Starbucks illegally withheld wage raises and benefits from unionized employees nationwide as the company sought to put a halt to the workers’ groundbreaking union campaign, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge found this week.
NLRB Administrative Law Judge Mara-Louise Anzalone held that the company violated federal labor law when it raised its wage floor to $15 an hour and give workers a raise across the board in August 2022 for nonunion workers only.
The company kept union or unionizing workers from being able to access a host of other benefits, including enhanced sick time accrual, contributions to savings accounts, and credit card tipping, Anzalone said. Other benefits like loosened dress code standards and updated equipment were additionally withheld from union workers.
The judge has ordered the company to retroactively compensate workers for missed wages and benefits and post and distribute a notification of workers’ rights in all of its corporate-owned stores for a year, due to the “intentional and categorical discrimination” against the unionized workers.
The decision condemned the company’s “flagrant, corporate-wide attack on its employees’ right to choose union representation.” In the 45-page order, the judge also noted Starbucks’s willingness to repeatedly violate federal labor laws in order to quash union activity.
“Respondent has a demonstrated proclivity for violating the [National Labor Relations] Act and infringe upon the statutory rights of its employees in any number of means during the course of their organizing efforts,” Anzalone wrote.
Bloomberg wrote that Thursday’s decision is the most sweeping ruling against the company to date, as it encompasses violations made against workers across the country and not just in individual stores or cities.
Last year, the company announced its new benefits package and that it would be raising wages for new nonunion employees by 3 percent or to $15 an hour, whichever was higher. Those who had been with the company between 2 and 5 years would get raises of 5 percent, and nonunion workers with more than 5 years of experience would get raises of at least 7 percent. Then-CEO Howard Schultz was integral in the plot to discriminate against unionized workers, Anzalone wrote, employing a “carrot and stick” tactic by promising higher wages to workers who didn’t unionize.
The company claimed that it was not applying the raises to unionized employees because it would constitute a unilateral change made outside of contract negotiations.
Anzalone rejected that argument and repeatedly condemned the arguments made by the company in the case, saying that the company’s lawyers’ arguments were “inexplicably tone-deaf.” It is incredulous to say that the company believed such wage raises would be against the law while also violating the law in a host of other circumstances including by refusing to bargain with unionized stores, the judge said.
“Ultimately, accepting Respondent’s ‘good faith’ legal compliance defense would require me, in the absence of any credible evidence, to presume that Starbucks (and presumably its counsel) so misapprehended basic labor law concepts that it considered itself compelled to deny wage and benefit increases on the basis of employees’ union activities without even considering bargaining with the union,” Anzalone wrote.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.