![]() ![]() “I went to the ER because I felt like literal death. One said she first felt under the weather a day after “not one but two customers coughed on me,” she told BuzzFeed News, requesting her name and city remain anonymous for fear of getting fired. That same day, an employee in eastern Pennsylvania with a bad cough and no paid sick leave poured coffee and mixed drinks behind the counter as a dozen or so customers waited for their orders.Īnd by Friday, March 20, three employees at a Starbucks in Oregon had come down with flulike symptoms and called in sick. On Thursday, March 19, a Starbucks employee in western Washington told her manager that a doctor said she probably had COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. That same day, an employee in Maine who told his manager he wasn’t feeling well was instructed to keep working because he “couldn’t be thinking every sniffle was corona, or else we would have to think everyone might have it,” he recalled. Another employee mentioned that his wife was showing coronavirus symptoms. On Monday, March 16, an assistant store manager in Georgia kept working despite a fever and a sore throat. ![]() After a night of cleaning by staff, the store opened back up for business as usual. On Saturday, March 14, a Starbucks employee in northern Washington developed a fever and dry cough and had trouble breathing. Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.All week long, Starbucks employees got sick, and Starbucks stores stayed open. “I’ll do what I can to be reinstated and try to get everything back on track. “I love all my coworkers more than words can ever say, and this happening has literally been devastating,” she said. ![]() Whitbeck said she plans to file another charge with the NLRB alleging her firing was retaliatory, and that she hopes to get her job back. “I was really hoping with the union stuff, we would be able to get that more back into perspective and try and get that restarted, but hopefully, it’ll continue even if I’m not there anymore.” “It’s not customer-focused anymore, or partner-focused. Whitbeck said that she loved her job, mostly because of her coworkers, but that the company has changed since she began working there three years ago. We need to move from a system that treats partners as disposable employees to a more sustainable, true partnership.” “We have put our lives on the line to serve the public and further this company's success,” the workers wrote, referencing their work through the pandemic. And in December, she worked at least 30 hours a week for three weeks in a row. In an email, the company referenced four days during that period where Whitbeck took paid time off.įor comparison, during the first eight weeks of the year Whitbeck worked more than 30 hours a week five times. Borges told VICE News that Starbucks cutting hours is not in retaliation for organizing, but rather due to a “seasonal evaluation” of the company’s needs.Ī sampling of Whitbeck’s schedule during her time at Starbucks, however, shows that her hours in February 2021, March 2021, and February 2022 were all roughly the same, more than 35 hours a week.īut according to documentation of her schedule provided by both Whitbeck and Starbucks, after the week beginning February 28 of this year-when she believes the retaliation against her started-she has been scheduled to work more than 30 hours per week just once. Starbucks Workers United has alleged that Starbucks is cutting workers’ hours in retaliation for the union campaign and filed a ULP last month over the reductions. The separation notice Starbucks gave Whitbeck says she “failed to communicate in line with Starbucks mission and values and failed to meet expectations… including acting in violation of Starbucks safety and security standard.” ![]() Whitbeck told VICE News that her coworker, a barista, was left alone in the store for 10 minutes. “So they left after I was out, and because I didn’t stay over and left at my scheduled time, I was terminated because I left that partner alone on the floor.” “There was a partner that had gotten left alone on the floor because it was past my out time, and the other shift supervisor was told they would need to go on their lunch before I was out, and they refused,” Whitbeck told VICE News. By all accounts, the 23-year-old Whitbeck was a star employee (Starbucks calls them “partners”): She told VICE News she’d had no write-ups during her three years at the store, and Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges said she’d had “no prior issues.” But the store fired her on Monday for an incident dated to February 27, when Whitbeck left at the end of her shift. ![]()
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