Starbucks Fires Employee Behind Starbucks Workers United Union Campaign

Starbucks Corporation SBUX has reportedly fired a shift supervisor responsible for lighting up the Starbucks Workers United union campaign.
Rizzo worked for seven years and served as a union leader at the Genesee St. store in Buffalo, New York, one of the first two stores in the country to win its union campaign.
Starbucks Workers United announced Rizzo’s termination in a tweet and said in a corresponding GoFundMe page that “this is retaliation at its worst.”
Rizzo told CNBC in an interview that her store managers fired her after she finished working her shift Friday. She said they told her it was because she had been late on four occasions — two of which were instances where she had been one minute late.
Starbucks told CNBC Rizzo had missed more than four hours of work throughout those instances and that she had been repeatedly issued write-ups for being late.
The move comes two days after CEO Howard Schultz testified before the U.S. Senate on Starbucks’ illegal union-busting campaign.
Schultz defended Starbucks’ negotiation approach. He also denied multiple times that the company ever broke federal labor law and said his focus as interim CEO was on operations, not battling the union.
Nearly 300 Starbucks cafes have voted to unionize. The union has made over 500 complaints of unfair labor practices. Starbucks has filed roughly 100 of its complaints against the union.
Judges have found that the company has several times broken federal labor law.
Price Action: SBUX shares are up 0.13% at $104.27 on the last check Monday.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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