ST. LOUIS — Starbucks employees at three different locations in the St. Louis area this week voted to approve union contracts, following a national push to unionize the Seattle coffee chain's stores.
Notably, employees at the Hampton and Wise location, at 1216 Hampton Ave., voted 17-0 to unionize on Friday.
The two other stores where employees approved union contracts voted Monday. The employees at the Lindbergh and Clayton location, at 1500 Lindbergh Blvd. in Ladue, voted 12-3, and at the Kingshighway and Chippewa location at 3700 Kingshighway Blvd., employees voted 9-4, according to Mariana Orrego, an organizer with the labor union Chicago & Midwest Regional Joint Board of Workers United (CMRJB).
The Chicago & Midwest Regional Joint Board of Workers United (CMRJB), a labor union and affiliate of Washington, D.C.-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has represented all the local Starbucks employees that have filed for a union representation vote.
Workers United represents more than 86,000 workers in the apparel, textile, industrial laundry, food service, manufacturing, warehouse distribution, and nonprofit industries in the U.S. and Canada, according to its website.
The employees at the Ladue Starbucks were the first in the area to file a petition through the National Labor Relations Board, requesting a vote to approve a union contract in March. Employees at seven other St. Louis-area Starbucks locations followed suit in the weeks following.
The Starbucks unionization push began last year, when two locations in Buffalo, New York, filed for representation. Since then, workers at more than 150 company-owned Starbucks locations have followed suit, according to CNBC. The Buffalo locations became unionized.
A Starbucks spokesperson said last month "we're listening and learning from the partners in these stores as we always do across the country."
"And so, with this petition, our position has not changed," the spokesperson said. "Starbucks success, past, present and future is built on how we partner together, always with our mission and values at our core."
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