Judge: Starbucks violated federal labor law by withholding pay hikes from unionized workers | CNN Business
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Starbucks violated federal labor law when it increased wages and offered new perks and benefits only to non-union employees, a National Labor Relations Board judge found Thursday.

Starbucks violated federal labor law when it increased wages and offered new perks and benefits only to non-union employees, a National Labor Relations Board judge found Thursday.

The decision is the latest in a series of NLRB rulings finding that Starbucks has violated labor law in its efforts to stop unions from forming in its coffee shops.

“The issue at the heart of this case is whether, under current Board law, [Starbucks] was entitled to explicitly reward employees,” for not participating in union activity, “while falsely telling its workers that the federal labor law forced it to take this action,” wrote administrative law judge Mara-Louise Anzalone. “It was not.”

  • eric
    108•1 year ago

    In Thursday’s decision, Anzalone recommended that Starbucks offer the benefits and higher pay to excluded employees, starting from the date when they went into effect for non-union workers, among other remedies.

    Starbucks should also post a notice in its cafes telling workers that the NLRB found Starbucks had violated federal labor law, and detailing employee rights, she said.

    This is the part that pisses me off the most - the only punishment is that Starbucks has to pay the unionized employees what they are owed and post a piece of paper correcting their earlier lies. There’s no fine, so they risked nothing by breaking the law.

    This isn’t even enough to be considered a slap on the wrist. Other companies will take note and try any creatively dishonest policy they can come up with to prevent unionization.

    • @alvvayson
      58•1 year ago

      There really should be jail time for C-levels.

      Anything less is being soft on crime.

    • Norgur
      6•1 year ago

      While I do agree that there should be more of a fine, the judge has torn Starbucks’ anti trust efforts wide open by having them admit to their lies in writing to their employees. The implications for Starbucks can easily be severe here as employees start to doubt the bullshit they got indoctrinated with by anti trust wankers.

      • @[email protected]
        26•1 year ago

        My old job had quite a few of these legally mandated “whoopsie we crossed the line a bit and got our hands slapped by the NLRB” posters around. The print was tiny and it covered the whole corkboard, basically just quoting the exact text of labor laws all written in impenetrable legalize. They weren’t exactly causing a wave of class consciousness among the workers.

        Oh also there were cameras watching the posters.

        • Norgur
          4•1 year ago

          Tbh, I’m betting more on the news than on the posters. Starbucks workers will see this shared via social media and such. Or so I hope. This is not at all certain, yet I think it might damage Starbucks more than some fine that will not change anything for the workers either.

          • @[email protected]
            15•1 year ago

            Surely concrete, actual monetary damage is more discouraging than some kind of class solidarity revelation that has yet to spark from a news article being shared. It’s not like doing this precludes them also getting a fine. Being unable to do this without serious repercussions would harm them a great deal more, in my opinion.