The high-profile clash between the coffee company’s leadership and disenchanted employees will come to a head on Tuesday, when elections will be held at seven stores to determine if the workers can unionize. It’s the latest move by coffee workers in D.C. and nationwide who seek union cards to improve working conditions, boost wages or improve benefits.
“I have faith in our organization,” said union organizer and store supervisor Cameron Call. “But if all else fails I do have confidence that the [National Labor Relations Board] will have our back because what we’ve seen from Compass is just so egregious and blatant union-busting.”
Haft categorically denied that Compass was hiring workers to dilute a union vote.
“No, we didn’t pad the vote,” he said.
Haft and Harrison Suarez, two former U.S. Marines, opened their first Compass shop and roastery in 2014 in the Shaw neighborhood. (Suarez left Compass more than three years ago.) Since those early days, Compass has grown into one of Washington’s most recognizable coffee brands, with a warehouse-size roastery in Ivy City and 17 shops around the D.C. area.
The unionization effort started in October 2022 as organizers demanded that the company reinstate credit card tipping, which Compass eliminated in 2020; bolster benefits; and improve other conditions.
The fight took a different turn after May 31 this year, when workers at seven stores officially declared their intent to unionize. In the weeks after, organizers said, they noticed droves of new hires being added to the payroll. Organizers distributed a list to the media of new employees including the co-founder and other executives of Union Kitchen, the D.C. food-business accelerator with its own history of union troubles; a federal-affairs employee with Uber; and the wife and mother-in-law of Haft.
Union organizers initially compiled a list of more than 100 new hires using the staff directory, but they can’t verify the exact number of newcomers because the staff’s access to the directory was revoked. Haft said access was taken away because “information was being abused.” Some were using it to solicit workers, including potentially for union organizing, he said.
When union organizer Penina Meier-Silverman first noticed the slew of new hires on June 9, she saw that they were listed as direct reports to Compass’s chief revenue officer and had been assigned to work at the seven cafes attempting to unionize, not any of the company’s other locations, she said.
“It was pretty clear to us right off the bat, given that these people were exclusively assigned to unionizing cafes, that this was an attempt to pack the cafes and sway the election,” Meier-Silverman said.
Some of the high-profile names disappeared from the tentative voter rolls that Compass submitted to the National Labor Relations Board on June 18. But the list still names more than 100 barista apprentices, including a number of new employees that The Washington Post confirmed via phone calls. They include a single mother from Southeast Washington working to support her 1-year-old son; a man who does not speak English; and at least one person who was recently released from prison — which union organizers say is a departure from the people they’ve typically seen on staff.
At least one new employee who spoke to The Post, 20-year-old Daniel Chehayeb, said he did not have to apply for the job. He said a friend of his knew Compass executives and had heard that the company was looking to hire a lot of new people quickly.
The voter rolls represent workers who, potentially, are eligible to participate in Compass union elections. But the names could change, as the final lists are not due to the NLRB until Sunday, and according to stipulated election agreements signed by Compass and the union, they will include employees who have worked at least 52 hours in the 13 weeks prior to July 14.
“Any details about the list before that date are irrelevant, and focusing on this list is a distraction,” Haft told The Post.
A supervisor at Compass’s Georgetown location, Meier-Silverman said 11 people worked at her cafe before the unionization efforts. The proposed voter list names 40 employees at the Georgetown store, a 264 percent increase. Haft denied the Georgetown shop has that many workers, but he declined to specify.
Compass, Haft said, has been hiring more workers for all 17 locations, not just the seven looking to unionize. And the company has been hiring and training people for new store openings, including one on 14th Street NW, in the former space of the Wydown Coffee Bar, which abruptly closed in May after workers there announced a plan to unionize.
“Some of it is seasonal. Spring and summer, those are good months for coffee. A lot of our students leave for the summer,” Haft added. “We’re always hiring new people in the summer.”
Haft declined to share details about the number of new workers hired since May 31. For the most part, he also declined to talk about individual hires.
At least one of the workers listed on the tentative voter rolls has already left Compass. Liz “Tizzy” Brown, a federal-affairs employee for Uber, told The Post in an email that she attended a June 9 training “alongside several other new hires at Compass.”
“However, I never worked a shift beyond that initial training, and as soon as this all came to light I reached out to Compass and asked to be removed from their employment system,” she noted.
Union organizer and store supervisor Joseph Babin said the union doubts that most of the high-profile hires such as Haft’s wife or the CEO of Union Kitchen (who did not respond to a request for comment) will work the stipulated number of hours before the election. The hires who have reported to work are of more interest to the organizers. Though organizers believe that these employees were brought in to dilute union support, Babin said they think they can persuade many of them to vote for unionization.
“They’re just stuck in the middle of an unfortunate battle between us and Compass, so we are actively trying to organize them before our election.”
Babin said the new hires initially left him bewildered because he had repeatedly pleaded with management for more help at the two stores he supervises near the White House — and was told the company did not have the budget.
“The majority of us were doing the work of two to three people,” said Babin, who said his store has been without a manager since December.
Haft said budgets can be a reasonable justification to freeze hiring if a particular store’s sales are slow. The cafes in downtown Washington, he said, are still down about 50 percent compared with their pre-pandemic sales.
The accusations lodged against Compass come during an unprecedented wave of unionization efforts at coffee shops across the country. Some shop owners, including one who started a small Pittsburgh chain, closed their businesses shortly after workers announced plans to unionize. As workers started organizing at Starbucks outlets, the coffee giant was accused of, among other tactics, hiring more workers to dilute a vote.
Companies typically follow the same playbook — created by union-busting law firms, says Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University.
Unionizing smaller workplaces is a relatively new phenomenon, says Givan. As such, there isn’t a lot of evidence to show whether small companies like Compass have the capital to go on a hiring binge to dilute a vote. When companies do hire large blocs of workers, Givan says, it’s not a given that the newcomers will vote against a union.
Then again, the new workers “they don’t necessarily have any relationship with their co-workers who have likely been organizing. They haven’t established trust with them,” Givan told The Post. “They haven’t learned about some of the challenges in the workplace that have led workers to want to organize in the first place.”
Managers will often hold mandatory companywide meetings — known as “captive audience meetings” — to try to persuade new and veteran employees alike to vote against a union, Givan said. The company may hire anti-union consultants or attorneys to help with the task. But Compass, Haft says, has refrained from mandatory meetings and has relied on its long-standing law firm, Venable, to guide the company through elections. Haft, however, said he plans to host informational meetings at the Ivy City roastery.
“If people want to ask me questions, I’ll answer questions, and I’ll share my views on why I don’t think this is a good thing for people or for Compass. But it’s not mandatory. You don’t have to come. There won’t be lawyers. It’s just going to be me.”
Companies may not need to influence some new employees if those workers, such as people on parole or probation, feel grateful just to have a job, notes Givan.
Such employees “will not take any risks that they feel might lead them to lose their job, including speaking up or advocating for a union, because that can actually send them back to being incarcerated again,” Givan said.
David Black, 48, was hired at Compass more than a month ago despite not holding a job for nearly three decades. He was released from federal prison in August after serving 26 years on a murder conviction. Black isn’t certain if the conditions of his release demand that he hold a job, but he said having one “makes you look good. It lets the judge know that you plan to be a productive citizen when you return to society.”
Black said he wasn’t sure yet how he would vote in the election: “I got to weigh all my options. … It’s all about what’s best for me.”
Union organizers fear that Compass will fire vulnerable workers like Black after the vote if unionization efforts fail. “Our concern is they’re going to make them eligible for the vote, and then as soon as the vote happens, they’re gone,” Babin said.
Haft said he has no such intention. Compass, he says, is investing time and money to train workers. He wants them to succeed. What’s more, Haft has met Black, whose hiring was just like everyone else’s in Washington: Compass couldn’t ask Black on his application — or in his interview — if he had a criminal conviction (though the company can ask once it has extended a conditional job offer).
Black “told me that we helped him sign for a new apartment,” Haft said. “We were able to provide a reference and we could submit his paycheck, and this is the first time he’s had a job that’s willing to do that. So I feel pretty good about hiring David.”
As Tuesday’s election draws near, union organizer Call said he remains undeterred. Call said he has worked in the food service industry for nearly a decade and has repeatedly left bad jobs in hopes the next one would be better. Now, at Compass, he’s tired of merely hoping for better — he’s demanding better.
“It’s been a long, long ride, and I’m glad it’s finally coming to fruition,” Call said. “I’m not willing to just give up at the finish line.”
