NLRB judge: Starbucks violated labor law in offering pay raises, benefits to nonunion workers

A federal labor judge ruled Thursday that Starbucks broke the law by providing raises and additional benefits for non-union workers last year without offering those same increases to unionized staff.

The ruling, first reported by Bloomberg, is a decision on the latest in a trend of allegations that Starbucks went through with a vast union-busting campaign in 2021 and 2022 as its shops increasingly considered joining an upstart barista union. 

Specifically, the judge ruled that the company violated the National Labor Relations Act last August by giving non-union workers a raise to at least $15 an hour, but did not extend the raises to unionized staff.

“Respondent used its top executive to launch a corporate-wide effort to manipulate its employees’ free choice by conditioning their pay and benefits on their willingness to forgo organizing—a direct attack on the Act’s central goals,” Judge Mara-Louise Anzalone wrote.

The ruling is the first to go against the company for a national policy. Previous rulings against Starbucks said it violated labor law on an individual, store-by-store basis.

Anzalone forced Starbucks to provide back pay for the union workers who were not given raises, as well as ordered CEO Laxman Narasimhan to record and distribute a video of him describing his employees’ labor rights.

The Starbucks union-busting allegations reached a crescendo in March, when then-CEO Howard Schultz faced the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 

Sanders grilled Schultz on his company’s union-busting practices and urged workers to continue pursuing unions.

Earlier that month, another labor judge ruled that the company committed ‘egregious and widespread’ labor violations against New York workers attempting to unionize.

In Thursday’s ruling, Anzalone said that the company’s announcement of the raise in early 2022 was a strategic choice to discourage workers from joining the union and cited the company’s communication strategy as a pressure campaign against unionization.

“Respondent continued to barrage partners with ‘updates’ which chiefly served to hammer home the idea that nonunion employees had ‘collaborated’ their way into raises and improved benefits,” the judge wrote.

“The evidence establishes that Respondent’s conduct in withholding wage and benefit increases from union and unionizing employees was calculated to discourage union activity and support within the meaning of the Act,” she continued.

The ruling specifically cites anti-union “news” pieces posted on the company’s website for employees, “listening sessions” where Schultz spoke to workers at stores across the country to discourage unionization and misleading statements about the benefits of organizing.

The Hill has reached out to Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United for comment.