Starbucks workers at Buffalo unionize

Employees at a Buffalo-area Starbucks have voted to form a union, making it the only one among the nearly 9,000 Starbucks stores in the United States to be organized. This is an important symbolic victory for labor at a time when workers across the country are expressing frustration with wages and working conditions. The result of the vote was announced on Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board and it represents a major challenge to the labor model at the giant coffee retailer which has argued that its workers enjoy some of the best wages and benefits in the retail and restaurant industry and don't need a union. 

The union was also leading in an election at another store but only by a small margin than the number of ballots the union was seeking to disqualify through challenges. The challenges must be resolved by the labor agency's regional director in the coming days or weeks before there is a result. John Logan, a labor professor at San Francisco University said, "Although it’s a small number of workers, the result has huge symbolic importance and symbols are important when it comes to union organizing. Workers who want to form a union in the United States are forced to take a considerable amount of risk, and it helps if they can see others who have taken that risk and it has paid off."

The unionized employees who are joining Workers United, an affiliate of the giant Service Employees International Union kept receiving inquiries from other Starbucks workers across the country who said they were paying close attention and were interested in unionizing as well. Alexis Rizzo, a worker at one of the stores says, "I don’t think it will stop in Buffalo, whatsoever."

Source: The New York Times