PORTLAND, Maine — The National Labor Relations Board accused Starbucks of illegally closing 23 stores, including a location in Portland, Maine.
The complaint filed Wednesday night seeks an order for the company to reopen all those store locations and provide workers with lost wages and other lost benefits.
Last November, employees at the Starbucks location on Middle Street in Portland voted to unionize and just one month later, the company closed that location. Former employees of that store and union advocates accused Starbucks of closing the store as an act of union busting.
"We just need to crack down on these companies, otherwise they’ll just continue to do it as a cost of doing business," Andy O'Brien, communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO, said Friday. "As this decision shows, if you violate workers’ rights to stop workers from collectively bargaining, you will pay the cost."
The Maine AFL-CIO represents 42,000 union members and retirees in the state.
Julia Langevin, a staff organizer for Workers United, said she was a former Starbucks employee and worked there for years. While she enjoyed a close-knit work environment more than 15 years ago, Langevin claims the culture within the company has changed.
She said companies like Starbucks have a lot of money and control while they face unionization efforts across the country.
“If it happens at Starbucks, it could happen at Amazon, it could happen at any of these major international corporations and I think those companies are feeling a lot of pressure," Langevin added.
Now, Langevin said the NLRB will gather testimony from former employees ahead of a public hearing which could begin next summer.
"[Former employees] shared with the news with each other yesterday and they were really excited and had something I think to feel vindicated and validated from their experiences," she added.
Meanwhile, an independent assessment, conducted by Attorney Thomas Mackall, released Wednesday shows Starbucks should better communicate its commitment to workers’ collective bargaining rights and train its employees to respect those rights.
Company shareholders voted in March to conduct that assessment to see whether Starbucks was adhering to its own human rights standards amid a contentious effort to unionize its U.S. stores.
According to The Associated Press, at least 370 of the 9,600 Starbucks locations have voted to unionize in the last two years.
In a statement, Sara Trilling, executive vice president and president of Starbucks North America, said:
“In support of our Reinvention Plan, and as part of our ongoing efforts to transform our store portfolio, we continue to open, close and evolve our stores as we assess, reposition and strengthen our store portfolio. Each year as a standard course of business, we evaluate the store portfolio to determine where we can best meet our community and customers’ needs. This includes opening new locations, identifying stores in need of investment or renovation, exploring locations where an alternative format is needed and, in some instances, re-evaluating our footprint.”
