Newly unionized Starbucks workers in the company’s Elmwood New York store wasted n time in flexing their new union muscles, walking off the job this week and forcing the company to close that store for the day. The six scheduled employees who walked out then formed a picket line outside the store. The Elmwood store was the only one of three union elections where representation was certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) back on December 9. Starbuck Workers United claimed that the strike was due to Starbucks not being fully staffed and safe to work at in current COVID-19 conditions. Ironically, the walk-out comes the same week that Starbucks announced that it was imposing a vaccine mandate on all employees effective February 9. The new policy mirrors the Biden administration mandate requiring employers of 100 or more to mandate either vaccination or weekly COVID testing for all employees. Notwithstanding, the union push within Starbucks continues to spread as over the course of the past two weeks, employees from stores in Seattle, WA; Knoxville, TN; Broomfield, CO; and Chicago, IL all sent letters to CEO Kevin Johnson advising him they were seeking NLRB approval to organize as a labor union. Including the three Buffalo market stores that already voted, that makes a total of 13 Starbucks stores in seven states that have filed for NLRB supervised elections.