On Tuesday morning, 10 Workers at Starbucks’ upscale Reserve Roastery in Manhattan, New York, quit their jobs amid allegations of unsanitary working conditions, including bed bugs and black mold, and union busting by management.
“No one wants to be in a building where management lies to us and leaves us in the dark where we clearly have a major bed bug infestation. Nobody wanted to be there,” he says 27-year-old Nicole DeRose, a store employee who was on shift when the strike began.
Starbucks Media Relations said in an email to In These Times that it has become aware of a “potential pest problem” on Monday and called a pest control service who found no evidence of an infestation and “gave the all-clear to reopen on Tuesday,” the company said in the email “The store has been treated with precautionary measures to avoid possible future problems.”
But DeRose claims a manager told her Starbucks had known about the bed bug infestation since Saturday, despite later denials from other managers. And according to DeRose, as of Tuesday, at least one of her co-workers had spots on his chest that appeared to resemble bed bug bites based on workers’ internet research, but he hadn’t confirmed the diagnosis at the time of their search. DeRose says that when her colleague left the roastery, a manager said: “If you go outside, that’s a mistake.”
Starbucks workers claim the situation demonstrates the company’s unwillingness to speak openly with its workers and address issues openly.
“We asked many questions such as ‘Where do we put our stuff? Where should I leave my bag if I can’t leave it in the break room because there are bed bugs there?’ And they said ‘We don’t know,'” says DeRose.
She adds “We asked for brand new, clean aprons. They didn’t have clean aprons for us. They tried to find random aprons for us. It was just a very disorganized day and that was insulting enough,” she says.
Joel Foote, a 23A year-old worker at the roastery, who was not working a shift on Tuesday, joined the picket line after receiving a call from one of his colleagues as the line approached 20 People, including community supporters and union allies.
foot says “the mold situation has been going on for months” with a “very old ice machine” that produces ice for the store.
“Mold was often spotted on top of all that ice, or some sort of black substance growing inside the machine,” says Foote. He adds “It’s in the various components of the machine. It’s all over the ice.”
Foote says the ice is used throughout the store, including for drinks like $20 Espresso martinis and drinks are served in the upstairs cocktail bar.
Another store clerk, Laura Garza, 22She told Patch the strike was over “Health and safety issues we’ve been grappling with since we won our union vote in April. These include a moldy ice machine that we are not equipped to clean up and is still in use, as well as the more recent situation with bed bugs found in the roastery.”
This was announced by Starbucks Media Relations in the same email “every ice machine undergoes a thorough cleaning at routine intervals” and so on “Management of roasting plants [had] discovered a wiring problem with a machine and had the unit in it replaced 48 hours” last week.
Elsewhere, the company said a vendor had not identified any concerns about the machine’s operation or cleanliness in the past month, but the company had replaced it anyway.
Foote says he was among the workers asked to remove the substance from the ice machine and says like the two who had done it before him, he got it “ill immediately.” Foote claims he was ill for three weeks, with symptoms including a sore throat, constant cough and a runny nose.
According to Starbucks Media Relations, the company “welcome[s] any partners who raise health and safety concerns with store management to ensure a speedy resolution.”
“I wish I could afford the coffee I serve. We sell a coffee drink priced at $ in our store17. That’s what [I] do an hour,” says DeRose.
Foote says the frustration among workers that led to the strike was not only the result of this recent health crisis, but also a series of management actions. These include reportedly unilateral changes in duties for behind-the-house staff who prepared food to also cleaning bathrooms, as well as a change in working hours for some “Partners” (as Starbucks employees refer to) who were suddenly asked to come in 4:30 p.m., a few hours earlier than their previous shift times.
The strike at the roastery follows a significant year of work organization at the coffee giant.
Since December 2021Above 250 company-run Starbucks locations in the United States have unionized. In April 1 That year, the Manhattan roastery became the first unionized Starbucks location in New York City and the tenth in the country. However, workers say they have since struggled to bring the company around the table to negotiate in good faith, despite reaching a legal settlement in early October.
This management obstruction of collective bargaining reflects a broader national trend. By the end of September, the company largely refused to negotiate with workers while waging a heated anti-union campaign, including layoffs 100 Union leaders and tailored pay and benefit policies to curb enthusiasm for unionization. The company even accused the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of secretly supporting the union and called for a suspension in upcoming postal union elections.
By the end of September, management was seated with only three branch unions, despite repeated attempts by Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), the labor network behind the organizing effort, to bring the company together. In the last week of September, Starbucks finally got closer to negotiating with most stores, abruptly sending out letters to representatives offering a three-week negotiation window in October.
Starbucks says it has reached a mutual agreement to negotiate 40 Sites with Workers United, SBWU’s parent union, and negotiations began on Monday. However, the company has now filed five unfair labor practices charges against Workers United because the union in five locations effectively included SBWU members who were not physically present at the negotiations. It was also alleged that the union recorded parts of the negotiations from at least one hearing and posted them online.
For its part, Workers United filed a national ULP complaint on Tuesday alleging that Starbucks still refuses to negotiate in good faith 152 locations including the Reserve Roastery in Manhattan.
To date, the NLRB has reportedly passed 800 Violations of the Federal Labor Code by Starbucks.
At the Reserve Roastery, while four workers still worked at the store Tuesday, workers said Starbucks was forced to hire employees due to staff shortages throughout the day. These included a facility manager who was spotted washing dishes, an events coordinator who worked in the merchandise department, and a shift planner who restocked and cleaned warehouses, DeRose says.
“It was really enlightening to see that we are often overworked on the floor, drowning on the floor, have super long lines and managers don’t come to help us… and then suddenly today they know how to have a drink “, she says.
The workers at the store remained on strike on Friday.
