A former barista in Everett is suing Starbucks for allegedly violating a new city law that requires employers to offer more hours to existing part-time workers before hiring new ones.
The lawsuit seeks class action status on behalf of all Starbucks baristas in Everett who were potentially impacted. It asks for Starbucks to pay twice the wages the workers allegedly missed out on and for the company to create a detailed plan demonstrating how they’ll comply with the law going forward.
Only a handful of Washington cities have similar laws requiring companies to prioritize existing part-time workers for new hours. Gabe Frumkin, an attorney representing the former barista, said this is the first lawsuit of its type that he’s aware of.
“It’s really a bigger case and a bigger story with ramifications for the entire community,” Frumkin said.
The lawsuit comes amid a labor battle at unionized Starbucks stores, with workers in at least 25 cities planning to walk out on Thursday, Nov. 13, to picket in front of stores for better pay and increased staffing.
Frumkin’s client, Tom Bosserman, worked at various Starbucks stores for more than a decade. He was employed part time and gladly would have taken more hours if offered, Frumkin said. But instead of offering more hours to existing workers like Bosserman earlier this year, the lawsuit alleges that Starbucks simply hired new part-time baristas.
“We don’t believe that Starbucks took any type of process and had any type of rationale for failing to offer hours to existing employees,” Frumkin said. “We think that they just went about business as usual by hiring new employees on part-time schedules.”
Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment. The company has until Nov. 20 to respond to the complaint filed in Snohomish County Superior Court, Frumkin said.
The Everrett law at the center of Bosserman’s complaint was created as part of an initiative approved by voters last year that raised the city’s minimum wage to $20.24 and added other worker protections.
Frumkin said it isn’t yet clear exactly how many new part-time workers Starbucks hired after the law went into effect, or how many part-time workers at the company’s six Everett locations may be eligible to join the class action lawsuit.
Several other cities, including Burien, SeaTac and Tukwila, have passed similar initiatives in recent years that paired wage increases with requirements about prioritizing existing workers for more hours. Those types of protections are important, Frumkin said, because some employers see hiring new part-time workers or contractors as a way to cut costs and avoid needing to pay their existing workers benefits.
Those existing workers are “kept where their head is just above water by having some minimum number of hours,” Frumkin said. “But that means they’re not able to receive benefits, their hours are pretty unpredictable.”
Everett’s law does not require employers to prioritize existing workers if it would mean paying them overtime. Employers can also bypass the law if they can provide a good faith explanation for why existing workers don’t have the skills needed.
Earlier this month, voters in Olympia rejected a ballot initiative that would have raised the city’s minimum wage to $20 an hour and added similar requirements about prioritizing existing part-time workers for new hours. A similar “Workers Bill of Rights” is set to go before Tacoma voters in the February special election.
