SEATTLE — A Starbucks barista’s petition complaining that the coffee chain has cut working hours in its stores to the point of “gross underemployment” for workers has garnered more than 11,000 signatures and the attention of top executives.
“Morale is at the lowest I’ve seen it in my nearly nine years of service with Starbucks,” barista Jaime Prater writes in his online petition on Coworker.org. “What’s happening currently is some of the most extreme labor cuts in Starbucks history.”
The 40-year-old barista, who works at a Starbucks in Montclair, Calif., alleges in his petition that store managers are “directed to cut shifts to save on labor costs.” As a result, baristas such as him who are trying to get more than 25 hours a week “find that a near impossible task.”
Starbucks spokeswoman Jaime Riley, who said the company employs 160,000 workers in the U.S., denied that the company issued orders to cut hours.
“There’s a misperception that there’s a top-down directive regarding labor,” she said. “There is not.”
Prater, she said, “is speaking to his personal experience and to his store. Every single store manager is working to balance the needs of the store with what the business trends are, with the needs of the partners employees, against normal seasonality and what we see throughout the year with customer behaviors and purchases.”
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and other executives have called Prater, Riley and Prater said.
Riley said it was important for Schultz to “understand what Prater’s concerns are and, if there are others, what their concerns are.”
Prater said he wants employees to be given the work hours they need to live on, for stores to have enough staff to run well, and for longtime employees to feel valued.
Prater said: “I believe he is going to do the right thing. I don’t want to escalate this further. People have talked about walk-offs, sit-ins. Oh my God, I don’t want that.”
Starbucks, with more than two dozen locations in Clark County, is one of the companies at the center of a national debate over scheduling practices and availability of hours for retail workers. The coffee chain’s scheduling practices came up during the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in March.
Prater’s petition had more than 11,900 signatures as of Wednesday.
Many of the signers say they also work at Starbucks and face similar labor cuts and understaffing.
Prater, who says he does not work for any unions, said 9,000 of the signers are identified on Coworker.org as Starbucks workers.
“As a supervisor, I see partner morale in decline almost every day I work,” Lina S. wrote on the petition. “There are certainly other factors that play into this, but a lot of it has to do with the constant need to cut labor that seems to be built into our scheduling.”
Cory W. wrote: “I had to leave Starbucks because I wasn’t getting any hours. After working there over a year, my hours were significantly cut. Nearly half my store has quit in a 3 month period, leaving most of the store to newbies.”
In an interview, Prater said he noticed staffing cutbacks starting this spring, after Starbucks’ second-quarter earnings showed sales that rose but still fell short of expectations.
In that quarter, the company racked up $4.99 billion in sales, up 9 percent from the year before but short of analysts’ expectations of $5.03 billion.
Prater also said that, in his experience, longer tenured workers get paid the same as new hires.
Prater worked as a manager for six years, stepped away and came back as a barista for the past three years.
“But as someone who’s been with the company this long, I should be making more,” he said.
He makes $10 an hour.
