The ruling is the latest by an appeals court to say that the NLRB went too far in finding workplace dress codes interfered with employees' rights to to advocate for better working conditions.
Page A2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 2 September 2026
12,000 Starbucks workers call for boycott over labor violations; appeals court clears company's dress code.
As it ran on the front
On August 25th, twelve thousand Starbucks workers - baristas from the union drive that started in one store in Buffalo in 2021 and has since organized more than 700 locations - called on the public to boycott the company. Their ask was not radical: $17 an hour, enough hours to live on, staffing that lets a shift actually function, basic workplace protections. They called Starbucks a "law-breaking coffee chain" because the company has been accused of hundreds of labor violations and still, five years into the organizing effort, has not signed a single union contract.
Nine days later, an appeals court answered. Not the wages. Not the staffing. Not the contract Starbucks still won't sign. The court ruled on the dress code - whether requiring workers to wear certain clothing violated their right to advocate for better conditions - and found it did not. The ruling landed Tuesday morning as if it settled something. It settled one thing: an appeals court, again, decided the National Labor Relations Board had gone too far in protecting workers who want to talk about their jobs.…
…(cont) That "again" is the part worth sitting with. The reporting on the decision called it "the latest" in a string of appellate rulings narrowing what the NLRB is allowed to find. Not the first. The latest. Every time the agency built to enforce labor law finds that a company crossed a line, there is a bench somewhere ready to explain that the line was drawn wrong.
Nobody at that appeals court adjudicated the $17 an hour. Nobody ruled on the missing contract, on the understaffed shifts, on the hundreds of labor violations the workers cited when they called the boycott. The court picked the narrowest available question - can a barista be told what to wear - answered it, and let the ruling stand in for the whole fight. That is not a coincidence of scheduling. That is what an appeals process is for when the workers are asking for money and the company needs a headline that says it didn't do anything wrong.
The boycott call didn't get a ruling. The dress code did. Watch which grievances get their day in court and which ones get twelve thousand people organizing a picket line instead, because the docket already told you the difference. Twelve thousand workers named a wage, a headcount, a missing contract. One court answered a question about a shirt, and called it settled.
“They didn't rule on the wages, the missing contract, or the hundred-plus violations - they ruled on the shirt. That's the tell: hand the court the smallest possible question, let the win cover the whole company.”
“Look, the court found no violation, full stop - that's a vindication, not a loophole. Did I say 'no violation'? I meant no violation of the dress code claim, which, yeah, happens to be the only claim anyone actually put in front of the judge. That's not spin, that's winning the case you're in.”
The receipts
Starbucks workers who have joined the unionizing effort that started in Buffalo, New York in 2021 and has spread to over 700 stores across the country called on all working people to show solidarity by boycotting the coffee chain, which…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.