Starbucks workers and company gear up for legal battle over union election integrity

With more than 200 individual Starbucks locations throughout the U.S. having successfully voted to unionize, the international coffee giant is crying foul, claiming the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) colluded with Starbucks Workers United (SWU) in at least one instance, requesting that mail-in union elections be suspended while an investigation is conducted.

Starbucks Corp. holds that NLRB agents “secretly colluded with the union” to sway election results, according to correspondence between the company and the board. Specifically, they allege that labor election votes — intended to be submitted via mail — were cast in NLRB offices. They cite a “career NLRB professional,” a whistleblower, as evidence.

Tuesday, the NLRB met with legal representation from all parties to investigate the claim and determine subsequent action.

Gabe Frumkin, an attorney representing SWU, obliquely compared the charges to Stop the Steal tactics, indirectly referring to former President Donald Trump’s attempt to cast doubt on the election of President Joe Biden by undermining the integrity of the elections process.

“We’re all familiar with the story. A party loses an election … that party is unwilling to accept the legitimate outcome of the election,” Frumkin said.

“Rather than conceding defeat and recognizing the victorious party, the defeated creates an alternate narrative replete with conspiracy theories featuring deep state agents when the defeated party cannot allege that its supporters were prevented from voting.”

“It alleges that some people were permitted to vote when they shouldn’t be, contesting the election result. [That] party is not afraid to cause collateral damage to the very institutions entrusted to protect the democratic processes we value in this country. The party may even want to do this damage.”

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Legal representation, Littler Mendelson, for Starbucks Corp. further explained their issue with the NLRB’s involvement in a recent Kansas City area Starbucks union vote, saying that two ballots were not mailed to Starbucks employees. Rather than resolve the issue “quickly or properly,” those employees were allegedly asked to cast their ballot at the NLRB’s St. Louis office.

“The danger here is that we’re being put to the game, that we’re supposed to now go through procedures where neither the union nor the region is prepared to provide documentary evidence that either corroborates or refutes what we have asserted,” Mendelson said.

“And that’s the danger that we shouldn’t even have to have an argument about that. So if the region and the union are prepared to present documents … then we could probably cut to the core in this case very quickly.”

Starbucks Corp.’s complaint further adds that, in colluding with the NLRB, the union was able to track the status of cast ballots, allowing it to “identify and specifically target individuals who had not yet voted, enabling the union to target and attempt to influence the vote of partners who had not yet voted.”

The company notes that “other available information indicates that the same type of misconduct” has occurred in Seattle and Buffalo.

The NLRB hearing is scheduled to convene Wednesday, Aug. 17,  at 1 p.m. EST.

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