Howard Schultz, the interim CEO of Starbucks, just announced that a slew of new benefits are coming for Starbucks workers, including raise wages. But there’s one catch: these benefits won’t be offered to employees who are unionizing.
In addition to higher wages, Schultz announced during a conference call last Tuesday that Starbucks employees will soon be able to receive benefits like expanded training (double the amount of training time for new baristas starting in June, and the same for shift supervisors in August), better sick leave, an employee app, student loan refinancing, and the ability to receive tips from customers who are not paying with cash. This is all part of the company’s plan to create a better environment for workers and consumers—and, surely, to push against unionization efforts.
In total, Starbucks will put a whopping $200 million towards wages, equipment, and training, and the company plans to spend $1 billion on their employees and customer experience this fiscal year.
"Today, we take further steps to modernize our pay and benefits vision for our partners with further investments in wage," Schultz said. But unionized employees and stores will see none of that money.
What's their reasoning behind this? Schultz said only workers at company-operated stores will see these wage raises and benefits because Starbucks can control their pay, while the company doesn't "have the same freedom to make these improvements at locations that have a union or where union organizing is underway."
In fact, the CEO even noted that the company is prohibited by federal law from promising new wages and benefits to these stores. "By law, we cannot implement unilateral changes at stores that have a union," he said. Yikes! That's some truly sad news for unionized employees.
Back in October, Starbucks promised wage raises to all employees; Schultz says this promise still stands, even for those who have voted to unionize. All employees will receive either a 3% raise or $15 an hour, with even larger wage hikes for tenured hourly employees. Future raises and benefits like the ones outlined in Tuesday's call, though, will not be promised to unionized employees.
As of today, around 50 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize; only five have voted not to. A total of 230 stores have filed petitions for union elections through Starbucks Workers United. Those stores involved in unionization efforts make up a small percentage in the grand theme of things, as there are 8,800 company-owned Starbucks in the United States, but numbers are continuing to grow at a rapid rate, and the company clearly wants to put a stop to that growth. We're interested to see if these promised benefits will slow the rise of unionizing stores.
