Starbucks’ Discipline of Worker for Subpoena Response Is Illegal

Starbucks Corp. violated federal labor law by punishing a worker at an Illinois café for responding to a subpoena directing him to appear at National Labor Relations Board hearing, an NLRB judge ruled.

The worker wound up not testifying because he received notice just prior to the hearing’s scheduled start that it had been canceled. But the law still protected him from being disciplined for missing work to comply with the subpoena, Administrative Law Judge Paul Bogas ruled.

The June 23 decision is the seventeenth out of eighteen cases in which an ALJ ruled that Starbucks violated federal labor ...