Starbucks Employees Are Now Petitioning to Unionize at 50 U.S. Stores

(Bloomberg) -- Starbucks Corp. employees are now petitioning to unionize at around 50 stores across the U.S., rapidly expanding the reach of a campaign that last month established the sole unionized foothold among the chain's thousands of corporate-run U.S. sites.

On Monday, the Workers United union said it's filing 15 unionization petitions with the National Labor Relations Board, which follow dozens of others submitted in the weeks since the group's landmark victory in a Buffalo, New York, election. Collective bargaining talks at that store began Monday, the union said.

Starbucks didn't immediately respond to an inquiry. The company's North America president, Rossann Williams, reiterated in a December letter to employees that “we do not want a union between us as partners,” but that the company respects the legal process and will bargain in good faith at the first New York store where the union prevailed.

Simultaneous unionization pushes at 50 to 100 stores would be harder for the coffee giant to effectively campaign against, University of California at Santa Barbara historian Nelson Lichtenstein said last month. “When and if that happens, it will be much more difficult for Starbucks and its anti-union law firms to scurry about the country suppressing these insurrections,” Lichtenstein said in an email.

The union announced filings Monday in New York, Kansas, California, Missouri, Oregon and Washington state.

If the labor board affirms that the union has signed up majorities at each store and schedules a flurry of votes across the country over the coming months, they will offer a crucial test of the fledgling union's staying power. So will the contract talks in Buffalo. Under U.S. labor law, management is required to hold contract talks “in good faith” once workers vote to unionize, but there's no obligation to make major concessions on workers' demands. In most cases, workers haven't yet reached a collective bargaining agreement a year after voting to unionize, according to a 2009 study.

Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, has so far prevailed at two of the three Starbucks sites to hold recent unionization votes, all in New York state. Employees have been voting this month at one of the company's Arizona locations, but the company has filed an appeal to prevent the counting of those ballots, arguing as it has elsewhere that store-by-store elections are inappropriate. Employees are also scheduled to vote next month at three more New York Starbucks sites.

Starbucks shares were little changed at $97.29 in New York trading at 11:31 a.m. The stock rose 9.3% last year, short of the 27% rise of the S&P 500 index.