Last month, seven of the 17 locations were in the Washington area Compass Coffee announced their intention to unite with Workers unitedbranch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which helped more than 400 Starbucks stores unionize. According to Washington Post Office, when the union efforts were first announced, Compass co-founder and CEO Michael Haft released a statement saying: “At Compass Coffee, we appreciate and deeply value the strenuous work and dedication of our employees. Our team is critical to our success and we strive to ensure they are respected, supported and compensated fairly. We take their concerns seriously and are committed to actively engaging in constructive dialogue to address them.
A month later, the company is accused of hiring 124 recent workers at unionized plants in order to gain a majority vote in their favor.
As reported Guardianthe accusations first came to lightweight via Compass Coffee United’s Twitter account, claiming that the recent hires include “dozens of friends of management, including other local restaurant executives and an Uber lobbyist.” They further allege that Compass “manipulates work schedules retroactively in an attempt to ensure recent employees have the right to vote in union elections.”
“We received their first voter list. There were 43 people on the Georgetown coffee shop list, most of whom I had never met or seen at the coffee shop before,” said Penina Meier-Silverman, shift manager at the Georgetown Compass Coffee store. “So coffee shops are just flooded with recent baristas. We also saw them falsifying schedules for days that had already passed. So they put people on the schedule who weren’t at work in the days that have passed.”
The alleged recent hires include the president of a chip/snack brand, the founder and CEO of a local bagel shop, and the company’s vice president and CEO/founder Union Kitchen, a brand closely related to Compass (as well as his own tumultuous union battle). One of the other recent employees, Liz Brown, an Uber lobbyist, claims that she is not employed by the company in any way: “Recently on June 9, I attended a training session with several other recent employees at Compass, and as part of that training I signed the same documents that everyone there did. However, I had never worked a shift beyond initial training and as soon as everything came to lightweight, I contacted Compass and asked to be removed from their employment system. This was solely in my personal role as Tizzy Brown and has nothing to do with my full-time job.”
– states CCU the latest hires represent no less than a 190% raise in Compass Coffee’s total employee count.
In an email response to the Guardian, Haft states: “We believe all Compass Coffee employees at the locations where the petition was filed are eligible. The list reflects current employees at the time of voting. As such, we will remain in close contact with our partners to provide the most up-to-date list on the 14th, as the service industry often experiences normal turnover and growth, especially seasonal growth, and we expect our final list to reflect this… Due to “We have long had a policy of not commenting on individual employees without their consent.”
According to the Washington Post, CCU is fighting primarily to restore tipping. Compass introduced a no-tipping policy in March 2020, and employees said they were assured of an appropriate raise. However, they claim the raise never came and the net net result was an overall decline in their net income.
CCU filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices related to recent hires, as well as alleged retaliation by Compass, including written retaliation against employees for discussing the union with a customer and wearing pro-union badges.
The union vote will take place on July 16.
