The University's ILR School is lighting up the newswires this week. Just a couple days after ILR Professor and Vice-Provost for Land-Grant Affairs Ron Seeber crossed the picket lines to be a guest on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, causing much controversy across ILR-circles, now the Wall Street Journal is running an article about Starbucks' somewhat ambiguous anti-union practices. Apparently Starbucks has been checking to see if any of their According to several emails, in early 2006, Starbucks managers discovered that two pro-union employees in New York were graduates of a Cornell University labor program. According to an email, managers took the names of graduates from an online Cornell discussion group and the school's Web site and cross-checked them with employee lists nationwide. They found that three employees in California, Michigan and Illinois were graduates of the program and recommended that local managers be informed.employees "partners" are graduates of Cornell to determine whether or not they might have pro-union sympathies. Starbucks Emails Describe Efforts to Stop Unionization - WSJ.com :: The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, has been trying to organize workers at Starbucks since 2004 and has been able to organize only several dozen at a handful of stores in New York and a few other cities.
We're not certain if this is good news or bad news here at MetaEzra. On one hand, it makes Cornell alums look like active, engaged citizens fighting for their rights. But on the other hand, it may make people think that Cornell grads can only get barrista jobs at Starbucks after graduating.
Of course, what the Wall Street Journal fails to mention is that the Starbucks executives fighting the union are also Cornell ILR alums. Funny how that works.
