A lot of people have stopped going out to public places due to concerns about coronavirus, which has severely reduced business at many Starbucks locations. That loss of business has already led to sudden, sharp, and severe hours cuts.
Starbucks is better than some other companies about offering healthcare benefits to baristas, but you need to work an average of at least 20 hours a week to qualify. So if you get cut back below 20 hours, that means losing healthcare benefits — in the middle of a public health crisis.
And now they’re talking about closing a bunch of stores and shifting to drive-thru only. That could be the right decision for public health, but it also means there are probably going to be a lot more hours cuts this month.
And that means a lot more people could get kicked off of their Starbucks healthcare.
They don’t need to cut anyone off. They can just keep paying for our benefits and keep people covered through the crisis, when medical benefits are more important than ever. We all know they can afford to do it, and they keep on talking about how important our health is.
Why is this important?
Nobody should be losing their healthcare benefits during this crisis. It's good Starbucks has added mental health benefits for baristas and new a “catastrophe pay” policy for people who get sick. But the hours cuts from this crisis are hitting us all hard.
Starbucks would normally be kicking people off of healthcare in July for not having enough hours, but a lot of people are going to be really low the first half of the year because of the crisis. We need them to commit to not kick anyone off in their July audit, no matter how many hours they are able to work during the coronavirus crisis.
We need Starbucks to be a leader here and commit to preserving workers healthcare. They need to make sure they don’t do any harm to the benefits their workers already have.
Sign on to call on Starbucks to protect our health by protecting our healthcare.
Working Washington
