Starbucks is going to the highest court in America to fight a union.
The highest court will listen to the coffee company’s case about having to hire back workers they fired in 2021.
Starbucks said the US labor officials’ case wasn’t good enough to justify the order they were asking for.
The way the fight is settled will have a big impact on the type of help US workers can get in work disagreements.
In this situation, the National Labor Relations Board asked for and got a special court order that made the company hire back seven workers at a store in Memphis. The company had treated the workers unfairly for being in a union, and the court said they had to hire them back.
Starbucks said that the employees who invited a news crew into a store to talk about their cause were fired for breaking company rules, like going into the store off-duty.
It challenged the emergency order, called an injunction, and the lower court agreed with it.
Supporters of the temporary orders believe they are important to deal with the problems that happen while trying to solve labor disagreements that can take a long time.
But Starbucks has won in other cases where judges had stricter rules for regulators. This shows that some judges disagree, and Starbucks wants the Supreme Court to make a final decision.
Big business groups, like the US Chamber of Commerce, are supporting Starbucks by filing legal papers.
There are more workers organizing in the US lately, and it’s causing problems for companies like Amazon, Apple, and car-makers.
Since 2021, workers at over 370 Starbucks stores in the US have decided to form a union.
The people in charge of Starbucks Workers United have made many complaints saying that Starbucks is breaking the law in order to stop the workers from organizing. Often, labor officials have looked into those claims and found them to be true.
Starbucks Workers United said that the company is trying to get rid of an important tool the National Labor Relations Board uses to hold corporations responsible for breaking the law.
The Supreme Court will consider the Memphis case, and Starbucks is now fighting against all US workers, not just its own employees.
Starbucks, which runs over 10,000 stores in the US, says it did not break work laws.
The company said it was happy that the court would think about its request to make things fair for US employers by making sure that the same rules are used when deciding whether to stop something from happening.