🗞️ NLRB Board Reverses Judge, Clears Starbucks in Barista Shift-Borrowing Case
A divided National Labor Relations Board dismissed a complaint that Starbucks illegally threatened a Seattle barista after her store unionized, overturning a 2023 judge's ruling that the manager's hedged comments amounted to a coercive threat.
The National Labor Relations Board on August 5, 2026, dismissed an unfair labor practice complaint against Starbucks Corporation, reversing a 2023 decision by an administrative law judge who found the company had illegally threatened an employee at its Holman Road store in Seattle after workers there voted to unionize. By a vote of 2 to 1, Chairman James R. Murphy and Member Scott A. Mayer ruled that remarks made by a Starbucks store manager about shift-borrowing rules were too equivocal to qualify as an unlawful threat under Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act. Member David M. Prouty, originally appointed to the Board by President Biden, dissented.
The case centered on barista Alejandra Toscano, who had worked for Starbucks since 2019 and whose home store was Holman Road from February 2021 until she transferred to the Green Lake store in July 2022. Like many Starbucks baristas, Toscano was not scheduled full time at her home store and relied on "borrowing," Starbucks' practice of picking up extra shifts at other nearby locations, to supplement her income. After Holman Road workers voted to unionize in April 2022 and the union was certified that May, Toscano's coworkers at a nonunion store told her she would soon lose the ability to borrow shifts there because her home store had gone union. When Toscano asked her manager, Chelsea Zapata, about the rumor, Zapata said she had heard at a meeting with company lawyers that unionized and nonunionized stores "could not borrow from one another," but added she "didn't know exactly what was true" and told Toscano she remained welcome to keep borrowing shifts. No company-wide restriction was ever put in place.
The Board majority found that Zapata's uncertain, employee-initiated response, paired with her repeated assurances that borrowing could continue, did not have a reasonable tendency to coerce workers exercising their organizing rights. In dissent, Prouty argued the Board should have weighed the timing, six days after certification, and pointed to three other 2024 Board decisions finding that Starbucks managers in Minneapolis, Mililani, Hawaii, and Michigan unlawfully threatened employees with similar loss of shift-borrowing privileges during the same organizing period in 2022.
The ruling is one of the first major Starbucks cases decided since Murphy and Mayer, both Republican appointees, were sworn in to the Board earlier in 2026, giving them a 2 to 1 majority over Prouty on the three-member panel that heard this case. It arrives as Starbucks Workers United represents roughly 560 unionized stores nationwide and remains without a first contract following a strike that began in November 2025.
Key Points
- The NLRB voted 2 to 1 to dismiss the complaint, reversing Administrative Law Judge Amita Baman Tracy's May 2023 finding that Starbucks violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act.
- The case involved comments by Green Lake store manager Chelsea Zapata to barista Alejandra Toscano about possible restrictions on borrowing shifts between Starbucks' unionized Holman Road store and nonunion locations after Holman Road certified in May 2022.
- The majority, Chairman James R. Murphy and Member Scott A. Mayer, found Zapata's remarks equivocal and undercut by her assurances that Toscano could keep borrowing shifts, so they lacked a reasonable tendency to coerce.
- Dissenting Member David M. Prouty pointed to three separate 2024 Board rulings finding Starbucks made similar unlawful threats about shift borrowing at stores in Minneapolis, Mililani, Hawaii, and Michigan during the same 2022 organizing wave.
- The decision, case number 19-CA-295850, was issued by a three-member panel on which Republican appointees Murphy and Mayer held a 2 to 1 majority over Democratic appointee Prouty.
Sourcing
Primary Source: National Labor Relations Board
Primary Source Link: Starbucks Corp., Case 19-CA-295850 (NLRB)
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