A Firing Strategy

Starbucks management has fired two hundred workers in the course of an organizing wave that started in Buffalo, New York, in December 2021. So far workers have filed for union recognition in 360 stores and won in 285.

Starbucks didn’t start firing workers right away, according to Casey Moore, a Buffalo barista who now works for Workers United, the division of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) backing the campaign.

But three months into the union wave, she said, corporate managers realized, “‘Oh, crap, we have a big problem here,’ and they did some calculus where they said, ‘Well, we’re going to fire these workers. We might face legal repercussions, but those aren’t as bad as the benefit from scaring workers.’”

On February 8, 2022, Starbucks managers in Memphis, Tennessee, called seven workers into individual meetings and fired them all on various pretexts, one of which was that they had held a press conference in the store.

Beto Sanchez, one of the seven, said he was additionally told he was being fired for failing to wear a mask while off duty — although the rule they cited only required masks while working.

The Memphis workers had gone public with their union drive three weeks earlier, on Martin Luther King Day. The firings were designed to halt the drive by removing the majority of the organizing committee.

But it didn’t work. Although Starbucks hired a bunch of new people, they still voted for the union, which won overwhelmingly.

“It backfired on them completely,” said Sanchez, a shift manager. “Starbucks was hoping to use our firings as a way to squash the fire, to scare people from organizing, but instead it fired people up to organize even more.”

Soon after the seven were terminated, Sanchez said, they saw photos of workers in faraway stores marching on the boss or walking out on strike holding “Reinstate the Memphis 7” signs.

Other firings took place after union votes, whether the union won or not. Victoria Conklin, a shift supervisor at the East Robinson store in Buffalo, was fired on June 22, a week after her store voted to unionize. She led a walkout one morning when six coworkers called out due to COVID. At first her manager had allowed them to close the store, but then he backtracked and required them to fill mobile orders.

Managers claimed Conklin was fired for being thirty minutes late, once, weeks earlier. She was late, she said, because she was exhausted from working too many early shifts and clopenings (closing at night and then opening in the morning). She had repeatedly asked for a different schedule and been denied.

Conklin expects an NLRB hearing in mid-April, nine months after her firing. The delays are because Starbucks is “fighting us every step of the way,” Moore said.

One Mile Out

Joselyn Chuquillanqui is still waiting for justice, too. She was fired July 27, three weeks after Locke, because she was a leader in the organizing effort at her Starbucks store in Great Neck, just outside New York City. “Even one more mile in, I would have had just cause to protect me,” she noted.

The whole Great Neck store signed union cards and they went public in February 2022. But after management conducted a ferocious anti-union campaign, the union lost by one vote. After that, “I had known [my manager] was trying to fire me and was just waiting for an opportunity,” Chuquillanqui said. She was eventually fired for losing her key (she reported it and followed protocol) and for being a few minutes late.

The NLRB process is cumbersome and only works if workers can prove they were fired for taking collective action. It also depends on judges who may identify with management. And unlike the New York City law, there is no provision for punitive damages against outlaw employers, only back pay.

Starbucks also regularly opposes fired workers’ unemployment claims. Chuquillanqui had to fight to get her unemployment checks. “Starbucks tried to appeal twice,” she said. “They were just trying to run me dry with my resources.” She finally won her claim.

Conklin appealed a negative unemployment decision and eventually won, too. But Sanchez said Starbucks blocked the Memphis seven from receiving unemployment compensation.

Origins in the Fight for $15

The just-cause law in New York was championed by SEIU and followed logically from the Fight for $15. Fast food companies in New York City are now required to pay fifteen dollars an hour, but they still inflict unstable schedules on their workers, negating the benefits of higher pay.

To curb abuses, SEIU mega-local 32BJ worked with fast food workers to pass a city Fair Workweek Law in 2017, which requires two weeks’ advance notice of schedule changes and premium pay when there are violations. Similar laws are in force in San Francisco and Seattle.

Fair Workweek posters are required in every fast-food joint. Locke said his managers “hoped nobody reads the poster.” He pointed it out to coworkers, but even with the premium pay schedule listed in black and white, it was another matter to get management to pay up.

The money is significant. For example, the law provides forty-five dollars if you are given less than a week’s notice of reduced hours. There’s a $100 premium for clopening, and you can refuse the shift. In September, Chipotle agreed to pay $20 million to thirteen thousand New York City Chipotle workers for workweek violations under the law. The workers at the chain are organizing with help from 32BJ.

The fast-food just-cause law passed in 2021 was intended to give workers some backup when they demanded their scheduling rights and premium pay. The bill also provides penalties for involuntary cuts in hours — a loophole in the Fair Workweek statute.

The just-cause law says that after you have passed your thirty-day probationary period, you can only be fired after you get warnings, an opportunity to improve, and retraining. (There are exceptions in cases where a worker endangers coworkers or the public.) And if your firing was unjust, you can be reinstated with back pay.

“Reinstatement is the key to making these laws useful in organizing,” said Rand Wilson, a longtime just-cause advocate who currently works for Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

Montana is the one US state with a just-cause law. Wrongly fired workers there can win up to four years of back pay and recover legal fees, but they “never had reinstatement, so their just cause is not so great,” Wilson said. “If you can march somebody back into work after they’ve been fired, they will feel a lot different about the union.”

Power of Reinstatement

That power was on display when the Memphis seven won reinstatement in September. Starbucks’ actions were so egregious that the NRLB asked a judge to order them hired back while other aspects of the case continued through the courts.

“It’s pleasant to know they’re taking it seriously, and not listening to Starbucks’ whining,” Sanchez said. Their back-pay case is still pending.

When they got reinstated, Sanchez said, there was an uptick in filings at other stores, “because people saw, hey, these people got their jobs back.”

Sanchez noted that the NLRB is understaffed, just like Starbucks stores, and that has led to delays. Still, the cases grind forward. “We’re getting them little by little. Each of them have their court dates. We’re just very ready for them to all get their jobs back.”

In Buffalo, Conklin said if her NLRB decision is favorable and she is offered reinstatement, “I would definitely go back. I want to look them in the eyes: I’m not leaving, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”