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BUFFALO, N.Y. (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp (NASDAQ:SBUX) on Thursday failed to fend off a labor organizing drive as employees in Buffalo, New York, voted to join a union in one of three stores.
Employees at one Starbucks location in Buffalo voted to join Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.
The vote counting for two other stores in the upstate New York city was still continuing on Thursday.
The Seattle-based coffee chain could still challenge the results of the election. But if the outcome holds, the company would gain its first unionized location in the United States in decades.
About 15 Starbucks employees who support the union drive had gathered in a room in Buffalo to watch results. Many jumped, screamed and hugged when they realized they had enough votes to win the store on Elmwood Avenue, according to a Reuters witness.
The vote was 19-8 in favor of joining the union.
Starbucks had several unionized cafes and a roastery in the United States the 1980s, but all eventually decertified. It beat back organizing campaigns in Philadelphia and New York City, but one location in Canada unionized in 2020.
A Buffalo victory could embolden other baristas to launch organizing drives at some of the company’s more than 8,000 other U.S. cafes. Already, three other Buffalo-area stores and one store in Mesa, Arizona, have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for union elections.
The closely watched results come as companies eye new union organizing campaigns amid a U.S. labor shortage that has already led to higher wages at most large retailer and restaurant chains.
E-commerce company Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) is facing a new election at one of its Alabama warehouses after results of the previous election – which the union lost – were overturned last month.
