Worcester Starbucks OKs Union After Vote

WORCESTER, MA — The workers at a Worcester Starbucks store voted to join a union on Friday, according to labor organizers.

The store along East Central Street was one of four Starbucks in Massachusetts to vote in a union on Friday. Stores in Brookline, Westford and Boston also unanimously approved unions. The combined votes from the four stores was 39 to zero.

The vote at the Worcester store was 14 to zero with five challenged, according to the Worcester DSA.

The Worcester Starbucks workers notified the company in a letter in early April that they intended to unionize.

"We have come together to form this union in response to recent work conditions with the intent to remedy and build beyond our currently unstable workplace," the letter said. "While Starbucks has not directly created many of the difficulties we face daily in our store, it has failed us with lackluster management at both the store and district level."

A movement to unionize the Seattle-based coffee chain's stores surged this spring. So far, 282 stores in 38 states have filed to unionize, according to the labor group More Perfect Union. About 115 of those stores have voted to join unions, while 13 elections have been lost. A Starbucks in Buffalo, N.Y., was the first one in the entire chain to unionize in December.