Outrage as Starbucks fires union organiser in New York amid front-page story on effort

More than 100 stores in 26 states have filed for union representation in historic campaign

A Starbucks employee who helped organise the coffee giant’s first unionised store in the US was reportedly fired, as the company faces a nationwide union campaign with more than 100 stores in at least 26 states filing for union representation, including in the company’s Seattle flagship.

Cassie Fleischer, who helped lead a successful union drive at the company’s Elmwood Avenue location in Buffalo, New York, was “effectively terminated” from the company after reducing her working hours to part-time work, she announced in a Facebook post on 20 February.

“Today, Cassie Fleischer was fired -- on the same day the story profiling her organizing contributions ran in the print Washington Post,” SBWorkersUnited wrote on Twitter.

The location was the first of the company’s 9,000 corporate-owned stores to unionise after a landmark December 2021 vote. The shop was among three Buffalo-area stores that sought union representation, among 16 shops in New York state alone that have filed to form a union.

Her reported termination also follows the company’s firing of seven employees at store in Memphis, Tennessee that is also seeking to unionise. The company said their termination was not related to the union drive but over “significant violations” of safety and security policies, including giving a local media interview after the store had closed.

Union organisers have accused the company of relying on union-busting tactics to block union efforts – including anti-union text messages and so-called “captive audience” meetings – as workers demand better working conditions and wages.

“If Starbucks thought this would silence us – they are very much mistaken,” Memphis union organisers said. “Our movement is only getting stronger, and we know that we will win our jobs back, our union, and our fundamental human and civil right to organize.”

In her Facebook post, Ms Fleischer said she is “no longer being scheduled nor am I allowed to pick up any shifts, and as of today I am effectively terminated from the company, at the first unionized corporate location in the nation.”

“When I cut my availability back to reflect the new job, I was told I ‘no longer met the needs of business’ and would face termination if I didn’t open my availability back up,” she added. “With the new job, I couldn’t, so I was told there was nowhere to go from here besides termination.”

Starbuck Workers United, the union campaign group that advocates for workers, said that the company “has always allowed part-time partners before”.

“Why are union activists suddenly being told they ‘don’t meet the needs of the business’?” the group said in a post on Twitter.

“As a leader in the union’s organizing and negotiations committees, and having helped organize the strike over Covid-19 safety, I know something has changed,” Ms Fleischer added, referring to a January work stoppage at the Elmwood Avenue location over what workers said were “unsafe” conditions during the public health crisis.

“This is not the company I signed on to in 2017, and this just further proves that we need a union in our stores,” she said. “Starbucks is making a big mistake and I will be spending this newfound time supporting my partners through the union in any way I can.”

Mary Kay Henry, president of Service Employees International Union, which represents unionised Starbucks workers, called Ms Fleischer’s termination “unacceptable”.

“[Starbucks] can’t claim to be a good employer as it fires workers who stand up for a voice,” she said.

Earlier this month, she called the “egregious” firing of Memphis workers “a new low in the company’s relentless union-busting campaign”.

New York state Senator Julia Salazar, a former Starbucks employee, said she is “thinking of some of my coworkers at my home store all those years ago, who would sometimes first learn they were fired by seeing the new week’s schedule without their name on it.”

“Humiliating,” she shared on Twitter.

An outcome from a union election among Starbucks workers at a location in Mesa, Arizona – the fourth Starbucks store in the US to hold a union vote, and the first to vote since late last year – was put on hold, pending a decision from the National Labor Relations Board.

As votes cast by up to 43 workers were set to be counted by the board, the ballots were instead impounded and the tally delayed, at the company’s request for a review.

That election also comes as workers at the company’s flagship Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle signalled their union campaign. Workers at the New York City roastery have also filed a petition to unionise.

The Independent has requested comment from Starbucks.

A previous company statement says the company has “been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us at Starbucks, and that conviction has not changed.”

The statement points to previous remarks from the company’s North American president Rossann Williams, who told workers that the “vote outcomes will not change our shared purpose or how we will show up for each other. … We will keep listening, we will keep connecting and we will keep being in service of one another because that’s what we’ve always done and what it means to be partner.”