Judge’s ruling deals blow to Starbucks over labor violations

Starbucks committed “egregious and widespread” violations of federal labor law while trying to halt union campaigns, a federal administrative law judge ruled Tuesday, ordering the coffee giant to give back pay and damages to employees who launched a nationwide organizing drive at the company.

Starbucks showed “a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights,” Judge Michael A. Rosas wrote in a 220page order released Wednesday.

In resolving a massive case that combined 33 unfair-labor-practice charges from 21 stores in the Buffalo area, Rosas held that the company retaliated against employees affiliated with Starbucks Workers United as they began a union drive in 2021. Since then, 268 of the roughly 9,000 company-owned U.S. stores have voted to unionize, and Starbucks’s interim chief executive, Howard Schultz, has drawn the ire of liberal political leaders.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders-said Wednesday that he would force a vote to subpoena Schultz as part of a hearing about unionization efforts at Starbucks.

Rosas’ order requires Starbucks to halt a sweeping list of behaviors that include retaliating against employees for unionizing; promising improved pay and benefits if workers renounced the union; surveilling union-supporting employees while on-site; refusing to hire prospective employees who back the union; relocating union organizers to new stores to halt the group’s activity; and overstaffing stores ahead of union votes.

Starbucks, the judge said, must reopen stores it closed as union momentum swelled among workers, rescind dozens of disciplinary actions taken against Buffalo-area employees, pay “reasonable consequential damages” and offer to reinstate terminated workers to their jobs. Rosas’ order also calls for Schultz and Denise Nelson, the company’s senior vice president for U.S. operations, to read a 14page notice that explains workers’ rights and how the company violated the law.

That same notice must be posted in each of the company’s stores, Rosas ruled, and shared digitally with employees. He also ordered Starbucks to begin negotiating a collective-bargaining agreement with Buffalo-area workers.

Starbucks representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“When workers launched their organizing campaign in the summer of 2021, we never could have imagined the lengths Starbucks would go to try to stop employees from exercising their legal right to organize,” Gary Bonadonna Jr., manager of the Workers United Rochester regional joint board, said in a statement. “This ruling proves what we have been saying all along — Starbucks is the poster child of union-busting in the United States.”