Starbucks Corp (NASDAQ:SBUX) has refused to negotiate in good faith at 144 of its newly-unionized cafes, US labor board prosecutors alleged in a complaint, as reported by Bloomberg.
The locations include the first two cafes to unionize with Starbucks Workers United, both in upstate New York, in which the National Labor Relations Board’s Seattle regional director alleges that Starbucks “bargained with no intention of reaching agreement” with the union, including by “insisting upon proposals that are predictably unacceptable to the union,” and “demeaning and otherwise undermining the union’s chosen representatives,” according to a filing on Tuesday.
Bloomberg noted that Starbucks didn’t immediately respond to its inquiry regarding the complaint, although the company has said repeatedly that it is negotiating fairly, and that the union is the one failing to do so.
The National Labor Relations Board has the authority to order companies to change their behavior but not to issue punitive damages for violations.
The Starbucks Workers United union has won elections at 300 of the company’s 9,000 corporate-run US cafes since voting began in late 2021, but none of those locations has yet come close to securing a collective bargaining agreement with the company.
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