We, the partners at the 874 Commonwealth Avenue Starbucks location, have been on strike for over three weeks – the longest in Starbucks history. We are on strike because just three days after our store voted to unionize, Tomi Chorlian was placed at our store as a proxy Store Manager. During her short time here, she has wreaked havoc on our work environment through a series of retaliatory and discriminatory acts. On July 18th, we decided to go on strike for the following reasons:

1. Ms. Chorlian has made illegal threats of discipline or termination of employees if we do not comply with a newly imposed availability policy in direct violation of Starbucks’ obligation to first bargain in good faith.

2. Since her arrival, Ms. Chorlian has aggressively cut hours for long-time employees, dramatically understaffed shifts, while simultaneously hiring an influx of employees. Additionally, Ms. Chorlian has continuously made unilateral changes to our schedule without any notice.

3. Ms. Chorlian does not align with Starbucks’ proposed mission and value of “creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome,” by perpetuating harmful and offensive rhetoric with respect to the race, gender, and orientation of both our partners and customers.

Starbucks informed us that they “have no plans to discharge [Ms. Chorlian] and will not consider in doing so until such time as the allegations made in the strike notice letter have been fully investigated”, which could take weeks and even months. This is true despite pending investigations and previous complaints about Ms. Chorlian’s fitness to manage. Starbucks now says it will not continue the investigation with workers until we unconditionally return from work, thereby delaying the investigation process. This response completely ignores the previous allegations made against Ms. Chorlian from other partners as well as the 8-page letter sent to District Manager Phil Mann detailing every incident that Ms. Chorlian enacted during her limited interactions with our store. Starbucks would rather lose thousands of dollars in sales and union-bust our store than fire a manager who blatantly disregards Starbucks’ own missions and values. Tell Starbucks to live up to their mission and values by firing Tomi Chorlian and requiring their incoming manager to meet with workers on a monthly basis before making unilateral changes to the labor hours and scheduling.