Starbucks on Tuesday fired seven employees at one of its cafes in Memphis, in the central United States, because they were looking to join Starbucks Workers United (SWU), the first union to have been recently created within the chain in the country.
A company spokesman, Reggie Borges, said the workers were fired for serious safety violations. Officially, they were accused of breaking internal rules by letting journalists into the facility outside business hours for interviews last month. But this is mostly “retaliation” once morest employees who sought to create a union in the cafe or helped them, SWU says in a statement.
“I had never been told or mentioned” the rules put forward by Starbucks to justify the dismissal, said Nikki Taylor, team leader at the cafe in question. “This is a clear attempt by Starbucks to retaliate once morest those who are leading the battle for a union in the establishment and to frighten other employees,” she added in the statement.
More than 50 other stores affected
Petitions will be filed with the agency responsible for labor law in the United States, the NLRB, the organization claims.
The company “respects the right of (its) employees to join a trade union” and “does not carry out any anti-union actions,” the Starbucks spokesman told AFP on Tuesday. But “she also expects her employees to follow the rules of (her) establishments,” which are passed on to all employees upon arrival during safety training at the store in which they work.
The Memphis layoffs come just two months following a Buffalo, N.Y., coffee shop became the first U.S. Starbucks to unionize. According to the SWU, more than 50 other stores across the U.S. are also in the process of holding union elections.
Although the Buffalo effort involved only 100 employees, the management of the Starbucks luxury coffee group fought hard once morest this effort, sending top company officials to try to influence the vote, highlighting the medical coverage they have put in place, the average salary and different financing arrangements for students.
A fund created Tuesday by the organization to support laid-off Memphis employees had raised nearly $25,000 within hours of its launch.
