After the stunning victory at Amazon by a little-known independent union that didn’t exist 18 months ago, organized labor has begun to ask itself an increasingly pressing question: Does the labor movement need to get more disorganized?
Starbucks Workers United (SWU) won its third store election February 28 in Mesa, Arizona. The vote was an overwhelming 25-3.
Reader Comments: War in Ukraine - Portside readers respond; Boycott Russian artists??; Baseball; Odetta; Starbucks; International Women’s Day; Prescription Drug Prices; Rachel Corrie Remembered; Resources; Announcements; more....
The Mesa store at Powerline and Baseline Roads became the first U.S. company-run store outside Buffalo to be unionized in the recent organizing wave.
Petitions to organize have come faster than even those involved first believed possible, according to Richard Bensinger, union organizer with Starbucks Workers United and a former organizing director of the AFL-CIO.
The liberal workers the company has long attracted are expanding a union campaign to other cities after a landmark victory in Buffalo.
Since the initial victory in Buffalo, workers at several other Starbucks stores throughout the country have filed for union elections, including in Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Knoxville, Tenn.
Starbucks corporate fought the Buffalo organizing effort. Massachusetts workers are preparing for a similar campaign by Starbucks.
Given that Starbucks would go to such lengths to stop just a handful of stores from joining a union, it’s no surprise that it took 50 years after its founding for a single café to unionize. And it’s no wonder it's seen as a groundbreaking event.
Spread the word