Starbucks Managers Allegedly Threaten Removal of Trans Benefits
Just a month after Starbucks announced that it would cover travel costs for its employees’ gender-affirming care and abortions, benefits for transgender employees are allegedly being threatened as part of an anti-union push by the coffee chain.
Trans baristas in several states, including Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Kansas, contend that managers pulled them aside for one-on-one conversations in which it was implied that union benefits for employees may not include gender-affirming care.
Niko Melton, a Starbucks employee in Oklahoma, says that in a meeting, the district manager participated in fear-mongering. The manager reportedly said, “trans partners’ benefits are up for negotiation,” if the employees pushed to unionize.
Another Oklahoma Starbucks employee Neha Cremin spoke to Bloomberg, expressing that the company appears to be aware of how vulnerable trans people feel, given the repeated legislative attacks against them in recent years, and that Starbucks is willing to weaponize that vulnerability to prevent unionization.
Bloomberg rightly points out that Starbucks has been at the forefront of offering gender-affirming care to employees. Starbucks has included some form of benefits relating to gender-affirming care for a decade now, even as other companies dismissed the procedures as simply cosmetic or unnecessary. However, just because Starbucks has been at the forefront of trans issues in the past it does not negate claims by employees that their healthcare is being used as a bargaining chip to prevent unionization.
Pro-union employees have argued that one of their goals with the union is to expand and protect access to gender-affirming care for employees. Currently, these benefits are only available to individuals working an average of 20 or more hours a week. Cremin also says that amidst the legislative attacks against trans people, it feels more important than ever to be able to unionize.
“We feel powerless on a state level,” she says. “Unionizing our store at least gives us something small to grab onto, that we can make our store a safe place.”
In an April 4 speech, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said, “companies throughout the country being assaulted, in many ways, by the threat of unionization.”
