A 33-year-old who worked at Starbucks for 13 years got fired over a month-old violation.

Last edited Sat Aug 13, 2022, 10:54 AM - Edit history (1)

Edit to add link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/33-old-worked-starbucks-13-120000106.html

A 33-year-old who worked at Starbucks for 13 years got fired over a month-old violation. It led to a union walkout and a viral video that has racked up 21 million views on TikTok

Christine Mui
Fri, August 12, 2022 at 7:00 AM

Sam Amato has spent nearly his entire working life at Starbucks.

Over 13 years, he’s served countless customers, learned details of their lives, and even “watched their kids grow up,” the former shift supervisor said. When a wave of labor activity spread through Starbucks locations across the country, he got involved as a lead organizer at the store he typically works at in Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo, New York, which became one of the first in the country to unionize.

On Aug. 5, the 33-year-old had just clocked in for his shift at a different Starbucks in the town of Tonawanda when the store manager pulled Amato outside for a conversation and fired him for a month-old violation connected to closing the store early, a decision that he said left him “blindsighted.”

“I mean, it’s been 13 years. It’s how I get my paycheck. It’s how I get my insurance. It’s how I make a living,” Amato told Fortune. “To have that pulled from under you…it was a devastating moment.”

FULL story at link.