BUFFALO, N.Y. — An employee at the Starbucks located on the corner of Delaware Avenue and Chippewa Street in downtown Buffalo filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to decertify the union.
The store voted to unionize back in 2022, at the time it was the sixth to unionize.
Since the initial Buffalo location on Elmwood Avenue voted to unionize in last 2021, there have been 250 union votes at Starbucks locations across North America.
The petition to decertify is the first attempt by a organized store to try and dissolve the union.
"This is a very aggressive attack by Starbucks," Buffalo attorney Robert Boreanaz said. "It's something that they're doing not just for the effect at the Buffalo store, they're hoping to have this ripple effect to some of the other stores as well."
Boreanaz is a labor and employment attorney in Buffalo, and not directly involved in the brewing battle between Starbucks and the union.
"They're trying to send a message to those unionized, and newly unionized shops, that they're not going to go anywhere, and they're going to suffer the consequences of possibly having a decertification petition filed against them," Boreanaz said.
Starbucks provided a statement to WGRZ, in regards to the petition filed with the NLRB the company spokesperson, saying "as with any NLRB petition, our focus is to ensure partners can trust their voice is heard and the process is fair."
Starbucks Workers United, however, says this isn't about having voices be heard and rather suppressing the organized labor movement.
"Almost every union leader at the store was fired or forced out because of the environment of intimidation and fear that Starbucks management created," a Workers United spokesperson said.
In a 200-page ruling issued in early March, a judge determined that Starbucks had "egregious and widespread violations of labor law."
Buffalo State University finance and economics professor Fred Floss says filing petitions to decertify the union is common.
"That's a standard practice for corporations that are trying to break their unions," Floss said. "They look at people who are working with the union, and they let them go, and then they bring in managers or others to take their place."
Floss says when pro-labor employees are removed from the equation, decertification is almost inevitable.
He expects this back and forth between Starbucks and the union to linger on locally and nationally.
"It's going to be a long fight," Floss said. "With young people, it will be interesting to see if they're willing to stick it out and continue to fight because a lot of them are students who are going to go on to other jobs, and that's what Starbucks is hoping for."