A former Starbucks Corp. store manager in New York said he was instructed to single out and discipline pro-union employees for unrelated reasons, such as wearing purple pants.
David Almond, who managed a series of Buffalo-area cafes, testified under oath to a National Labor Relations Board judge in August that Starbucks higher-ups listed names of employees the company had determined supported the union, and told him to punish them. The transcript of Almond’s testimony was obtained by Bloomberg through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Almond said the list was read to him by a manager the company had deployed to his store, as a rundown of employees there with pro-union sentiments. Other managers later ran through the same list with Almond and suggested ways to penalize the employees in ways that were not related to the union, he said.
