Starbucks workers are racking up win after win after win, despite vicious anti-union campaign

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The union effort at Starbucks went three for three in vote counts held on Thursday, at one store in Buffalo and two in Rochester. That’s pretty damn good. But on Friday, it appears to have gone four for four, with workers voting to unionize at three Ithaca stores with a combined vote of 47 to three, and the union leading six to one at a store in Overland Park, Kansas. In that case, there are seven challenged ballots—because the company challenged ballots of union supporters to drag things out.

If or when that result holds, it brings the tally to 17 union wins out of 18 votes held at Starbucks stores, with the anti-union practices employed in the 18th under National Labor Relations Board investigation, according to the union. The wins have come in multiple cities in New York; Seattle, Washington; Mesa, Arizona; and now all but certainly Kansas. But workers are organizing across the country, having filed for union representations in Ohio, Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Virginia, Hawai’i, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Michigan, Missouri, and more.

Starbucks remains committed to its union-busting campaign. In March, the NLRB issued a complaint against the company for retaliating against two Phoenix, Arizona, workers for their activism. But Starbucks actually went on to fire one of those workers after the retaliation complaint. Now, the NLRB is preparing to issue another complaint against Starbucks for retaliation, this time for its firing of seven union leaders in a Memphis store.

All of this looks pretty bad, so Starbucks is going on a PR offensive. Interim CEO Howard Schultz, the company’s founder, is out here warning that “We can’t ignore what is happening in the country as it relates to companies throughout the country being assaulted in many ways, by the threat of unionization,” even as the company bullies and illegally fires teenagers for daring to speak up. In case Schultz isn’t winning over the public with that rhetoric, the company is trying to hire a crisis communications/brand reputation manager. 

The alternative, of course, would be … not behaving in a way that leads you to need a crisis communications/brand reputation manager. Stop bullying teenagers. Stop illegally firing workers for exercising their right to speak out and organize. The results are clear: The anti-union campaign is not working, even though it is traumatizing workers.