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Unionized Starbucks workers won’t have access to improved benefits the company is considering, CEO Howard Schultz told store leaders in an online forum on Monday.
At the time of his comments, nearly 200 Starbucks stores in 30 states had filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), seeking to hold union elections.
Schultz told store management that the company is considering expanding benefits to combat attrition and to help recruit baristas, and he cited U.S. labor law requirements that employers negotiate pay and benefits separately with unionized workers. His comments were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Is it really legal for a major employer like Starbucks, with nearly 400,000 workers in the U.S. alone, to offer such a two-tiered benefits system, effectively punishing workers for choosing to unionize?
“It's technically correct,” Cathy Creighton, director of the Buffalo co-lab at Cornell’s school for industrial and labor relations, told Fortune. Once workers vote to unionize, she says, their employer must indeed negotiate with them before instituting changes to things like benefits and wages.
However, she says, nothing prevents a company from offering unionized workers those same benefits. If the company wanted to, it could go to each unionized store and ask if they want improved benefits or wages, while...
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