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By: Serach Nissim
A US agency has ordered Starbucks to reopen two stores it had shuttered last year in Ithaca, NY.
As reported by the NY Post, a labor judge ruled on Friday that the coffee chain had closed down those stores in order to “chill unionism.” Geoffrey Carter, an administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), ruled that Starbucks “violated the National Labor Relations Act” by “permanently closing its two remaining stores in Ithaca … for antiunion reasons” while “failing and refusing to bargain with Workers United.” Starbucks must comply with the order by reopening the locations “within a reasonable period of time,” the judge decreed.
Starbucks had shuttered the two stores in the Ithaca Commons and Meadow Street stores in May 2023. The union had then filed a complaint with the NLRB. This is hardly Starbucks’s first clash with the labor unions nor its first trial with NLRB. In April 2022, workers at three Ithaca locations voted to unionize. Weeks later, Starbucks regional leadership began considering the permanent closures of the Meadow Street and Ithaca Commons locations, according to the NLRB ruling. In June of 2022, a third location in Ithaca had been shuttered. In July 2023, the NLRB ordered Starbucks to “immediately” reopen that location.
Per the Post, the coffee giant had decided to shutter the stores due to high turnover and low profitability metrics, but the NLRB countered that Starbucks factored the “economic losses” during employee strikes as part of its profitability metrics. Carter wrote in his ruling that Starbucks will be permitted to provide new evidence which was unavailable at the time of the first trial, to try to demonstrate that reopening the two locations would be “unduly burdensome” to the company.
Starbucks released a statement in response to the new ruling, saying: “We are reviewing the administrative law judge’ decision regarding actions at two stores in Ithaca, NY.” The company added: “Our focus continues to be on training and supporting our managers to ensure respect of our partners’ rights to organize and on progressing negotiations towards ratified store contracts this year.”
Last year, the NLRB actually asked Starbucks to reopen 23 stores across the country that labor advocates say were closed in response to workers unionizing. Those stores spanned throughout the US, in major cities including Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle, the company’s headquarters. There were wide-reaching labor protests by Amazon workers, auto workers, Hollywood writers and actors.
The contentious fighting with the unions all began in 2021, when Starbucks workers at a Buffalo, NY location became the first Starbucks store to unionize. Since then, employees at hundreds of other coffee stores across the country have sought to unionize. At first, Starbucks refused to negotiate with Workers United, which represents more than 10,000 of the chain’s employees, and this led to numerous work stoppages. Federal district judges and NLRB administrative judges intervened, issuing dozens of decisions against Starbucks, accusing it of unfair labor practices — including delaying negotiations and withholding benefits from unionized workers.
Starbucks also clashed with Workers United over another topic. Per the NY Post, earlier this year, the Workers United had posted messages on social media declaring “Solidarity with Palestine!”, following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. This prompted a lawsuit by Starbucks, accusing the union of trademark infringement.
