Workers at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Manhattan, the company’s New York flagship location, went on strike outside the front entrance on Wednesday protesting allegedly unsanitary working conditions. 

The strike began at 11 a.m. and grew to a picket line of over 70 people—Starbucks workers, organizers with Workers United, and even people off the street joined in some of the chants. Cries of “What’s disgusting? Union-busting!” and “Come get your moldy ice!” filled the sidewalk as two strike organizers served Dunkin Donuts coffee and pastries at a table off to the side. Congressman Jerry Nadler, the representative for the Roastery’s district, joined the picket line and shook hands with some of the organizers. 

Workers said that over the past few days there had been two bed bug sightings in their break room. After spotting one on Sunday, management at the store called in an inspector early this week, who found no infestation. But workers aren't satisfied, they said. 

“They called in a specialist, the specialist found no nest, but on Monday there was another bed bug found in our manager’s office,” said Athena Kosmopoulos, one of the workers on strike. “Once you find one, honestly, it’s already there. It’s a huge problem. It’s a really big space—you can’t tell me that they’re not nesting.” 

Kosmopoulous said that workers had also been dealing with black mold in the ice machines used to serve drinks to customers. On Wednesday, too, they said that black mold had been discovered leaking in the back-of-house retail room, where the store keeps its merchandise. 

“It’s unsafe to breathe in, it’s not safe for us,” they said. “The mold gets in our ice. We try our best to pick it out when we serve to customers. We’ve had employees clean out the ice machine and get sick from it.” 

Image Credit: Jules Roscoe

A Starbucks spokesperson wrote in an email to Motherboard confirmed that a pest control provider had visited the store on Monday and deemed it safe to open despite the alleged bed bug sighting. They also said that the ice machines are regularly cleaned and that one machine was replaced during a recent inspection, although due to a wiring issue and not mold. 

“At all of our facilities every ice machine undergoes thorough cleaning at routine intervals to ensure every beverage we serve is crafted to the highest standards,” they wrote. “Last week during routine maintenance and cleaning of the ice machines at the Roastery store management discovered a wiring issue with one machine and had the unit replaced within 48 hours.” They did not address any concerns of black mold. 

Image Credit: Jules Roscoe

Starbucks Workers United won its first union election last December in a store in Buffalo, NY, demanding better pay and healthcare benefits. The company has since retaliated against pro-union workers, holding mandatory anti-union meetings and even temporarily closing organizing stores. It also raised the wages of non-union workers, seemingly as an incentive to keep them from joining any organizing effort. The strife has continued as individual stores start to bargain for contracts; on Monday, Starbucks left the negotiating table at several locations across the country after workers remotely joined the proceedings via Zoom. The company alleged that the union was engaging in bad faith bargaining as a result. 

“Starting here feels like a dream,” said Lee Kido, who has worked at the Roastery for over three years. “It very much feels like you’re walking into the Willy Wonka of coffee. And as I continued working there, it felt like this golden bubble popped for me. There’s a lot of chaos from management, and ever since we started organizing, there’s been tons of intimidation and fear and one-on-ones and captive audience meetings. It feels like management time and time again will just not listen to us.”

The Roastery became the first Starbucks store in New York City to unionize in April, and is the ninth store to do so in the company’s history. Since then, workers say they have yet to get a union contract. 

“We’re still bargaining for a contract,” Kido said. “They won’t sit down at the table with us.”

“We have fully honored the process laid out by the NLRB, respect our partners’ right to engage in lawful union activities and look forward to resuming and starting collective bargaining sessions for more than 40 stores over the coming weeks,” the Starbucks spokesperson wrote.

The Wednesday strike was a continuation of a walkout strike started by Kosmopoulos the day before. “I had woken up Tuesday morning, and I was reading messages about my coworkers crying outside of work because the situation that we have to deal with is so stressful,” they said. “At that point, I was upset. I couldn’t just keep talking about doing a strike, I couldn’t just sit down anymore. It had to happen.” A third strike is planned for Thursday morning.

Amazon anti-union consultants are trying to interfere with the Amazon Labor Union’s organizing activities at ALB1, the company’s Albany warehouse that recently filed for a union election. 

Images sent to Motherboard show the consultants wearing brightly-colored warehouse vests, which is their attempt to blend in when they go down to the warehouse floor and talk to workers, according to Seth Goldstein, a lawyer for the Amazon Labor Union. 

“It’s to blend in with workers,” Goldstein said. “To pretend they’re one of them.” 

The consultants in their conference room. Image Credit: Heather Goodall

Images sent to Motherboard show a whiteboard in a conference room used by the consultants. On the whiteboard is what appears to be a list of recommended restaurant options in Albany for the consultants who fly into town to prevent unionization before traveling to a different warehouse in another part of the country to do the same. Recommendations on the list include casual dining restaurants like Ted’s Fish Fry, but also more expensive options like Delmonico’s (“for steak,” according to the whiteboard) or 677 Prime, which according to its website is “upstate New York’s premiere steakhouse” and offers a $179 A5 Japanese Wagyu filet, $40 per ounce "Snow Aged" Japanese Wagyu, and caviar for $165 on its menu.   

“This is what they’re concerned about. Getting the best steak in Albany,” Goldstein said. “I think that’s pretty ridiculous. They’re trying to look like the workers, but they’re not like the workers. They make $3,200 a day. They're worried about steak and all the good places to eat. And our members can't afford it. They don't have a living wage.” According to an LM-20 filing with the U.S. Department of Labor, consultants at the firm hired by Amazon—RoadWarrior Productions, LLC—are paid “$3,200 per day per consultant plus expenses.”

Amazon did not provide comment in time for publication.

Also on the whiteboard are a visible a series of hashtags under a cartoon bee drawing: #BeeKind, #PositiveVibes, #Beethankful, and #Beyhive. 

“I’ve never seen that before,” Goldstein said. “But that’s what they have to do to remind the union-busters to behave themselves. These are things that you’re reminded of when you’re in kindergarten.”

Image: Heather Goodall

Heather Goodall, the organizing campaign manager for the ALU, expanded more on #BeeKind in an interview with Motherboard. “They’re overly nice to workers in an attempt to pose as somebody who’s genuinely concerned about their issues,” she said. “I asked last week, ‘What are you talking to workers about?’ and they responded that it was just to see how they’re doing. We never get a straight answer on how they’re improving working conditions.” 

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Goldstein explained in a phone call with Motherboard that the consultants would go onto the floor of the warehouse to talk to workers there. “They have one-on-one meetings, where they go around on the floor, and take [the workers] off-task,” he said. “And sometimes people lose productivity.” 

A video sent to Motherboard by Goldstein shows organizing campaign manager Heather Goodall interviewing a worker at the warehouse in Albany. Goodall asks, “So, talk about what’s going on in the warehouse.” 

“About the ‘employee relations’ people?” the worker responds, making air quotes with their hands. “They’re literally harassing and following people around while they’re trying to do their job, and stopping them from doing their job. Meanwhile, work’s getting backed up, and other people are getting upset because they have to pick up the slack.” The worker explains that one consultant in particular was going up to workers around the warehouse sharing and reading from a piece of paper. 

“Many people are feeling harassed,” Goodall said in a phone call. “It’s to the point it’s creating a hostile work environment. Why is this still happening if workers have expressed they’re frustrated? They don’t want to be approached at work.”

Goldstein said that the consultants also host “captive audience meetings,” which refers to a mandatory meeting held by Amazon during working hours. During such a meeting, the consultants will usually show anti-union videos or share anti-union material. 

Goodall noted that beyond these meetings—one of which she was kicked out of for asking questions—the consultants put up signs about them in break rooms, in bathrooms, and even on TVs throughout the warehouse. “It’s absolute overkill,” she said. 

The union election is scheduled to begin on Oct. 12. The whiteboard also notes that no worker hired after Sept. 3 of this year would be able to vote in the election. 

The dates on the consultants' whiteboard. Image Credit: Heather Goodall

ALB1 would be the fourth Amazon warehouse to file for union election, after ALU president Chris Smalls and Derrick Palmer managed to successfully run a worker-led organization effort at their warehouse in Staten Island earlier this year. Smalls even made an appearance at the Albany warehouse, according to a video sent to Motherboard by Goldstein, but was not allowed into the building and was asked to leave.

“I find it disgusting that they would put so much effort into destroying people’s lives and violating their labor rights—their human rights,” Goldstein said. “Amazon is a flagrant violation of human rights, and they should be held accountable.”

Starbucks is holding gender-affirming care for transgender employees hostage as part of its fight against the unionization wave sweeping the country, according to a new National Labor Relations Board charge filed by workers at a store in Oklahoma.

The unfair labor practice charge, filed Monday, says Starbucks has “interfered with, restrained, and coerced its employees in the exercise of their rights” under the National Labor Relations Act. It’s a complaint common among unionizing Starbucks workers; more than 200 unfair labor practice charges have been filed against Starbucks with the NLRB in the past year.

But employees at the Oklahoma City store also accused Starbucks of “threatening employees with the loss of benefits (including the loss of gender-affirming healthcare for transgender employees) if they voted to be represented by a union,” according to a copy of the charge obtained by VICE News.  The new charge was first reported by Bloomberg. 

Neha Cremin, a worker at a Starbucks store in Oklahoma City, told Bloomberg that she recently had a one-on-one with her manager where she was told, “just know that if you unionize, when you are negotiating your benefits, you could gain, you could lose, or you could stay the same.” 

Cremin also told Bloomberg that the manager told her: “I know specifically, you have used the trans health-care benefits.”

“I think the company realizes that we as trans partners feel particularly vulnerable at this time,” Cremin told Bloomberg. “I think that in some cases they are willing to take advantage of that.”

Reached for comment about the allegations in the complaint, Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges told VICE News: “Claims are false. No truth to them.” Borges also told Bloomberg that the company is “not threatening our partners with the loss of benefits if they join a union,” and that Starbucks takes “a great deal of pride in offering industry-leading benefits and have done so for more than 50 years.”

Mila Ward, a barista at a store in Indiana that last month became the first in the state to file for a union, told VICE News that she initially wanted to work for Starbucks because she’d heard that the company would “pay for all transition-related medical costs.” But the reality of the situation, she said, has been more complicated.

In March, Wade underwent facial feminization surgery, which she says is rarely provided by employer-based insurance; Starbucks covered 100% of that procedure, Wade said. 

Getting that coverage, though, required purchasing Starbucks’ primary employer-based insurance, and she also resorted to starting a GoFundMe in order to pay for travel to get the procedure. 

Wade also said the range of coverage depends on the procedure. Hair removal, she said, is not covered outright but is reimbursed by the company; Wade said she’s paying $270, a “massive percentage of my take-home,” and the reimbursement checks can take up to three months to come in. (The hair removal procedure is required for bottom surgery, Wade said, which is covered by her primary insurance plan.) 

Starbucks workers have previously accused the company of threatening to take away benefits as part of a bad-faith effort to dissuade workers from unionizing, including pay raises and benefits, any help the company might provide to DACA recipients who work there, and unionized workers’ ability to transfer to other stores—an option frequently used by the many college students who work for the company. 

Starbucks has repeatedly denied the claims, saying that federal labor law prohibits the company from unilaterally setting benefits, which is true. But both the union and labor law experts say the company could simply offer such benefits to unionized workers, and unionizing workers have insisted that they wouldn’t sign a contract that doesn’t exceed the benefits Starbucks already offers.

Pro-union workers have also repeatedly accused the company of retaliation, including firing leading organizers. In several cases, including in western New York, Memphis, and Phoenix, the NLRB has sided with the workers and their union. A federal judge last week ruled against a petition from the NLRB to immediately reinstate three fired workers in Phoenix. 

“Most of my coworkers are queer, and many of us rely on the transgender healthcare benefits. We are uniquely vulnerable when Starbucks makes veiled threats that gender-affirming healthcare could be taken away,” Cremin said in a statement to VICE News, provided by the union. “We deserve access to healthcare. We deserve to be paid enough not just to survive but also to transition, to love, to thrive.”

Wade said she has conflicting feelings about the healthcare Starbucks currently provides. 

“On the one hand, yes, I’ve been able to use it and it’s made a massive difference in my life, I would never have access to that surgery otherwise,” Wade said. 

“On the other hand, it definitely feels like they are using it to continue to market their allegedly progressive image and have this captive workforce of highly-exploited, very poor trans people.”

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