With a victory in Cleveland on Friday, Starbucks workers officially reached 200 union election wins across more than 30 U.S. states, a remarkable achievement in the face of a full-throttle union-busting campaign by the coffee company’s management and its billionaire interim CEO, Howard Schultz.
The speed with which Starbucks workers across the country built on the historic victory in Buffalo in December — when employees voted to form the company’s first-ever unionized store in the U.S. — has stunned observers who’ve seen the nation’s labor movement wither in recent decades amid a ruthless corporate assault.
“Across the country, Starbucks workers are striking against poor working conditions and the company’s open hostility to Starbucks Workers United’s nationwide union drive,” said Robert Reich, the former head of the U.S. Department of Labor. “In one year, 200 U.S. Starbucks stores have unionized. I’m amazed by what these courageous baristas have achieved.”
As More Perfect Union, a progressive media outlet, noted Friday, “Eight months ago there were 0 unionized Starbucks stores.”
“This is a historic moment in American labor,” the publication added.
In addition to the number of elections won thus far, experts have also taken note of the union’s strikingly high win percentage and the dozens of unanimous victories it has scored at locations across the country, an indication of Starbucks workers’ overwhelming desire to organize in the face of poor treatment.
“Starbucks Workers United has won an amazing rate — about 5 of 6 elections,” wrote labor journalist Steven Greenhouse. “It has won 52 unanimous votes.”
According to More Perfect Union’s latest tally, workers at 316 Starbucks locations have filed for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Starbucks workers’ nationwide organizing drive has helped fuel an uptick in union activity in the U.S. in recent months following a year in which overall union membership declined.
Earlier this month, the NLRB said the number of union election petitions filed with the board between October 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022 were up 58% compared to the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 2021.
The labor board also noted a 16% increase in unfair labor practice (ULP) charges filed against employers. Starbucks workers have lodged hundreds of unfair labor practice charges in recent months, accusing the company’s management of firing union organizers, slashing hours, and illegally threatening to deny pay raises and other benefits to unionized stores.
For Starbucks employees who have voted to unionize, the hard work is far from over: They now must win a contract, an arduous task given the CEO and management’s open disdain for the collective bargaining push.
At some locations that have won union elections, Starbucks workers have walked off the job to protest management’s refusal to engage in contract negotiations as required by law.
“Partners are ready to bargain. Our managers are ready to bargain,” Starbucks Workers United said in a statement last month announcing Seattle employees’ plans to strike. “Three months after we won our election, we refuse to wait any longer… See you on the picket line.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 182 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy