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After three stores in Buffalo held elections, the process has snowballed, with more than a dozen more stores across the country filing to hold elections.

This is every Starbucks that is holding a union vote (so far)

[Source Photo: TonyBaggett/iStock/Getty Images Plus]

BY Kristin Toussaint3 minute read

This story will be updated as additional Starbucks stores file to hold union elections

When Starbucks workers in Buffalo made history as the first location of the iconic coffee chain to vote to unionize, campaign organizers Workers United hoped it was just the start of a movement to increase worker power across the country. A month later, it seems they may get what they hoped for: Workers just won union representation at a second Buffalo Starbucks location, and several more across the country have filed petitions to hold union elections.

The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that conducts union elections, announced January 10 that it certified a union victory at a second Buffalo-area Starbucks store, after votes were tallied there in December—the same time when the first Buffalo store unionized—but were inconclusive after the union challenged that certain ballots should not count. The union said several votes were cast by employees who did not work at that store, and the labor board agreed, ultimately tossing them out. (Yet another Buffalo-area store held its election to unionize at the same time, where the workers voted to not join Workers United.)

Starbucks has 10 days to ask for a review of the labor board’s decision—but that election may not be the only one the company has to worry about. Union votes are now in the works at 14 other stores across the country, with 17 total Starbucks stores having filed to hold an election. “We are inspired by the bravery of our partners in Buffalo,” workers at a Hopewell, New Jersey, Starbucks wrote in a letter to Starbucks President and CEO Kevin Johnson on January 11, announcing their intent to form a union. The company refers to its employees as “partners,” but workers have repeatedly said that unionizing is “the only way for us to truly be partners in our company, in power rather than simply in name.”

Starbucks locations that will soon hold union elections include those in:

  • Hopewell, New Jersey
  • Two in Mesa, Arizona
  • Cleveland
  • Three in Eugene, Oregon
  • Broomfield, Colorado
  • Knoxville, Tennessee
  • Seattle
  • Two in Allston, Massachusetts
  • Brighton, Massachusetts
  • Brookline, Massachusetts
  • Three stores in Chicago
  • La Grange, Illinois
  • Amherst, New York
  • Cheektowaga, New York
  • Depew, New York
  • Two in Tallahassee, Florida
  • Baltimore, Maryland
  • Memphis, Tennessee
  • North Chesterfield, Virginia
  • Five in Richmond, Virginia
  • Two in Santa Cruz, California
  • Five in Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Lansing, Michigan
  • Detroit, Michigan
  • Four in Philadelphia
  • Denver, Colorado
  • Atlanta, Georgia
  • Portland, Oregon
  • Three in Buffalo, New York
  • Three in Ithaca, New York
  • Kansas City, Missouri
  • Overland Park, Kansas
  • Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
  • Los Angeles
  • San Antonio, Texas
  • Great Neck, New York
  • Brooklyn
  • Two in Manhattan
  • Pittsburgh

The company has continued to oppose the union activity. “We’ve been clear in our belief that we are better together as partners, without a union between us at Starbucks, and that conviction has not changed,” a spokesperson told Reuters. Starbucks EVP Rossann Williams sent a letter to employees in October saying that “operational challenges” such as staffing, training, repairing equipment, and so on, “can only be solved by us, from within Starbucks.”

Workers have taken issue with the argument that a union would come between the company and its employees. “Starbucks has portrayed this effort as like, a third party coming in and wanting to take control and disrupt things in our workplace,” Colin Cochran, a Buffalo barista, told AZ Central. “Which is ridiculous because our union is going to be made up of baristas and shift supervisors who make up Starbucks. That’s not a third party.”

The work for Starbucks employees even at the two Buffalo locations that won their union elections is far from over. Now they must negotiate a contract with the company, a process that can be drawn out for years. Winning a contract may require workers to apply even more pressure, like conducting a work stoppage.

Starbucks workers seem ready to apply such pressure. “This generation of workers is standing up to anti-union bullying,” Richard Bensinger, a union organizer advising the efforts, said following the ruling on the second Buffalo location, according to Bloomberg. “Partners all around the nation are now responding.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristin Toussaint is the staff editor for Fast Company’s Impact section, covering climate change, labor, shareholder capitalism, and all sorts of innovations meant to improve the world. You can reach her at ktoussaint@fastcompany.com. More


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