Starbucks Workers Notch a Win in 'Demands of Decency'

Starbucks will pay about $35 million to 15,000-plus New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday, hours before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders visited striking baristas on a picket line. The development came amid a continuing strike by Starbucks' union that began last month at dozens of locations around the country, reports the AP. The workers want better hours and increased staffing, and they're angry that Starbucks hasn't agreed on a contract nearly four years after workers voted to unionize at a store in Buffalo, New York.

Mamdani, Sanders, and some state and city officials sought to amplify the baristas' message by mingling with scores of strikers and supporters outside a Starbucks shop in Brooklyn. "These are not demands of greed—these are demands of decency," Mamdani, a democratic socialist who ran on pledges to aid working-class people, told the crowd. Some workers carried giant mock-ups of Starbucks takeout cups, bearing the union's logo instead of the coffee chain's insignia.

Striking baristas described a harried workplace with chronic short-staffing, online orders so complex that the ticket is sometimes longer than the cup, and last-minute calls to come in. The city began investigating in 2022 after receiving dozens of worker complaints against several Starbucks locations; the probe eventually expanded to hundreds of stores. The city said it found, among other things, that most Starbucks employees never got regular schedules, making it difficult for staffers to plan other commitments such as child care, education, or other jobs.

The company also denied workers the chance to pick up extra shifts, per the city. Under the agreement announced Monday with New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Starbucks will pay $3.4 million in civil penalties, in addition to the $35 million it's paying workers. The company also agreed to comply with the city's Fair Workweek Law going forward. Most of the affected employees who held hourly positions will receive $50 for each week worked from July 2021 through July 2024, the department said. Workers who experienced a violation after that may be eligible for compensation by filing a complaint with the department. The settlement also guarantees that employees laid off during recent store closings in the city will get an opportunity for reinstatement at other Starbucks locations.