Starbucks pushes back against US workers’ cafe-by-cafe union vote
Al Jazeera
Employees at three Starbucks locations in the Buffalo, New York area have petitioned to join Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.
Starbucks Corp. workers shouldn’t have the right to vote for a union on a cafe-by-cafe basis, the coffee chain told the U.S. labor board amid efforts by workers in Buffalo, New York, to organize.
“The facts and the law do not support holding individual and separate elections,” Starbucks attorney Alan Model said in his opening statement Thursday during a hearing held by the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees unionization in the U.S.
Model argued that, because of similarities among the stores, any labor vote should include employees at all 20 of the company’s Buffalo-area locations — meaning the union would need backing from a majority of participating workers across the region in order to win.
