Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Three more Starbucks locations in Buffalo have voted to unionize after the National Labor Relations Board tallied ballots from union elections on Wednesday.
Those three stores are part of a wave across the United States that have filed petitions with the labor board to hold union elections since two stores in Buffalo and one store in Arizona unionized in the last few months.
"Today, we just won our next three votes here in Buffalo for our union campaign, which is unbelievable," said Michelle Eisen, one of the leading members of Starbucks Workers United. "That brings our total number across the country to six, five here in Buffalo alone. We've only had three vote counts, and we've had winning vote counts across the board, which is pretty amazing."
The first store to vote for unionization on Wednesday was the Walden and Anderson store, which passed the vote to unionize by one vote, 8-7.
About an hour later, the Sheridan and Bailey location voted "yes" to unionization, as the vote passed by a 15-12 count. The store needed a minimum of 15 votes to unionize out of 29, with two of those votes being contested.
A short time later, the Transit and French location also tallied a 15-12 count to unionize, with two additional votes being contested. Like the Sheridan and Bailey location, Transit and French only needed a minimum of 15 votes.
In just a matter of hours on Wednesday, the number of Starbucks stores nationally to unionize doubled from three locations to six.
"I think it's important to note that while this is an unbelievable victory and the people standing behind me and the people in these stores worked so hard to get to this point, they should have never had to work this hard," Eisen said. "It shouldn't be this difficult to form a union if the vast majority of your workplace wants a union, and that is solely based on Starbucks' ridiculous union-busting tactics. In spite of all of that, here we are with three more wins. Three-out-of-three."
"Everybody was talking about the 25-3 vote in Mesa. What we just witnessed - these three stores - because of the power of the organizer standing behind me, just triumphed in an anti-union campaign that's been prolonged for six months," said attorney Mike Dolce, representing Starbucks Workers United.
The votes for all three stores were originally scheduled to be counted back on Feb. 23 until they were impounded, pending a decision from the NLRB on whether Starbucks workers can continue to unionize on a store-by-store basis.
