Starbucks Executes Systematic Union-Busting Campaign with Record NLRB Violations

Following grassroots organizing success at Buffalo stores in late 2021, Starbucks launches a systematic illegal union-busting campaign that generates over 500 unfair labor practice charges—likely the largest number facing any company in the 90-year history of the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB files over 80 formal complaints against Starbucks for violating federal labor law, with administrative law judges finding the company broke the law 130 times across six states, including illegally firing approximately 200 pro-union workers since the organizing drive began.

The $119 billion company deploys the full anti-union playbook: CEO Howard Schultz threatens to withhold raises and benefits from 200+ unionized stores while providing them to non-union locations (illegal discrimination); fires seven Memphis workers after they began organizing (illegal retaliation); closes at least 11 unionized stores claiming “safety reasons” (illegal interference); and convenes mandatory captive-audience meetings where workers are subjected to anti-union propaganda. On March 1, 2023, an NLRB administrative law judge finds Starbucks guilty of “egregious and widespread misconduct” showing “general disregard for employees’ fundamental rights.”

Yet despite these systematic violations, Starbucks faces minimal consequences: NLRB can only order back pay for fired workers and notices promising not to violate the law again, with no monetary fines or punitive damages. By the time cases are resolved years later, organizing momentum is destroyed and workers have moved on. The Starbucks campaign reveals the modern union-busting model: systematically violate labor law with impunity, knowing NLRB enforcement is too slow and penalties too weak to deter illegal retaliation. The strategy demonstrates that 75 years of NLRB underfunding and Taft-Hartley restrictions have created a regulatory framework where breaking labor law is cheaper than recognizing unions.