For the past few months, we’ve kept an eye on the efforts of some Starbucks employees to unionize stores in the Buffalo New York market and we await the final results of that ongoing election – the voting closes on December 8 and NLRB begins the vote counting on December 9. At the same time however, employees at a Starbucks store out in Mesa, Arizona have formed an organizing committee and is beginning to put together a campaign to unionize stores in that southwest market. According to multiple media reports, a number of employees in Mesa sent a letter to company CEO Kevin Johnson advising him that they have formally begun the organizing process. It has also been intimated that similar efforts have begun in Starbucks stores in the Orlando and Chicago markets as well, while baristas across the nation are said to be watching the Buffalo campaign closely. While that battle is ongoing, the NLRB filed for an injunction this week against California-based casual-dining chain Daily Grill alleging that the company was illegally refusing to negotiate with Unite Here Local 11, which was certified as the union representing workers in one of the chain’s Los Angeles locations back in 2018. The parent company Grill Concepts, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April, cited the pandemic and accompanying government shutdowns as factors contributing to its inability to reach agreement with the union. Elsewhere, 90-unit West Virgina-based Tudor’s Biscuit World is facing an effort from its workforce to unionize and join on with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400 and has also filed the requisite paperwork with the NLRB for a union representation election.