In April of 2022, workers at a Starbucks in Ithaca, New York, voted 19-1 to unionize with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), the organizing campaign that has been spreading across the company’s some nine thousand corporate-owned locations in the United States.

The store is on College Ave, near Cornell University, making it one of the busiest Starbucks locations in the area. Even in comparison to the two other Ithaca locations that formed unions, the College Ave workers were particularly well-organized: shortly after their vote, they went on strike over an overflowing grease trap in the store that spilled oil and waste onto the floor, a workplace hazard.

In early June, Starbucks informed the workers that it was closing the location. In communications about the decision, the company cited business concerns, mentioning the grease trap specifically as part of its thinking for shuttering the store. In a statement following the decision, Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges said, “We open and close stores as a regular part of our operations.” But for the workers at College Ave, the explanations only confirmed their suspicion: this was retaliation.