Starbucks will hand over roughly $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City employees and pay an additional $3.4 million in civil penalties to resolve allegations that it broke the city’s Fair Workweek law, officials announced on Monday.
An investigation by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) found that, from July 2021 through July 2024, the coffee chain failed to give workers stable schedules, declined to offer extra hours to existing part-timers and did not provide the legally required premium pay when shifts were altered at short notice. Most affected hourly staff will receive about $50 for each week worked in the period; staff who suffered violations after July 2024 can file individual claims.
The settlement coincided with a national one-day strike by Starbucks Workers United, which drew mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Senator Bernie Sanders to a Brooklyn picket line. About 550 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-operated U.S. stores have unionised since the first victory in Buffalo in December 2021, yet no collective agreement has been reached.
Mamdani told workers the walk-out was “not a demand of greed — it’s a demand of decency,” while Sanders accused the company of refusing “to sit down and negotiate a fair contract.”
Shift supervisor Gabriel Pierre, 26, who works in Bellmore, Long Island, said stores remain “chronically short-staffed” and that last-minute schedule changes make second jobs or childcare impossible.
Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said the firm is “ready to talk when the union is ready to return to negotiations,” and described compliance with New York City’s scheduling rules as “notoriously challenging to manage.” The company admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to new training and auditing procedures to ensure future schedules meet city standards.
Under the deal, workers laid off during recent NYC store closures will be offered vacancies at other Starbucks locations before external applicants are hired.
The city opened its probe in 2022 after receiving dozens of complaints; investigators ultimately reviewed records from hundreds of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx cafés. DCWP said the vast majority of employees never received the regular schedules mandated by the 2017 law, leaving baristas unsure of weekly earnings or hours.