Starbucks Anti-Union Lies

A classic move in the anti-union playbook is to offer your non-union workers something that you don’t offer your unionized workers, making the bogus lie that a union would stop the company from offering higher wages or better benefits to workers. This is what Starbucks is now trying to pull.

• Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz has a message for workers interested in unionizing: If you do, you could miss out on higher wages. The coffee chain said it would raise wages back in October. Starbucks will honor those commitments to employees even if they have voted to unionize, Schultz said during an analyst call Tuesday. But future wage hikes are coming. And they won’t necessarily apply to workers in unionized stores, he said.”Today, we take further steps to modernize our pay and benefits vision for our partners with further investments in wage … and in September, we will share additional initiatives we are planning for Starbucks partners,” he said.
• But “we do not have the same freedom to make these improvements at locations that have a union or where union organizing is underway,” he said, adding that federal law “prohibits us from promising new wages and benefits at stores involved in union organizing.” The first company-operated Starbucks store voted to unionize in December. Since then, about 46 stores have voted to unionize, with five voting against. Overall, 237 company-owned stores have filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board so far.

Again, this is complete bullshit. Hard to say whether workers will believe it. But with 46 out of 51 stores winning their election and 237 more to come, a number that grows by the day, so far workers are very much not having it.