Third Starbucks Store Votes To Unionize, Arizona: Organizing Momentum

- Starbucks' union-busting campaign can't slow organizing momentum as Arizona store votes yes. Daily Kos. Feb. 25, 2022. - Ed.

Starbucks managed to delay the counting of ballots in a union vote at a Mesa, Arizona, store, but the company couldn’t change the result: Workers voted to unionize, 25 to three. When the workers said they were confident they would prevail after the delay, they were not joking. This is the 3rd corporate-owned Starbucks store with a union, the first two being in Buffalo where the union won two out of three elections in December.

Workers at more than 100 Starbucks stores across the country are organizing, despite a vicious anti-union campaign. The coffee chain's efforts include firing multiple union leaders, captive audience meetings in which managers intimidate them or barrage them with anti-union messages, and the company flooding stores at which workers are organizing with extra managers or extra employees to dilute the union vote.

Starbucks has also used a lot of high-priced lawyers to maneuver for delays on votes or vote-counting. As happened in Mesa—buying the company time to continue its anti-union campaign or blunting the organizing drive’s momentum by preventing wins from being counted. Starbucks’ biggest delay tactic - to get the National Labor Relations Board to call off store-by-store elections and replace them with larger consolidated elections across regions, has been rejected repeatedly, yet the company keeps trying, and scoring smaller delays as a result.

Ballots at 3 Buffalo Starbucks stores were supposed to be counted on Wednesday, but Starbucks succeeded at delaying the counts on the very same day as the NLRB said the Mesa count should go forward. Those Buffalo votes are likely to be counted soon. Meanwhile, a poll shows that large majorities of people nationally and of Starbucks customers specifically support the workers unionizing. The poll, done by Blue Rose Research for More Perfect Union, found that 67% of people surveyed agreed that Starbucks workers “need a union in order to have a better opportunity at higher pay and benefits, worker safety and fair schedules.”...

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/25/2082237/-Starbucks-union-busting-campaign-can-t-slow-organizing-momentum-as-Arizona-store-votes-yes