Starbucks Adds Employee Benefits—But There’s A Big Catch For Union Workers

Starbucks is once again coming under fire on Twitter and elsewhere for their treatment of workers who want to unionize. The coffee giant, as CBS News reports, just introduced new “financial-focused employee benefits” last week. However, there is a notable catch— only non-unionized workers can obtain them.

The chain just outlined two new efforts to supposedly aid workers with their finances. The first is My Starbucks Savings, which aims to allow workers to contribute a portion of their pay to a personal savings account through Fidelity Investments. The second is a program called Student Loan Management Benefit, which will give employees access to resources as well as individual coaching to help manage student loan debt.

In addition, it is designed to assist with refinancing and repayment options, according to Starbucks. “As we reinvent the future of Starbucks, together with our partners, we knew we had an opportunity to further support the financial well-being of our partners and their families,” Ron Crawford, senior vice president Total Rewards at Starbucks, said in a recent announcement.

This of course is not the first time that Starbucks has withheld benefits or as some Twitter users are writing “mistreated” employees who wished to join a union. Earlier in 2022, Starbucks CEO Howards Schultz claimed in an online forum that Starbucks would not be able to offer new benefits or wage increases to unionized employees. He said this was due to U.S. labor law, which CBS News writes “requires companies to separately negotiate pay and benefits with unions.”

However, as the Associated Press reported last month, the Seattle office of the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint in August. They said that Starbucks was in fact “in violation of the law” by failing to offer wage increases and other benefits to their unionized workers. Starbucks Workers United, the union, then said that 300 protesters picketed outside of the Starbucks Investor Day meetings last week, according to AP.