Starbucks has agreed pay more than $35m (26m) to thousands of workers in New York City, to settle the city's claims that the company denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily slashed their hours.
Over 15,000 hourly workers are set to receive $50 for each week they worked during from July 2021 through July 2024, city officials said.
Vilda Vera Mayuga, commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, cited alleged violations of city law requiring predictable schedules for workers.
The settlement, announced on Monday, comes as the coffee chain faces pressure to improve working conditions nationwide.
Starbucks said in a statement that it is "committed to creating the best job in retail and to ensuring our practices follow all laws". It added that it has recently outlined plans to invest $500m to improve coffeehouse staffing and training.
Officials in New York City started investigating Starbucks in 2022 - a probe that began with dozens of worker complaints and grew to encompass all Starbucks locations across the city.
The city's worker protection department found "a pattern of systemic violations", officials said in a statement. Starbucks broke the city's Fair Workweek Law more than half a million times since 2021, they said, calling the agreement announced on Monday the largest worker protection settlement in the city's history.
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