Starbucks closes another Seattle location over safety concerns

Another Starbucks location in Seattle will close next month due to what the company said are security concerns.

A spokesperson for the coffee giant said “security incidents” had “continued to escalate” at its Capitol Hill-area store, prompting Starbucks to close it on Dec. 11, The Seattle Times reported.

CEO Howard Schultz told an internal meeting over the summer that Starbucks “deals with things stores aren’t built for,” like crime and homelessness, according the post-millennium.

Schultz’s comments came as Starbucks decided to close more than a dozen stores spread across some of the country’s biggest cities, including DC, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland and Seattle.

Starbucks Workers United, the company’s fledgling union, sees the decision as retaliatory since the soon-to-be-closed store was one of the first in the country to organize.

“Starbucks and Howard Schultz think they’re above the law”, Starbucks Workers United wrote on Twitter. “They believe they can do whatever they want and get away with it. This is unacceptable and will not hold. »

The store will officially close on December 9. A Starbucks spokesperson said it would begin negotiating with the union over possible transfers of employees to other stores.