All 22 workers whose ballots went unchallenged voted in favor of a union, according to tallies from the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday. But union organizers and Compass representatives challenged 101 ballots, which puts the issue in the NLRB’s hands.
Despite this, workers were feeling “incredibly encouraged and pretty electrified,” said Joseph Babin, a union organizer and store supervisor. “We were not expecting, in full honesty, a unanimous yes across the board, especially since a lot of these unchallenged ballots were new hires. The fact that we were able to connect with them so well that we got them all to vote yes, to me, is incredibly encouraging.”
The ballots are being challenged after Compass went on a hiring spree in the weeks after workers announced plans to unionize on May 31. The move drew criticism from organizers and labor experts who say Compass employed a traditional union-busting tactic to try to dilute pro-union votes — an allegation the company’s co-founder and chief executive Michael Haft has categorically denied.
Now an NLRB regional director, Sean Marshall, will decide whether to count or open the challenged ballots, Kayla Blado, press secretary for the independent federal agency, said in an email Wednesday. The director could also order a hearing to adjudicate the matter, potentially deciding which of the challenged ballots were from employees qualified to weigh in on the union vote. Both sides have five days after the election to file objections, she added.
“The results will be certified once any challenged ballots, and any potential objections are dispensed with,” Blado said. The process could take weeks just to get a hearing on the agenda.
On Tuesday, Compass either closed stores for the day or closed early so workers could cast ballots. The company papered over the windows to give workers privacy. A representative for the NLRB was there to administer each election. Both the union and Compass had a representative at the shops to challenge ballots.
Haft expressed frustration at the number of challenged ballots from union representatives. “If there’s a dispute, the parties should try to resolve it the day of [the vote], and typically people are able to resolve at least some of the contested ballots,” Haft said Tuesday. “They refused to engage in any sort of reasonable discussions.”
But Compass Coffee United has followed NLRB’s guidelines when challenging ballots, Babin said. “We are in full compliance with the law and disturbed that Michael Haft seems to think the law does not apply to all of us. If his fleet of new hires are eligible according to NLRB guidelines, he has nothing to worry about,” he said.
The NLRB doesn’t identify which representatives — whether from Compass or the union — challenged each individual ballot. But Haft said union representatives “challenged every single person who voted that wasn’t part of the organizing committee.”
Babin called Haft’s claim “100 percent untrue,” but declined to specify how many ballots they challenged. Babin said one of the only two unchallenged voters at his location near the White House was a new hire, not a member of the organizing committee. Compass disputed the legitimacy of at least two workers at the Spring Valley cafe who were apparently not on the eligible voter list, Haft said.
Each challenged ballot was sealed in an individual envelope, with the stated reason it was being challenged.
After agreement from both sides, some of the ballots are being challenged based on whether a person who voted is considered a supervisor, employees who are generally not allowed to be union members. Babin said he is confident that the NLRB will rule that Compass supervisor ballots are valid because the agency defines a supervisor as someone with authority over hiring and firing, which Compass store managers have, not supervisors.
The accusations lodged against Compass come during an unprecedented wave of unionization efforts at coffee shops across the country. As workers started organizing at Starbucks outlets, the coffee giant was accused of, among other tactics, hiring more workers to dilute a vote.
Organizers at Compass began pushing for a union in October 2022. Among their demands, they want the company to reinstate credit card tipping and 401(k) retirement plans, both of which Compass previously offered.
The fight took a turn after May 31 this year, when organizers said they noticed droves of new hires being added to the payroll in the wake of the unionization announcement. Union organizers have alleged that many of the recent hires have personal ties to Compass leadership. 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.
However, nearly all of the high-profile new hires were absent from the final list of voters that Compass submitted to the NLRB on Sunday. According to stipulated election agreements signed by Compass and union organizers, employees must have worked at least 52 hours in the 13 weeks before July 14 to be eligible to vote on the union. The preliminary voter roll Compass submitted to the NLRB on June 18 included 167 employees, but that number dropped by 37 — or about 22 percent — in the final voter rolls submitted Sunday.
The union has also alleged that some new employees appear to be vulnerable people who would be reluctant to support a union at the risk of losing their jobs. The final voter list includes a number of new employees 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.
Union organizers have suggested Compass will fire vulnerable workers after the vote if unionization efforts fail. Haft said he has no such intention. Haft declined to share details about the number of new workers hired since May 31, but said the company hired workers to fill empty positions and prepare for new store openings, including three more locations expected to open by the end of the year. For the most part, he also declined to talk about individual hires.
The union has lodged a number of complaints since the hiring spree, including allegations that Compass has fired or reduced the hours of workers in retaliation for their union support. Union organizers have even set up a GoFundMe campaign to help the workers. Haft denied all the allegations.
Both sides said they were hopeful about their chances before the NLRB and the election results.
“I’m pretty confident that we’re going to be successful in all those challenges,” Haft said.
Babin was equally confident.
“I feel very optimistic about what this means for the rest of the challenged ballots,” Babin said. “So while the path forward is definitely daunting, we’re feeling more at ease.”