A federal court has given Starbucks 14 days to comply with an administrative subpoena seeking documents related to the coffee chain’s response to a store-by-store unionization drive.
Starbucks had challenged the subpoena, which was issued by the U.S. Department of Labor, or DOL. The chain argued that DOL did not have the authority to issue a subpoena.
But the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington decided that the department did indeed have the power, and that the sought-after documents were relevant to an investigation being conducted by DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards, or LMS.
The materials reveal what Starbucks’ spent in fiscal 2021 and ’22 to deal with an organizational drive focused on the coffee giant’s operations in Buffalo, N.Y. The LMS said the documents are germane to its investigation into Starbucks’ compliance with the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, legislation that governs expenditures by both unions and employers during an organizing campaign.
“We will not sit idly by when any company, including Starbucks Corp., defies our request to provide documents to make certain they are complying with the law,” Seema Nanda, the solicitor of DOL, said in a prepared statement.
Starbucks indicated that the court’s decision was more of a clarification than a forced change in its behavior.
“There has been no adverse determination about the company's reporting requirements,” the company said in a prepared statement provided to Restaurant Business. “We continue to engage with government officials to provide clarifying information on our compliance with decades of labor law and the many ways we're listening and learning from our partners as we work to improve the opportunities and experience offered by Starbucks."
The court directive follows a Starbucks request that the U.S. Supreme Court clarify the criteria federal district courts should use in deciding whether to issue certain injunctions against the chain. The petition is in effect an appeal of a lower court’s directive to reinstate employees who were fired from their jobs at a Tennessee cafe.
The baristas argued that they were dismissed because of their support for the unionization drive. Starbucks contended that the employees were let go because they violated key employment rules, including trespassing while their restaurant was closed.
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