Starbucks Committed ‘Substantial' Legal Violations To Defeat Union, Officials Say

Posted By TheNewsCommenter: From Huffpost.com: “Federal Officials Accuse Starbucks Of Egregious Union-Busting”. Below is an excerpt from the article.

Federal labor officials say Starbucks broke the law repeatedly during a union organizing campaign in Florida and should be forced to bargain with the workers there.

A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against the company on Tuesday, asking that a judge take the rare step of issuing a “bargaining order” for the Starbucks store in Estero, Florida. Such an order would effectively throw out the results of an election in which workers voted 21-11 against unionizing in an initial tally last May.

The regional director, David Cohen, argued that the election was irreparably tainted by Starbucks’ actions, and that there was only a “slight possibility” that a do-over election could be run fairly. He said compelling Starbucks to bargain with the Estero workers was the only certain way to rectify the situation, given the company’s “serious and substantial violations.”

“Requests for a bargaining order tend to be reserved for what officials consider egregious cases of labor law violations.”

Among other charges, Cohen alleged that Starbucks fired a worker because they were a lead organizer for the union, threatened to withhold raises and benefits if workers unionized, and carried out “closer than normal supervision” of workers to discourage them from forming a union.

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