Starbucks is forced to cough up $35 million, but the reason for the massive settlement exposes the true crisis

Starbucks is facing a hefty bill, agreeing to pay about $35 million to over 15,000 workers in New York City after officials announced a massive settlement over claims the company illegally denied stable schedules and arbitrarily cut employee hours, as per AP News. This news dropped just hours before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders visited striking baristas on a picket line.

The settlement means Starbucks is also on the hook for an extra $3.4 million in civil penalties to the city, and the company has agreed to finally comply with New York City’s Fair Workweek law moving forward. The settlement is a big win for the workers involved. Most of the affected employees who held hourly positions will get $50 for every week they worked between July 2021 and July 2024.

If you had a violation after July 2024, you might still be eligible for compensation if you file a complaint with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. This is a huge amount of money, and hopefully, as shift supervisor Kaari Harsila said while picketing, “I sure hope that it gives Starbucks an awakening.”

It’s a big win for workers’ rights

The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection started investigating Starbucks after they received dozens of complaints against various locations. That investigation quickly ballooned to cover hundreds of stores. What the probe found is pretty awful for Starbucks employees: most workers never got regular schedules. This made it incredibly difficult for staffers to plan out their lives, whether that meant scheduling child care, managing education, or juggling other jobs.

To make matters worse, the city found that Starbucks denied workers the chance to pick up extra shifts. This meant employees stayed part-timers even if they desperately wanted to work more hours. Gabriel Pierre, a 26-year-old shift supervisor, summed up the frustration perfectly: “It is the company’s issue to give us the labor amount to schedule partners fairly, and they are not scheduling us fairly, no matter how much money we are making them.”

This massive settlement comes amid a continuing strike by the Starbucks union at dozens of locations nationwide. Workers are demanding better hours and increased staffing. They are understandably angry that the company hasn’t agreed to a contract nearly four years after workers at a Buffalo store first voted to unionize. Since then, union votes have followed at other locations, and now about 550 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned stores are unionized.

During their visit, Mayor-elect Mamdani and Sen. Sanders mingled with scores of strikers and supporters outside a Brooklyn shop, amplifying the baristas’ message. Sanders, an independent from Vermont, pointed out that four years after that first union vote, “Starbucks has refused to sit down and negotiate a fair contract.” Mamdani, who recently had a productive meeting with President Trump, told the crowd, “These are not demands of greed, these are demands of decency.”

Starbucks claims it’s committed to following all local laws, but Anderson also noted that New York City’s Fair Workweek law is “notoriously challenging to manage.” That doesn’t sound like a great excuse when you’re dealing with people’s livelihoods.