THANKS A LATTE

Starbucks giving U.S. workers pay raise, stock grants after changes to tax law,

NEW YORK— Starbucks is giving its U.S. workers pay raises and stock grants this year, citing recent changes to the tax law.

All employees will soon be able to earn paid sick time off, and the company’s parental leave benefits will include all non-birth parents. Starbucks Corp. said Wednesday that the changes affect about 150,000 fulltime, part-time, hourly and salaried employees, most of whom work as baristas or shop managers. The new benefits apply to workers at more than 8,200 company-owned stores but not at the 5,700 licensed shops like those found inside supermarkets.

Starbucks is the latest to say it’s boosting pay or benefits due to the passage of the Republican tax plan, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent. Walmart, for example, raised its starting hourly salary from $9 to $11 (U.S.) earlier this month, and also expanded its parental leave benefits.

Beyond changes to the tax law, other factors are affecting retail working conditions. Larger employers are having a hard time attracting and keeping workers because of historically low unemployment rates. Target had also announced in October that it would raise its starting hourly wage to $11, and said it would raise wages to $15 by the end of 2020.

Starbucks said workers will get a pay raise in April, their second increase this year. The company declined to specify how much more workers will be paid or what it pays them now. The job and recruiting site Glassdoor says baristas make about $9.60 an hour, based on an average of salaries shared by Starbucks employees.

The company will give at least $500 worth of Starbucks stock in April to employees at stores, support centres or bean roasting plants. Store managers will get $2,000 in stock grants. Those amounts are on top of what those workers were already going to receive this year, the Seattle-based company said.

The new perk allows Starbucks employees, which the company calls “partners,” to accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, extending a benefit that had previously only been offered to employees where state law required it. Workers may use the benefit in the case of an illness for themselves or for a family member, and the company said an employee working 25 hours a week could expect to accrue about five days of sick time over a year.

Borges said employees had asked for expanded sick leave benefits and the company had been contemplating the move well before the passage of the new tax law. But the tax cuts, he said, helped to “accelerate our ability to do it.” Employees had signed online petitions calling for paid sick leave and other benefits, as well as raised questions about disparities in the parental leave benefit offered to store and non-store workers. Starbucks also announced Wednesday that it would add six weeks of paid parental leave for its hourly employees who become new dads, a benefit that had only previously been offered to new mothers and adoptive or foster parents. While that is an improvement from the zero weeks of parental leave those workers had received until now, it is still less than the benefit Starbucks offers to its non-store employees. New mothers at Starbucks who make a salaried wage receive 18 weeks of paid leave, and other salaried parents receive 12 weeks.

Starbucks said the changes will cost the company more than $250 million. With files from the Washington Post