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Starbucks fired the employee responsible for igniting the Starbucks Workers United union campaign [1]

['Ashley Capoot']

Date: 2023-04-01

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz testifies about the company's labor and union practices during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 29, 2023.

Starbucks fired Alexis Rizzo, the employee responsible for igniting the Starbucks Workers United union campaign, just days after the company's former CEO Howard Schultz testified on Capitol Hill about the coffee chain's alleged union-busting, CNBC confirmed.

Rizzo worked as a shift supervisor at Starbucks for 7 years and served as a union leader at the Genesee St. store in Buffalo, New York, which was one of the first two stores in the country to win its union campaign.

Starbucks Workers United announced Rizzo's termination in a tweet Saturday and said in a corresponding GoFundMe page that "this is retaliation at its worst."

"I'm absolutely heartbroken. It wasn't just a job for me. It was like my family," Rizzo told CNBC in an interview. "It was like losing everything. I've been there since I was 17 years old. It's like my entire support system, and I think that they knew that."

Rizzo said 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 over the course of those instances, and that she had been repeatedly issued write-ups for being late.

Rizzo suspects she was let go as a result of Wednesday's Senate hearing, she said.

Schultz faced a volley of tough questions from Sen. Bernie Sanders Wednesday about Starbucks' labor and union practices. Sanders, a pro-union independent representing Vermont, has been putting pressure on Starbucks for more than a year to recognize the union and negotiate contracts with unionized cafes.

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[1] Url: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/01/starbucks-fired-employee-responsible-for-workers-united-union-campaign.html

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