Starbucks interim president Howard Schultz told a weekly meeting of store managers Monday that the benefits he’s considering extending to non-union workers won’t immediately apply to the company’s new unionized employees.
The ruling, just over a week after Mr. Schultz’s third tour as chief executive, came after employees in at least 16 company-owned stores voted to join a union in the past six months. although the National Labor Relations Board has not yet certified all the results.
Since Mr. Schultz returned as chief executive, Starbucks has fired at least three union members for violating company policy, a spokesman said. Schultz also suspended share buybacks so that the company “would have the opportunity to invest more in our partners and stores,” he said in a letter to employees on Sunday, and he has held meetings with employees in several cities to share their ideas. ask for business improvement.
Two appearances became controversial when Mr. Schultz was confronted by pro-union workers.
A Starbucks spokesperson said the benefits comments in Monday’s meeting emerged during a question-and-answer session, when Mr. Schultz was asked how new benefits the company is considering fit into the union campaign.
The spokesperson, paraphrasing Mr Schultz, said the CEO responded that when introducing a benefit, “we are not allowed by law to give that benefit unilaterally to the stores that voted to unionize while in collective bargaining. to be.”
The spokesperson said the topic of benefits arose from employee input during recent sessions with Mr. Schultz, and the Starbucks chief had not provided examples of benefits he was considering or when they might be offered.
The comments were reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal.
Labor law experts said companies were allowed to discuss the difference in benefits unionized and non-union workers received, but could not make an implicit promise that workers would receive better benefits if they chose not to join. a trade union.
Matthew Bodie, a former labor council attorney who teaches law at St. Louis University, said the comments could be interpreted as undermining the so-called lab conditions required for upcoming union elections if they had been public, but not necessarily if they were. were expected to remain confidential. Bodie said the comments could still be evidence of an intention to negotiate in bad faith by trying to offer unionized workers a worse deal than non-union workers, which is also considered an unfair labor practice.
Wilma Liebman, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board, said the timing of the potential benefits was questionable, as it was unclear whether they would have been added had they not been for the union campaign.
While it’s difficult to know for sure whether Mr. Schultz has crossed a legal line without reviewing his precise comments, which the company has not provided, the spokesperson said that Mr. Schultz merely stated what the law required.
Mr. Schultz has been outspoken in his opposition to the union. In his letter of Sunday, he suggested that many workers who supported unionization are “collusion with outside union forces” and wrote that he did not believe that “conflict, division and disagreement – which the union was targeting – Starbucks or our partner.”
He added that less than 1 percent of the more than 200,000 Starbucks employees in the United States voted to join a union, and about 65 percent of workers eligible to vote in a union election. had not participated.
