Dozens of fed-up Starbucks baristas trying to unionize the coffee company in New York City promise to file complaints on Tuesday for violations of city law governing consistent schedules for workers.
It will be the first collaboration between the fledgling union, Starbucks Workers United, and 32BJ-SEIU, the largest service workers’ union in the country. The newer organization has had mixed results in trying to unionize the giant coffee corporation to date.
Of the 15,000-plus Starbucks cafes in the U.S., only a few locations have voted for unionization. The company’s famously anti-union CEO Howard Schultz came out of retirement in 2022 after workers started to organize. He has caught the attention of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lambasted him in a January letter and demanded that he “immediately halt [his] aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign.”
Complaints from 27 baristas at 23 Starbucks in four of the five boroughs say they have grounds for complaints with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection for Fair Workweek Law violations, according to a 32BJ spokeswoman. Those include not keeping a consistent schedule for workers, not paying premium rates for opening and closing shifts and not giving first dibs on shifts to workers with seniority. The Big Apple has 275 Starbucks locations, the most of any city in the country.
”Multinational corporations like Starbucks have no excuse for not following the law. We urge the agency to seek full compliance from Starbucks and all other fast food companies doing business in our city,” 32BJ President Manny Pastreich wrote to the department. He said that the union is looking at possible violations at three additional locations.
Barista Lee Lambert, 22, said his hours have been filtered down to a drip at the Williams St. location in the Financial District — from 20 to 25 per week to as little as 14 weekly hours.
“All labor costs have been cut dramatically,” said Lambert, a recent graduate of Pace…
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