After working at Starbucks for nearly three decades, one former employee is suddenly out of work. According to a press release shared with Mashed by Starbucks Workers United, Logan Matthews was first hired 26 years ago at an event where former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, was present. During his long tenure at the company, Matthews worked at 50 different Starbucks locations nationwide and assisted with the opening of eight new stores. Matthews seemed like a valued and trusted employee, so what was the reason for his recent abrupt firing? Supposedly, money went missing from the store Matthews was working at during one of his closing shifts, back on July 26.
However, the company let him go in September, just two days after his store formally filed to unionize and Matthews came forward as a union leader. Timing is everything, and in this case, it may say something suspicious about Starbucks’ priorities.
This incident comes on the heels of many former Starbucks employees filing charges against the corporation with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging unfair labor practices. Since December 2021, over 200 former Starbucks employees have reported being let go from the company after union activity. Alicia Flores is one of these employees; she worked at Starbucks for seven years before getting fired via a voicemail message. She calls Starbucks’ union-busting strategy “psychological warfare,” telling The Guardian, “Starbucks doesn’t know what this is doing to people’s mental health, and it’s kind of ironic because the company prides itself on being pro-mental health.”
Starbucks’ dynamic with unionizers has long been tense
The Starbucks union battle has taken many unexpected turns, and it’s possible that these days, the chain’s workers fear that they may be fired if they speak up. Still, Logan Matthews was blindsided that he was no longer welcome at the job he’d called home for over 20 years. “I am shocked that a company that I dedicated 26 years of my life to would fire me in this way simply because I decided to stick up for myself and for my co-workers,” he said in the press release. “Starbucks made a huge mistake by firing me, and they’re going to be held accountable. You don’t fire a 26-year worker two days after their store announces their organizing campaign. You don’t get away with that.”
According to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, the NLRB determined that Starbucks has broken labor laws more than 100 times since workers started organizing. Additionally, in a study (funded by Howard Schultz’s own foundation) that looked at the 250 largest companies in the United States, Starbucks ranked as poorly as possible regarding opportunities for promotion and fair pay.