Starbucks Seeks to Delay Union Election as Vote Nears
The move, and a visit by the company’s former chief executive days before the scheduled start of balloting at three Buffalo-area stores, reflect the stakes.


Aimee Alumbaugh, center, trained new baristas on using the espresso machine at a Starbucks in Cheektowaga, N.Y., near Buffalo.Credit...Libby March for The New York Times

By Noam Scheiber
Nov. 8, 2021
Just days before workers at three Starbucks stores in the Buffalo area were scheduled to begin voting on unionization, both labor and management took steps that reflect the high stakes involved, including an attempt by Starbucks on Monday to delay the election.

No corporate-owned Starbucks stores in the United States are unionized. Since workers at the three locations filed petitions in August seeking to affiliate with a union, the company has brought in officials from out of state — including managers and its president of retail for North America — to address problems at stores in the area.

The union filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board last week accusing the company of unlawfully “engaging in a campaign of threats, intimidation, surveillance, solicitation of grievances and the closing of facilities” during the election campaign.

On Saturday afternoon, Starbucks closed stores in the area so workers could attend a talk by Howard Schultz, the company’s largest individual shareholder and its former chief executive, at a local hotel.

Attendance at the session was voluntary, and Mr. Schultz did not mention the union campaign explicitly. But according to a transcript provided by Starbucks, he appeared to allude to the unionization effort repeatedly.

“We’re not a perfect company,” Mr. Schultz told employees at the meeting, who included baristas, managers and company officials. “Mistakes are made. We learn from them, and we try and fix them.” He argued that the company’s history of doing right by its employees, including offering them health care benefits and equity, showed that it had their interests in mind.

On a visit to the area in September to talk to managers, “I heard some things I never heard before about the condition of some of the stores some of you were working in,” he said on Saturday, without specifying the issues. “I made a promise to the managers that all of that would be addressed and fixed.”

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Workers who support the union have cited chronic understaffing, insufficient training and pay increases that fail to keep up with seniority. Some say the problems were compounded by the pandemic but long preceded it. In October, the company announced a new pay plan that included wage increases.

Union supporters, who are seeking to become part of Workers United, an affiliate of the giant Service Employees International Union, also say they want to ensure that they have a voice in resolving problems that arise on the job.

The National Labor Relations Board is scheduled to begin sending ballots to workers at the three stores on Wednesday; they are due back by Dec. 8. Under an October ruling from a regional official of the labor board, the three stores are slated to hold separate elections, meaning that a simple majority at any one of the stores would create a union.

But on Monday, Starbucks appealed the ruling, arguing that the board’s acting regional director erred in not setting up a single election involving all stores in the Buffalo area instead. It asked the N.L.R.B. in Washington to review the decision, and for a stay in mailing out ballots until the board rules. A single, larger election typically favors the employer.

Some workers who attended Mr. Schultz’s talk were confused by a story he told about the Holocaust, in which he noted that only a small portion of prisoners in German concentration camps received blankets but often shared them with fellow prisoners.

“So much of that story is threaded into what we have tried to do at Starbucks is share our blanket,” Mr. Schultz said, according to the transcript.

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