The battle for unionisation at Starbucks has now been brought to the doorstep of the Seattle giant. Despite the company’s attempts to stifle the movement, it is gaining momentum.
Starbucks Corp. workers will have an unionisation vote at a store in Seattle, a move giving the labour group that recently defeated the company in landmark elections in New York a chance to extend its new foothold to the coffee giant’s home town.
Previous tactics from the company included some questionable actions, as we reported in the past. For the moment, it is unknown if the company has abandoned that approach, or if so, how they are now communicating the case for non-unionisation to their employees.
A ballot will be mailed to each employee on February 25, the Seattle regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ordered Friday, rejecting the company’s argument that a store-by-store vote is inappropriate.
As in Seattle, the company argued that any vote should include the combined workforce of more stores, meaning that in order to win, the union would need more votes.
However, labour board officials found that there wasn’t enough evidence to depart from the agency’s usual presumption that a single workplace’s employees form a sufficiently large group to vote.
