DC coffee chain lists CEOs and Uber lobbyist as baristas to halt union drive
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/24/compass-coffee-union-election-uber-lobbyist
DC coffee chain lists CEOs and Uber lobbyist as baristas to halt union drive
Compass Coffee is accused of hiring 124 additional people before union election next month
Michael Sainato
Mon 24 Jun 2024 07.00 EDT
A coffee chain in the Washington DC area is accused of hiring dozens of friends of management, including other local food service executives and an Uber lobbyist, in an effort to defeat a union election scheduled for 16 July.
Workers at seven Compass Coffee locations, more than a third of the companys stores, announced their intent to unionize in May 2024. The company has 18 cafes in Washington DC and northern Virginia and its coffee can be purchased in grocery stores throughout the area.
In a post on Twitter/X, Compass Coffee United accused the coffee chain of hiring 124 additional people at cafes that are attempting to unionize. The union has also accused the company of manipulating worker schedules retroactively to try to make the new employees eligible to vote in the union election. The Uber lobbyist, Liz Brown, and Uber did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
We received their first voter list. There were 43 people on the Georgetown cafe list, most of whom I have never met or seen in the cafe before, said Penina Meier-Silverman, a shift supervisor at the Georgetown Compass Coffee store. So the cafes are just flooded with new baristas. We also saw that they were forging schedules for days that have already passed. So they put people on the schedule for days that have passed that were never at work.
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