College Students Are Urging Their Schools Dump Starbucks Coffee Over Shutdowns of Unionized Cafes
- Pro-labor sit-in protest demands Cornell find a new vendor
- Closures are part of its store-fleet evaluation, company says
Cornell University’s student government and campus activists are urging the school to stop serving Starbucks coffee after the chain announced plans to shutter its nearby unionized cafes.
Employees at the three corporate-run Starbucks Corp. cafes in Ithaca, New York, voted last year to join Starbucks Workers United, making Ithaca the first US city where all of the company’s baristas were unionized. Starbucks announced last June that it was closing one of those cafes, prompting a complaint from the US National Labor Relations Board, which alleged the company was illegally retaliating because workers organized. Last week, the company said it was also closing the remaining two Ithaca stores, a move the union claims constitutes further retaliation.