- Unionized workers in South Carolina have sued Starbucks for accusing them of assault and kidnapping.
- A store manager reported staff to police after they asked for a pay raise, the lawsuit says.
A group of unionized workers in South Carolina have sued Starbucks for accusing them of assault and kidnapping, suspending them, and banning them from its stores across the US.
The eight workers said in the lawsuit, filed Monday, that the store's manager had "falsely reported to the police that the plaintiff workers had assaulted and kidnapped" her in August.
According to the lawsuit, Starbucks employees at the store in Anderson gave the manager a letter in which they asked for a pay raise and for broken equipment to be fixed. The store manager then called the district manager on her cell and started to leave the store, but staff followed her to the exit and repeated their request for a wage raise, per the lawsuit.
"They made no attempt to block the exit, and no employee physically touched her," the lawsuit says. A video posted on TikTok by Starbucks Workers United, purporting to show the incident, shows the store manager pushing past an employee.
The store manager told the district manager that the staff weren't letting her leave the store, per the lawsuit, though in the video the workers can be heard saying that the manager could leave.
Two days later, the manager called the police, saying that the workers had engaged in violent and illegal activity and "would not let her leave until they got a raise," per the lawsuit. It added that the report listed the offenses as assault and kidnapping.
In a statement at the time, Starbucks said that it had been the store manager's first day at that location and she had "felt threatened and unsafe as a result of conduct by 11 store partners."
The company said it opened an investigation, suspended the workers with pay, and filed a report with law enforcement.
"We fully respect our partners' right to organize but no one, regardless of their interest in a union, is exempt from the standards we have always held – that everyone in our stores can expect to be treated with dignity and respect and work in a warm, welcoming, inclusive environment," Starbucks said in the statement.
The lawsuit alleges that Starbucks' statement defamed the workers and "falsely insinuated" that they'd engaged in criminal misconduct.
As well as being suspended, the workers were also banned from all Starbucks stores in the US.
The lawsuit says the police interviewed many of the workers "over a period of weeks, causing the plaintiffs significant distress."
But the Sheriff's Office told The State in September that after speaking to staff and seeing the TikTok video from the incident, "none of the allegations were true."
"The employees did not stop her from leaving and did not put their hands on her, which is what the boss reported had happened," the Sheriff's Office continued. "She is the one who initiated any kind of contact when she pushed past one of the employees as she was walking out of the door."
Despite the police's statement, neither Starbucks nor the store manager have retracted their statement, according to the lawsuit.
"Defendants defamed the workers and abused legal process," the lawsuit says.
In May, the employees had voted 18-0 to unionize. Workers at the store also staged strikes in June and July, per The State.
More than 235 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize, according to Starbucks Workers United, following the first company-owned US store in Buffalo, New York in December.
Starbucks has been accused of union-busting tactics, including by the National Labor Relations Board, which claimed that Starbucks was using "illegal tactics" to stop workers in New York state from unionizing. In September, New York City filed a lawsuit against Starbucks, alleging the coffee chain wrongfully terminated an employee and union organizer.