Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Partners with Starbucks Workers United announced on Tuesday the union has filed over unfair labor practice 20 charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to stop Starbucks from continuing its anti-union campaign.
"We have, as of today, filed 21 ULPs against the company," said Michelle Eisen from the Elmwood Ave. store, one of the three locations nationwide that has unionized, on Tuesday. "A national charge, as well as several charges in Buffalo alone, which will encompass 18 of the current 20 stores that are located in this market."
After partners of Starbucks Workers United announced their initiative to unionize at the end of August this past year, Starbucks engaged in a campaign of surveillance, intimidation and coercion to undermine employee organizing efforts, according to the union. In their effort to slow up or complicate to unionize, Starbucks began closing stores, stacking units with scores of new hires, and flooding area stores with several out of town managers.
Some of the allegations Starbucks Workers United have filed with the NLRB include the extreme surveillance of stores and workers by company managers and other corporate advisors, the closing of a store in Cheektowaga and dispersing the store's employees across other stores in the area, and the firing of a partner at the Elmwood Ave. location that Eisen described as an "unfair firing."
"What we're alleging to the National Labor Relations Board, which is the federal government agency that enforces labor law in this country, is that everything you just heard, times 100, is a violation of workers rights under federal labor law," said attorney Ian Hayes representing Starbucks Workers United. "We already know that all of this disruptive, horrible behavior by the company is morally repugnant, it's disgusting. The public is on our side on that, there's been a lot of reporting on that. We're sort of already at that point."
The workers are asking the NLRB to stop the company's campaign not only in Buffalo, but also nationally by seeking all remedies the Board has available to it.
"For all of the 21 ULP charges that we've filed this week, and in the last couple of weeks, we're asking not just that the NLRB find there was a violation of the law - isn't that horrible and bad - we're asking them to stop it. We're asking for injunctive relief against Starbucks. In the Buffalo area, at all of these stores, and nationally," Hayes said. "We're asking for broad cease and desist orders to stop not only the specific conduct that we're alleging and the categories of behavior, but to stop any anti-union campaign or behavior of that type broadly. In other words, the company cannot be trusted to just follow a set of strict requirements saying you can't do surveillance, you can't pull the anti-union meetings. We're asking the NLRB to put a stop to the entire anti-union campaign. It's been that destructive, and it's that egregious of a violation of the law."
For the workers like Eisen, who fought hard to help Elmwood Ave. to become the first Starbucks store in the nation to unionize, she did not expect this process of helping other stores unionizing being this difficult. To a point where they have filed several unfair labor practice charges against Starbucks for their anti-union campaign.
"I was hoping that once we won that first store - I think most of us were hoping that once we won that first store - that the company would acknowledge that we had been successful in unionizing, and try to work with us. I think on the face, they did," Eisen said. "We've had bargaining sessions at Elmwood, so that is moving forward. But it's impossible to say that you're going to bargain in good faith with one store while you're actively trying to crush unions and other stores. I'm very disappointed. This is not the company I started with 10 years ago. I think they need to knock it off and recognize what's happening here."
You can listen to the entire press conference below:
