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Starbucks illegally withheld raises and tips from union workers, NLRB says
- mjhay 4y agoThe NLRB has been pretty well defanged at this point. I doubt anything significant will happen here.
- justin66 4y agoIt's been rumored over the years that Starbucks' chairman Howard Schultz has some pretty lofty political aspirations. There's a darkly humorous thing that happens when sort of liberalish business leaders discover that workers at their company want to unionize (clearly there must be some kind of mistake!), but Schultz might just get over it and play ball with the unions.
- WeylandYutani 4y agoThey have Starbucks in Europe and cannot sabotage unions there. American liberals need to walk the talk. But it seems so many of them are just closet Republicans especially when the idealism costs them money. I haven't forgotten how Bernie Sanders was silenced.
- myspy 4y agoWow, real a*holes the leadership of Starbucks.
- wahnfrieden 4y agoWage theft is three times larger than the rest of categories of theft combined, so I suspect the issue is more systemic than some individually asshole leaders / more complex than celebrity-like good vs bad evaluation of individual actors. Agreed they are assholes, but am skeptical that advicating nicer ones and fining the mean ones can legitimize the whole system
- kevinventullo 4y agoSystemic or not, these decisions are still made by individual actors who very much know the difference between right and wrong.
- ihateyouall123 4y agoI have no idea what right or wrong means to most people in 2023. Also there is no such thing unless you believe in Judeo-Christian values. There are only actions
- kevinventullo 4y agoThank you for the insight, ihateyouall123.
- cjtrowbridge 4y agoYes and, not no but.
- uoaei 4y agoRight, culture is frequently described as a top-down phenomenon, so it is appropriate to look at those highest in the leadership chain first, as they are prime movers when it comes to this kind of thing. They shape the organization's operations through their choices of what to get involved in and what to let others handle.
- jwestbury 4y agoWage theft is also not punished nearly heavily enough to act as a deterrent. From Rutgers: "Even if an employer is caught, the penalties are generally not severe enough to change their future behavior. The two primary penalties that DOL uses are civil money penalties and liquidated damages. Employers who repeatedly or willfully violate the minimum wage and overtime requirements may be subjected to civil monetary penalties of up to $1,100 for each violation, but DOL seldom uses these penalties (Bobo, 2009)."[0] [0]https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Centers/CWW/Publications/wage_theft_in_the_united_states_a_critical_review_june_2020.pdf https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/Documents/Cente...
- joe4147 4y agoThe two comments above you are discussing how this is kind of what workers signed up for when they joined a union. Maybe SB leadership are assholes (and maybe they are breaking labor laws -- I genuinely don't know much about this topic), and not to call you out specifically, but I see a lot "drive by" comments like these that are just expression of anger, and don't really engage with the story at all. I see a lot of non-programming discussions get buried in this stuff, and it makes HN feel like Reddit. I used to always feel like more likely than not I'd learn things from HN comments.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago[flagged]
- Bloating 4y ago[flagged]
- giraffe_lady 4y ago[flagged]
- ihateyouall123 4y ago[flagged]
- giraffe_lady 4y ago[flagged]
- chimprich 4y agoHN stories about unions always attract low-value comments. I prefer the GP-kind of comments to the elaborate troll replies pretending to understand unionisation ("oh look! Less money! That must have been the sort of thing the workers really wanted when they unionised").
- 4y ago
- dang 4y agoMaybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive or name-calling comments to HN. We're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sokoloff 4y agoI'm clearly no expert in labor law, but isn't the entire point of unionization that the company has to negotiate significant changes in contract and benefits terms with the union? As a lay person, that seems like the first principles of what unionization means. The company can act directly with the workers in non-union locations and must work with the union in union locations; that seems to be what Starbucks is doing. (Now, are they being strategic and jerks about it? Yeah, probably, but they couldn't unilaterally impose these changes, even if seemingly beneficial to workers, without negotiations with the union.)
- brightball 4y agoI've heard that this is typically how it goes. Union reps will negotiate every detail, so all of the stuff that you have already done for the rest of your staff has to be brought to the table as a negotiating point with the union for it to factor into the conversation.
- uoaei 4y agoNone of your assumptions matter. Only the union contract and its contents matter. Do you have the text of the contract?
- justin66 4y ago> Only the union contract and its contents matter. Strictly speaking, a century's worth of American labor law also matter. Since we're listing things that the average hn user is unfamiliar with.
- hvs 4y agoStarbucks is allowed to give benefits to union members without negotiation (why would unions want to fight free benefits?). But most companies don't just give benefits to unions when they can use them in contract negotiations. Now, I'm not a lawyer, labor or otherwise, so I'm not sure how the law works when you provide benefits to non-union shops but not to union shops, but that's what the NLRB is for.
- 4y ago
- adamsmith143 4y agoEven if what they did is illegal and they get punished, the fines are likely to be something like <1% of yearly revenue and basically a rounding error for them so what incentive do they have to stop doing it?
- rootusrootus 4y ago> what incentive do they have to stop doing it? It makes them look petty, it will add friction to their relationship with the unions, and it probably costs them a little extra to deliberately exclude a relatively small number of locations from the ability to tip than it would to just universally roll it out. It shouldn't take much of a fine to convince them to give up on it. The bad PR alone would probably be enough.
- adamsmith143 4y ago>It shouldn't take much of a fine to convince them to give up on it. The bad PR alone would probably be enough. I'm not sure about that. Plenty of companies receive fines for doing shady and illegal things and I don't think their bottom lines change much as a result.
- likeraindrops 4y ago> It makes them look petty Caring about looking petty has never once crossed Starbuck's radar. Union and non-union stores look the same to customers (except now some allow credit card tipping), so customers would only know about this at all if they're in tune with this type of news.
- xyzelement 4y agoI am not sure I get the logic here. Labor unions create more structure and rigidity in the employer employee relationship, where everything is negotiated rather than ad hoc. Presumably the employees in unionized stores got some benefits from the union (higher wages, stability? Otherwise what's the point of the union.) So they must already have some baseline they negotiated and have been happy with. Starbucks is rolling out a different model to it's not structured employee situations, this is both their right since the rigidity of the union isn't there, and perhaps it's needed there more. As a layperson that "not relying on tips" is a goal that a union should provide (else what's the point?) So it's weird that they now want those too. Totally get why the union doesn't like it but it's kinda one sided. You are either married or you okay the field.
- rootusrootus 4y agoThis is just facilitation of customer tips to employees, not an additional benefit paid to employees by Starbucks.
- xyzelement 4y agoWhy does that matter? It still requires (a) SBUX to do work and (b) has impact on SBUX. What I mean by later : if I am someone who didn't tip before the CC system but now I do because it's easy, my cup of coffee has gone up by a buck. On the margin at some point it's going to just be the same as a price raise (coffee is 5 bucks rather than 4) which obviously impacts business at least somewhat.
- tssva 4y agoYour logic that the cost of a cup of coffee has effectively gone up by $1 because you have voluntarily given a $1 tip which you didn't but could have given prior is completely illogical.
- xyzelement 4y agoIt's tightly logical but you are failing to follow. Credit card integration obviously generates more tipping, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it. This is because once they see the prompt, many people think of the tip as mandatory (vs may not have thought about it) - or they don't have cash but now can tip. A good thing. I always tip well. Now coffee becomes a thing you tip for, for these people. Totally voluntary. For those people, this raises the effective price of a cup of coffee. Getting Starbucks now becomes a costlier habit. At the margins this can drive someone to go elsewhere, skip, etc (basic supply and demand.) This may not apply to some given individual but across millions of customers over a long time price including tip obviously affects quantity demanded.
- MuffinFlavored 4y agoBarista starting Hourly Pay Range near me: $15.50 to $17.50 (before tips) > From free coffee to competitive pay, Starbucks is proud to offer a comprehensive compensation and benefits package to our eligible part-time and full-time partners. Benefits include 100% tuition coverage through our Starbucks College Achievement Plan, health coverage with a variety of plans to choose from, and stock & savings programs like our equity reward program, Bean Stock. What’s more, Starbucks offers flexible scheduling and opportunities for paid time off. Visit starbucksbenefits.com for details. This is a non union store to my knowledge. Looking at this as pessimistically as possible, I'll guess nobody is getting 40 solid hours a week (aka they strategically cycle through 20 to 30 hour/week part time employees) 7 days a week, 25 hours a week, let's say you don't work 3 days (you are 100% off, not on call in case the store gets busy or something) 25 hours a week, 4 days a week. about 6.25 hours a shift. let's say it's $16/hr $100 in a 6.25 hour day, 4 days a week, $400/week gross Let's say you don't work at all 4 weeks of the year (store closed for holiday, you take unpaid vacation/sick time/call out, you don't use PTO, i don't know). 52 weeks a year, say you work 48 full. $16/hr, 25 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $19.2k/yr before any tips $16/hr, 30 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $23.0k/yr before any tips $16/hr, 35 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $26.8k/yr before any tips $16/hr, 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year: $30.7k/yr before any tips $16/hr, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year: $32.0k/yr before any tips so the upper bound for what you'll most likely ever earn gross as a barista at starbucks is $32k/yr say the union comes in, negotiates. what does this upper bound increase to?
- jwestbury 4y ago> say the union comes in, negotiates. what does this upper bound increase to? Reasonable sick time allocation without fear of being fired?
- MuffinFlavored 4y agoAre you telling me if you're a good part time (or full time) barista at Starbucks in a non-union store and you don't abuse (call in sick too often like being hungover from a party the night before, are reliable), you have to worry about getting fired for taking... 5 days off unpaid sick? I kind of "don't believe" that's how the world works.
- manv1 4y ago[flagged]
- vore 4y agoYou know, there's a huge range of things between labor representatives and Soviet communism. Nobody is going around calling unionized actors communists.
- exabrial 4y ago[flagged]
- oofta-boofta 4y agoYour classist rant is dumb, bad, and so poorly thought out I don't even know where to begin other than possibly accusing you of being a shill bought and paid for Starbuck's PR team to astroturf anti-union sentiments. You sound like someone who's either never had to do a hard job, like food service, or your a fellow worker so inculcated with corporate propaganda you come across like a Clayton Bigsby-esque caricature. All workers should be treated fairly, paid a living wage, and not be treated like robots to be thrown away at the slightest inconvenience. This is what a union does.
- exabrial 4y agoYou nailed it. I work for Starbucks ;)
- olliej 4y agoFriendly reminder: tips are not paid to an employer, they are paid directly to the employee. An employer cannot withhold tips in any circumstance because tips are not their property. Withholding tips is explicitly theft.
- xracy 4y agoFeels like pretty clear behavior from starbucks to try and convince people they're better off not being in a union. When in actuality they probably wouldn't have changed anything for the other stores, had stores not unionized.