The drumbeat of union representation elections continued loud and clear over the past few weeks, notably within the Starbucks chain and within Amazon warehouses. Speaking to Starbucks’ ongoing unionizing issues, the Starbucks Workers United (SBU) caught a big fish last week when the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in New York City officially voted to unionize by a tally of 46-36. The Roastery is now the 10th corporate-owned Starbucks to vote to unionize against one loss at a store in the Buffalo market. At the same time, with a 60% turnout of eligible voters, mega-retailer Amazon saw its workers at the Amazon warehouse in the Staten Island borough of New York City vote to unionize by a margin of 2654 – 2131. At a separate Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, workers again rejected the union with 993 votes opposed versus 875 who voted in favor with another 416 votes contested and not yet counted. You will recall that the Alabama facility rejected the union last year by a 2-1 margin, but the NLRB invalidated those election results and ordered a new election to be held. With the bias and constant urging of the NLRB, expect more union elections to crop up in new businesses throughout the remaining years of the Biden presidency.
