Over the course of 2022, many thousands of Starbucks partners joined together with their coworkers to push for better working conditions, with over 350 locations holding union votes–but in spite of the protections the National Labor Relations Act attempts to guarantee, the workers have been met with tremendous retaliation. In response, Senator Bernie Sanders, as Chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, has written to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz asking him to testify on March 9. While all of the HELP Committee’s Democratic members have signed on, the republican members have not, including Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.
Out of Alabama’s 85 Starbucks stores, two have held union elections. Although the workers ultimately won their elections, they faced retaliation both before and after the votes. At the Scottsboro Starbucks, two organizers were fired just before ballots went out, while others at both the Scottsboro store and the unionized Birmingham location faced hour cuts and schedule changes. The Birmingham Starbucks workers faced multiple terminations as well; one of those terminated organizers, former Shift Supervisor Kyle McGucken, was fired in October, immediately upon returning from paternity leave. McGucken had been organizing publicly for months, and was denied Weingarten rights when they requested a union representative be present for the meeting in which they were terminated.
Starbucks workers in Alabama aren’t the only ones facing retaliation for exercising their right to unionize. Starbucks Workers United states that over 100 workers across the country have been fired in retaliation, and that the hour cuts and schedule changes Alabama Starbucks workers are seeing is a nationwide campaign to demoralize its workforce. On the other side of the Alabama – Georgia line, a vocal pro-union worker was fired for tweeting that he was told to work while testing positive for COVID. In Tennessee, seven workers were fired at just one Memphis location. The group came to be known as the Memphis 7, and were ultimately reinstated, with the final decision coming from a Trump-appointed district court judge. However, they went eight months without their jobs. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has also accused Starbucks of illegally withholding raises and benefits from unionized locations, and has repeatedly asked federal courts to issue a nationwide cease and desist order against the company.
The long delay to resolution in these cases puts workers at a disadvantage. Even if they win their case and get reinstated, most working people are unable to go eight months without an income. For Starbucks, though, having to reinstate a fired employee is not particularly burdensome; the company appears to think the terminations are sufficiently damaging to the campaign to continue regardless of NLRB censure.
Tuberville did not respond to repeated requests for comment about his absence from the HELP committee letter.
This is not the first time that Tuberville has opposed congressional efforts to bring attention to employer abuse in his state. In February 2022, as Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders held a hearing on the abuse of workers and consumers by private equity, highlighting how the laws set by Congress unfairly advantaged Warrior Met through bankruptcy proceedings. At the hearing, Alabama coal miners testified about the impact these private equity abuses have had on their lives. As the miners approach two years on strike, the longest in Alabama history, Tuberville has not only failed to take any action to resolve the situation, but criticized his colleagues for holding a hearing on the matter, quoting from press releases put out by the bosses at Warrior Met.
Although union members and community supporters from around the state have showed up repeatedly to support the miners as well as Starbucks organizers at both locations, Alabama’s politicians have been almost entirely absent. As a result, Alabama’s Starbucks workers have been left to deal with retaliation without support from their elected representatives. “Starbucks and Schultz have been constantly illegally busting unions and Tuberville’s refusal to do anything is telling,” said Sydney O’Neal, a partner at the unionized location in Birmingham.
McGucken noted Tuberville has emphasized that as a coach, he learned to listen as much as talk so that he can understand problems and deliver a win. “If this is true,” McGucken said, “listen to working people struggling to make a paycheck, understand the problem is corporate greed, and help our union win for the workers.”