Compass Coffee Union Elections Were Allegedly Sabotaged By New Hires

The fight for a union at Washington D.C.-based coffee chain Compass Coffee brewed controversy following what workers claim to be an illegitimate union election. Employees at seven locations of the chain filed a petition to unionize last month under Workers United, the same union behind Starbucks workers' high-profile unionization efforts. But the union vote held among employees on July 16 is being called into question, due to what Compass Coffee United, the branch representing the workers, is blaming on unit packing. The practice involves diluting the voter pool with an influx of new employees who have been hired by the company specifically to vote against unionization.

According to a series of posts shared by Compass Coffee United on X, formerly known as Twitter, of the 123 total opened ballots, 101 have been contested based on the employment eligibility of the voters. The union alleges that the company was "muddying the waters through hiring over 100 employees for the petitioned cafes, and engaging in illegal union busting tactics" to draw the process out.

Indeed, some of the named "new hires" brought on by Compass Coffee are head-scratchers. The company's list of workers eligible to place a vote reportedly include government employees and various executives and CEOs of other companies. Some have gone on record to say that they have never worked a shift at Compass Coffee, beyond once being involved in a training session (via Restaurant Dive and Bloomberg Law). At least one purported hire denied voting.

The allegations against Compass Coffee might be compared to claims about other corporate entities, including Starbucks. The years-long struggle for Starbucks baristas to win union representation and bargaining has included similar methods of pushback from the company, including controversial firings of pro-union employees and threats to end or reduce benefits to workers involved in unionization efforts. Last October, Starbucks Workers United even accused the company leadership of encouraging boycotts of unionized locations over tweets regarding the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. In response to purported anti-union activity, Starbucks faced multiple lawsuits and was called into question by various U.S. senators, including Senator Bernie Sanders who described the tactics as "shameful" and "blatant and illegal" in a tweet.

Now, some legal experts say that Compass Coffee could be facing similar repercussions in response to the apparent unit packing. As labor law professor Michael Fischl told Bloomberg Law, "It's not too much of a stretch to make the claim that this has interfered with the workers' rights to freely organize. To saddle the workers with a bunch of new colleagues who don't really work there only so they can vote against the union seems like a one way ticket to a bargaining order to me." Compass Coffee United has already threatened legal action, writing that both the union and employer could "have avoided months of litigation" if higher-ups, specifically founder and CEO Michael Haft, "had decided to respect workers' rights" and allowed for a fair union vote.