Starbucks is waging a war on its workers. The coffee chain has brought back founder Howard Schultz to lead the effort to defeat a union drive that is still spreading across the country, and that workers allege is flagrantly violating federal law as it seeks to slow their momentum. Currently, 176 Starbucks locations have filed for National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections since the first union campaign at a corporate-owned store in the United States went public in Buffalo, New York, last year.

Starbucks is favoring a particular method: firing union leaders. Workers at several stores say they have been terminated in retaliation for legally protected union activities. Early allegations came in Memphis, Tennessee, in February, when Starbucks fired seven workers after they announced their union drive. The company has said that the workers were fired on the pretext of workplace conduct violations, and while Starbucks Workers United has filed unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against the company alleging retaliation, the understaffed NLRB has yet to make a judgment, and the workers remain without their jobs.

In recent days, with Schultz back at the helm — and, bizarrely, attempting to assuage worker unrest by announcing that the company is “going to be in the NFT business” — the firings appear to have accelerated. Several union leaders in Buffalo have been fired or forced out. Three workers have been fired in Overland Park, Kansas, where the remaining workers are now on strike. And on Monday, Laila Dalton, the nineteen-year-old Starbucks barista in Phoenix, Arizona, whose prior claims of retaliation were substantiated by the NLRB mere weeks ago, lost her job.