In Philadelphia, Starbucks Workers Just Won Another Victory Against Their Bosses
Last week the NLRB ruled that workers fired from a Philadelphia Starbucks for unionizing should be reinstated. The decision is part of a series of recent worker victories against a company intent on putting an end to all unionization efforts.
The Starbucks logo as seen outside a store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images)
On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Starbucks to reinstate with back pay two Philadelphia workers that the company, valued at $123 billion, had fired. The pair of baristas had filed complaints with the NLRB alleging that Starbucks fired them for trying to form a union, among other labor-law violations.
According to the NLRB, Tristan Bussiere, Echo Nowakowska, and their coworkers began to organize in mid-2019 with the support of a labor organizer from One PA, a regional nonprofit founded by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in 2011.
In July of that year, workers in their store demonstrated to call for changes to working conditions, including the removal of the manager, more accountability on several forms of discrimination, and early implementation of a local work standards regulation.
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