Two business days after employees of a Starbucks in Buffalo, N.Y., voted to unionize, baristas of two stores in Boston filed a request with federal regulators to hold a vote on organizing their units as well.
With the filing, six units of the coffee chain are now awaiting a decision from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on unionization petitions. Three are in Buffalo and one is in Mesa, Ariz.
Separately, the owners of three cafes in Somerville, Mass., have acceded to employees' request that they be represented in future contract negotiations by New England Joint Board Unite Here, an affiliate of the giant Unite Here union. Jennifer Park and Tucker Lewis, co-owners of Diesel Cafe, Bloc Cafe and Forge Baking Co., said they would abide by what a majority of their employees have indicated they wanted to do.
Not included in the tally of Starbucks units looking to unionize is a Buffalo store whose employees have already voted on whether to unionize. That election is being reviewed by the NLRB because the legitimacy of enough ballots to change the results has been called into question. The votes, sealed in an envelope, were slipped under a door rather than mailed.
Representatives of Starbucks Workers United, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate that will now speak for employees of the unionized Buffalo store, said they would succeed in organizing that second unit if the disputed votes are rejected.
Employees of a third Starbucks unit in Buffalo voted not to join Starbucks Workers United, or SWU.
The filing by Starbucks employees in Boston was first reported by Bloomberg. The workers there discreetly solicited enough signatures from their colleagues on Friday to petition the NLRB after learning of their colleagues’ victory in Buffalo, the article’s author, Josh Eidelson, said later in a tweet.
On the same day the SWU succeeded in unionizing the Buffalo store, Starbucks North American President Rossann Williams addressed the results in a companywide note posted on the coffee chain’s website.
“So what happens from here? Put simply, we continue on as we did today, yesterday and the day before that,” Williams wrote.
But the SWU says the home office has changed the way it deals with employees at the three Buffalo stores that are awaiting a decision from the NLRB on holding a union vote.
“They changed their strategy from playing the ‘nice guy’ to waging psychological warfare on partners,” the union said in a tweet.
It accused corporate personnel of saddling supporters of unionization with both openings and closings in the same week to cut into their sleeping time. It also alleged that the units are being overstaffed with new hires to dilute union support.
A Starbucks spokesperson responded, "These continued accusations are not only grossly inaccurate but just simply untrue. We are partners. We show up for one another. That’s what we do and what we will continue to do."
The chain’s union situation is being carefully watched by the rest of the restaurant industry because it marks a rare success by labor in organizing units of a major chain. Many observers are also concerned because of the decidedly pro-union stance that the Biden administration has taken.
The nation’s view of unions is the most positive it’s been since 1965, Sean Kennedy, EVP of public affairs for the National Restaurant Association, said at last week’s Restaurant Leadership Conference.
“Labor is having a moment,” said Kennedy, the industry’s lead lobbyist. Still, “it’s not a crisis, yet. We have not seen any major union activity occur. It’s all onesies and twosies. But it’s something we need to be mindful of.”
Update: This story has been updated to include comment from Starbucks.
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