Hannah Rosenberg/Sun File Photo. Cornell will be terminating its partnership with Starbucks following a recent National Labor Relations Board ruling.

While lecturing on social enterprise recently, as I have done each semester in recent years, I learned the following news from a student and found the article below in the University’s newspaper to explain it:

Cornell to End Partnership With Starbucks by June 2025

Cornell will be terminating its partnership with Starbucks no later than the expiration of its current contract, Student Assembly President Patrick Kuehl ’24 announced in an Aug. 16 email to the student body. The contract is set to expire in June 2025…

Thanks to Jonathan Mong at the Cornell Daily Sun for that clear explanation, worth reading in full if you care about the coffee business, and/or the basics of labor law in the USA. Bravo to the University for its consistent stand upholding those labor laws. Starbucks, a company I once admired without reservation, now primarily puzzles and frequently disappoints me:

Starbucks increases U.S. hourly wages and adds other benefits for non-union workers

Starbucks is increasing pay and benefits for most of its U.S. hourly workers after ending its fiscal year with record sales.

But the company said Monday that unionized workers won’t be eligible for some of those perks, a sign of the continuing tension between the Seattle coffee giant and the union trying to organize its U.S. stores.

At least 366 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since 2021, according to the National Labor Relations Board. But Starbucks and the Workers United union have yet to reach a labor agreement at any of those stores. Starbucks has 9,600 company-operated stores in the U.S.

Starbucks said Monday it will increase wages — which currently average $17.50 per hour — starting Jan. 1. Employees at both union and non-union stores who have worked four years or less will get raises of 3% or 4% depending on years of service.

Employees who have worked five years or more will be eligible for a 5% increase, but since that’s a new benefit, it must be negotiated with Workers United and is therefore not available to unionized stores, the company said.

Workers United rejected that claim and said it will file unfair labor practice charges against Starbucks with the NLRB.

“Withholding benefits from unionized stores is against the law,” the union said…

Read the whole story here.