Workers at Starbucks’ NYC Reserve Roastery went on strike Tuesday and Wednesday over some disturbing conditions in the store. They say a moldy ice machine hasn’t been fixed and, more recently, they found bed bugs in the employee break room. The Roastery became the first New York City Starbucks location to unionize earlier this year.
A Starbucks spokesperson told Patch that a pest control service “found no infestation or insect activity.” Workers, though, say that bed bugs were found multiple times, including once by management. “Proper protocols and communication regarding bed bugs is scarce,” one of the workers told Patch. “All the while, we haven't heard a peep from Starbucks about bargaining our contract.”
Starbucks has delayed bargaining contracts with workers at the 250 or so locations that have voted to unionize, and this week the company started bargaining meetings in five locations only to walk out almost immediately.
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At the handful of bargaining sessions scheduled for this week, Starbucks management quickly walked out, objecting to the fact that members of the union’s national bargaining committee were observing via Zoom. Workers, though, say there were no ground rules barring remote observers, and since the management walk-outs come after the company delayed beginning negotiations for months and continues to refuse to bargain with most of its unionized stores, this looks an awful lot like a pretext to continue delaying. Starbucks’ insistence that meetings have to be fully in person is a particularly obvious ploy, since management has in some cases insisted on last-minute changes that left workers unable to attend … because of their work schedules at Starbucks.
Workers documented the course of a planned bargaining session for one Buffalo-area store. First, the corporate team was late:
The management negotiators said they were outside the conference room waiting for chairs. Which is funny, since it sure looks like there were chairs there. After arriving late, they stayed for five minutes, then left for two hours before returning to say only that they would not participate if anyone was observing remotely.
Starbucks management—or its high-priced anti-union attorneys—pulled the same act in five locations:
One theme of Starbucks’ union-busting campaign has been that the union is a separate entity, and that “there are no partners at the table, just lawyers and union reps.” But we can see clearly here that it’s Starbucks workers (or “partners,” in corporate terminology) at the table, and management’s lawyers walking away because more workers are observing remotely.
Starbucks is desperate to blunt the momentum of the union wave at its stores, and delaying negotiations and wasting people’s time is an obvious part of that effort. No doubt the company paid Littler Mendelson, its union-busting law firm, plenty of money to implement the strategy.
Sign and send the petition to Starbucks company leadership and board: Stop union-busting and sign the Fair Election Principles.
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