Starbucks chief talks of possible benefits for nonunionized employees.

Starbucks' interim chief executive, Howard Shultz, told a weekly meeting of store managers on Monday that benefits he was considering expanding for nonunion employees would not immediately apply to the company's newly unionized workers.

The National Labor Relations Board has not yet certified the results of the 16 company-owned stores where workers voted to unionize over the past six months.

Starbucks has fired at least three union supporters since Mr. Shultz returned as chief executive. Mr. Shultz told employees in a letter on Sunday that the company would have the chance to invest more in its partners and stores, and he has held meetings with employees in several cities to ask their ideas.

Two appearances became contentious when Mr. Schultz was confronted by pro-union employees.

The Starbucks spokesman said the comments on benefits came during a question-and-answer session when Mr. Schultz was asked how new benefits the company was considering might fit in with the union campaign.

The spokesman said that the chief executive said that they were not allowed to give the benefit to the stores that voted for union.

The spokesman said that the Starbucks chief had not provided any examples of benefits he was considering or when they might be offered.

The comments were reported by The Wall Street Journal.

According to experts on labor law, companies were allowed to discuss the benefits that union and nonunion employees received, but that they couldn't make an implied promise that employees would receive better benefits if they chose not to unionize.

If the comments were made public, they could be seen as an attempt to undermine the lab conditions required for union elections, but not necessarily. The comments could still be evidence of an intent to bargain in bad faith by trying to give union employees a worse deal than nonunion employees, which is considered an unfair labor practice.

The timing of the potential benefits was questionable since it was unclear if they would have been added if not for the union campaign, according to a former chairwoman of the National Labor Relations Board.

It's hard to know if Mr. Schultz crossed a legal line without reviewing his precise comments.

Mr. Shultz has been against the union. He wrote on Sunday that he did not believe that conflict, division and dissension were caused by employees who supported unionization.

He said that less than 1 percent of Starbucks employees in the US had voted to unionize, and that 65 percent of employees eligible to vote in a union election had not done so.