Blue Bottle Workers Rally at Harvard Square Location to Protest Firing of Union Organizer

Around 10 Blue Bottle employees rallied outside the coffee chain’s Harvard Square location on Monday to demand the reinstatement of a barista who was fired last week.

The protesters alleged the worker, Remy S. Roskin, lost her job last Wednesday due to her support for the newly-formed Blue Bottle Independent Union, which includes the chain’s five other Boston-area locations and was formed in May.

A Blue Bottle spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Monday evening.

Roskin said she was fired for violating company policy by using her phone to clock in for her shift shortly before she arrived on Sept. 9. That day, she was called in for a meeting with her manager and a company HR representative.

Two days later, she was summoned to a second meeting and told she had been terminated.

The company did not follow its established disciplinary procedures — which start with a verbal warning and escalate to a written warning, followed by a formal write-up — against Roskin, she said.

Roskin expressed regret for clocking in early but said her termination seemed “targeted.”

“I recognize that I shouldn’t have been clocking in on my phone, but I also know that they know I’m a really big part of the union and union organizing,” she said. “It seems like they were looking for something to fire me over instead of actually talking to me about it or writing me up or anything.”

Roskin, who had worked at Blue Bottle for more than two years and was a shift lead at the Harvard Square shop, said she had not previously received any warnings or write-ups.

In an open letter urging Blue Bottle’s regional officials to reinstate Roskin, the BBIU alleged the company had used its time and attendance policies to penalize organizers.

“While it might not have been wise for Remy to clock in with her phone, at Blue Bottle union supporters have previously been written up for being simply one minute late to clocking in,” the union wrote, describing the company’s enforcement practices as “draconian.”

As of Monday afternoon, more than 300 people had signed the letter.

Roskin and the BBIU also claimed Blue Bottle violated Massachusetts law by delaying her final paycheck until the day after she was fired. State law requires that “any employee discharged from such employment shall be paid in full on the day of his discharge.”

The BBIU, which currently has 70 members, first publicly announced its plans to unionize in April. After Blue Bottle refused to voluntarily recognize the union, employees staged a walkout and filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.

The union won a majority of employee votes, 38-4, making Blue Bottle one of several Boston-area coffee chains to unionize in recent years.

But Roskin and BBIU president Rocky Prull said Blue Bottle had become increasingly hostile to union organizers over the summer.

“Most recently we have seen prominent union supporters and organizers being increasingly written up by café management,” Prull wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.

Last spring, Blue Bottle — which is owned by Nestlé — hired the multinational labor and employment law firm Ogletree Deakins to handle its relationship with the BBIU.

The union will begin negotiating its first contract in mid-October.

“We will be fighting for better wages and benefits, protections from harassment, and democratic control of the workplace,” Prull wrote.

—Staff writer Tilly R. Robinson can be reached at tilly.robinson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tillyrobin.