Starbucks Closes Its Ithaca Locations One Year After Workers Unionized

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/starbucks-closes-its-ithaca-locations-one-year-after-workers-unionized/

Former Starbucks employees say the fight is far from over as they pressure Cornell University to “divest” from the company.


By Michelle Chen Twitter Today 5:00 am

On a quiet Friday afternoon in downtown Ithaca, N.Y., a handful of current and former Starbucks workers, donning their signature green aprons, lined up in front of a microphone across the street from one of the city’s two remaining Starbucks locations. One by one, they testified before a few dozen local protesters about how their jobs had become unbearable in recent months: surveillance, intimidation, and arbitrary discipline by managers—all to punish them for forming a union. And on May 26, Starbucks would be shutting down their union altogether by shutting down the cafés that employed them.

“I have been facing union-busting by Starbucks for a year and a half,” barista and former Cornell student Kolya Vitek told the crowd, “and I can tell you it is disgusting, and it is exhausting and it’s terrible. And I’m mad…. we do not deserve this. We just want rights and we just want dignity.”

The closure of the last two locations in Ithaca appears to be an escalation of what workers describe as a pattern of systematic anti-union abuse at Starbucks stores across the country.

Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), a national network of Starbucks unions backed by the Service Employees International Union, has filed a total of about 500 unfair labor practice charges against the company before the National Labor Relations Board. Last March, a NLRB judge issued a landmark ruling against Starbucks for committing “hundreds of unfair labor practices” during the Buffalo union drive, surveilling and unfairly disciplining workers. Ordering the reinstatement of 30 workers, the judge cited “a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights.”

FULL story at link above.