Starbucks’ Discipline of Worker for Subpoena Response Is Illegal

Starbucks Corp. violated federal labor law by punishing a worker at an Illinois café for responding to a subpoena directing him to appear at National Labor Relations Board hearing, an NLRB judge ruled.

The worker wound up not testifying because he received notice just prior to the hearing’s scheduled start that it had been canceled. But the law still protected him from being disciplined for missing work to comply with the subpoena, Administrative Law Judge Paul Bogas ruled.

The June 23 decision is the seventeenth out of eighteen cases in which an ALJ ruled that Starbucks violated federal labor law in connection with the nationwide organizing wave at the coffee chain that’s seen about 330 stores unionize since late 2021.

The ruling is also the fifth time an ALJ found the company illegally discriminated against its workers for participating in an NLRB proceeding, an unfair labor practice that labor law observers say can trigger adverse results before both the board and the courts.

The NLRB ruled just last week that Starbucks unlawfully told Seattle workers they can’t testify when subpoenaed without getting a co-worker to cover their shift, and by threatening them with discipline if they failed to secure that coverage.

In the most recent ALJ decision, Bogas held that the company also committed unfair labor practices when it disciplined workers at a Peoria, Ill., store for their union activity. In one example, a manager sent a worker home after she asked for a union representative during a meeting that could have led to discipline, a right that’s guaranteed by the US Supreme Court’s 1975 ruling in NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., the judge found.

Starbucks didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case is Starbucks Corp., N.L.R.B. A.L.J., Case 25-CA-292501, 6/23/23.