Recognition…Brendan Bannon for the New York Times
A Buffalo Starbucks worker who helped lead the coffee chain’s union campaign last year has accused the company of coercing her in retaliation for her organizing efforts.
The employee, Jaz Brisack, is the subject of an unfair labor practice charge filed Tuesday night by the Workers United union. The indictment said that Starbucks applied scheduling and availability policies to Ms. Brisack in a discriminatory manner and that this effectively led to her separation from the company.
Ms. Brisack, who is well known among Starbucks employees because she is a Rhodes Fellow and also works as an organizer for the union, said in an interview that the company denied her requests to change her work availability to a month or two the week from three.
“For seven months you and Starbucks have retaliated against me by refusing to accommodate my availability and vacation requests and scheduling me when I’m unavailable to force me to resign,” Ms. Brisack wrote in a letter she received gave to her manager on Tuesday. “Starbucks deliberately made my continued employment with the company impossible.”
Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, said in a statement that the company has attempted to balance scheduling requests from employees, known as partners, with business needs. “No partner is scheduled or treated differently from other partners, segregated or disciplined because of their position or support of the union,” he added.
Mr Borges said Ms Brisack’s shop is regularly forced to close early due to staff shortages.
The National Labor Relations Board has accused the company of firing other employees in similar circumstances, including workers in the same shop, according to a complaint the agency filed this spring. Starbucks has denied the allegations and the case will be heard before an administrative judge.
Ms Brisack said she first tried reducing her availability in February and then again in May. She officially demanded one day a week, a Sunday morning shift, and said she told her manager she would compromise on two days, but that business required her to be available at least three days. That summer, she began quitting shifts she couldn’t do, she said, but this was unsustainable because it imposed more work on colleagues and hurt morale.
“It’s an increasingly bad environment,” Ms. Brisack said. “I can’t be responsible for that. I can’t let Starbucks destroy us from the inside.”
She handed in her resignation on Tuesday after asking her manager if she would be assigned three shifts during the next scheduled work time. The manager indicated that it would be her.
In the letter to her manager, Ms. Brisack said she hoped to return to the company. “I look forward to returning to work at Starbucks if the NLRB orders my reinstatement,” she wrote.
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