affected, right?
what's realistic? 2 random sick days a quarter per employee? 4 a year? sick bank hours accrued?
if this, then that
if "employees taking time off without any notice (sick time) disrupts the schedule/store operations", then "the store will suffer financially"
if "the store suffers financially", then "the loss needs to be made up elsewhere in order to be offset"
if "the loss needs to be made up elsewhere", then "the money needs to come from somewhere"
if "the money to offset the loss needs to come from somewhere", then "prices need to be increased"
therefore, in order for ALL workers to be allowed to take SOME sick time off (time off without much notice) without retribution, prices need to be increased even further
if prices need to be increased even further, you might alienate away even more of your existing or potential customer base (prices already very high for what they offer relative to their competition)
if you alienate away more customers, you lose money
therefore, you're asking the business to lose money at the expense of their dispensable/replaceable entry level jobs. i don't mean for that to sound as cold and heartless and immoral and rude as it does. i'm not some high level executive who only thinks in terms of MBA. i'm just trying to show perspective to both sides of the bargaining equation. imagine if the entire staff could call out sick whenever they wanted without consequence twice a week. the store would have to close down, wouldn't it? where's the balance?
is the balance supposed to be exactly where it is now? you'd argue it needs to be more in favor of the worker, but you also admit to not putting much effort/thought into thinking of the business side, becasue you're arguing it's already too much in favor of the business side
Yes I am. That's exactly what it comes down to.
I uncompromisingly believe that making profit while not providing a living wage and sick time is immoral and should not be allowed. Maybe they can do both, maybe they can't. They put themselves in the position of needing to find out though.
The sheer ignorance of this comment is astounding.
tomorrow you're the starbucks CEO
instead of focusing on maximizing shareholder profit, you want to keep profit the same as it is now, but you also want to be a good moral person and listen to the complaints about "baristas need to be able to make $16/hr and have up to 5 'i can't come in for whatever reason despite being scheduled and i don't want to rush to get it covered/make it the store's problem and not mine' days a quarter"
how much MORE do you have to raise the drink prices from $6-8 per drink before tip to pull that off? serious question
you're at 75% margin when a drink is $7 (hypothetical but probably within a ballpark)
do you need to raise margins to 85% to be able to support baristas needing 5 unpaid random days off a quarter? 5 * 4 quarters = 20 a year
i don't think margins after what you charge the customer can stay the same while also enabling baristas to call out (what effects does that have on a store's daily sales/revenue/profit? they're linked, right? less baristas, customers get pissed, walk out, cancel orders, more mistakes made, or people see it is too busy and don't want to wait and don't order)
so you need to increase margins in order to support bartsias being allowed to basically, mess up the daily shift scheduling dynamic. somebody calling out randomly for being sick without being able to find a cover can probably cost the store... up to 20% of its revenue/sales/profit a day? 10%? 5%? 25%?
say you have 4-5 baristas per shift during busy hours. they can all call out sick randomly? store closes for the day? we're talking about moving the responsibility of fearing for your job being lost if you can't find somebody to cover your shift off of the employee.
what's the sane amount here? charge more? allow it more with less (no?) repercussions?
so you would agree that (at their current $6-8 drink average), they are NOT charging enough to support their employees like human beings (being able to factor in that any barista should be allowed the right to call in sick 5 days with no notice a quarter)
Is that a fair summary?
How many days are they currently factoring in? 0, right? Because all baristas need to fear getting fired over take 1 sick day a quarter (call out unpaid with no notice) or need somebody to cover it right
So, how much do drink and food prices need to go up at starbucks to support 5 sick days per quarter per barista instead of the current 0?
Their current margins are 75%. Do they need margins to go to... 85%? 95%? 105%? 115%? What's the cost of a barista taking a sick day once a quarter? What's the cost to a store's bottom line per day of 5 baristas taking a sick day 5 times a quarter? What if they do it all at once? Close the store for the day, miss the revenue/sales?
Aside from that, if they can't afford to treat their employees with dignity, they shouldn't be in business. They can, though.
Their margins are already plenty high. They just need to stop prioritizing executives' and shareholders' pocketbooks (shock! heresy!), and start prioritizing the human beings that depend on their jobs there to put food on the table.
How much of that would you like to see them give up in order to appease the employees to your standards? Would you like to see their net margin at 0%? 1%? Do they deserve to make any profit in your mind?
You're saying they make too much profit. That's fair. You'd like to see them to treat their employees better at the expense of making less profit. I just don't know how realistic that is...
American liberals need to walk the talk. But it seems so many of them are just closet Republicans especially when the idealism costs them money. I haven't forgotten how Bernie Sanders was silenced.
It makes them look petty, it will add friction to their relationship with the unions, and it probably costs them a little extra to deliberately exclude a relatively small number of locations from the ability to tip than it would to just universally roll it out.
It shouldn't take much of a fine to convince them to give up on it. The bad PR alone would probably be enough.
Caring about looking petty has never once crossed Starbuck's radar. Union and non-union stores look the same to customers (except now some allow credit card tipping), so customers would only know about this at all if they're in tune with this type of news.
I'm not sure about that. Plenty of companies receive fines for doing shady and illegal things and I don't think their bottom lines change much as a result.
Well, the NLRB, one of the arbiters of labor laws, doesn't say "maybeeeee", it says they _are_ breaking labor laws.
"Don't protect your rights or your employer will break the law!"
"Even if an employer is caught, the penalties are generally not severe enough to change their future behavior. The two primary penalties that DOL uses are civil money penalties and liquidated damages. Employers who repeatedly or willfully violate the minimum wage and overtime requirements may be subjected to civil monetary penalties of up to $1,100 for each violation, but DOL seldom uses these penalties (Bobo, 2009)."[0]
[0]https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Cente...
Sometimes the employer is also acting as a worker but not necessarily and they get to keep the surplus either way
That seems like a pretty clear distinction to me