‘DISCOURAGE THEM’

Ex-Starbucks Manager: I Was Told to Randomly Punish Pro-Union Baristas

A Buffalo-area manager claimed that company higher-ups had listed pro-union baristas and instructed him to find ways to discipline them.

A former Starbucks manager testified before a National Labor Relations Board judge in August that corporate higher-ups had instructed him to target pro-union baristas and punish them for irrelevant and sometimes absurd reasons, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. David Almond, a manager who worked in the Buffalo, New York area, had a list of employees thought to harbor pro-union sentiments read aloud to him. In one case, when Almond explained that a pro-union employee was a great worker, a district manager told him to “go through her files” and come up with “something in there we can use against her,” he claimed. In another instance, he was allegedly made to ensure there was always a supervisor scheduled to work at the store, to deter conversations around unionizing. “She said, this way, the [employees] won’t feel comfortable talking about the union, and if they do, then you should discourage them,” Almond said, according to a transcript of his testimony. A Starbucks spokesperson told Bloomberg that, to the company’s knowledge, Almond had not been directed to single out workers.