Starbucks workers at an outlet in Buffalo, New York, have voted to unionize — which is the first time a union has won the right to represent Starbucks workers in the company's history. Another store voted against, and a third is currently being contested.
Starbucks has 235,000 employees in the US, and the votes in New York were closely watched by Starbucks management, which had spent significant resources on trying to dissuade the stores from unionizing.
Unwanted unions
Unions have been on the decline in the US, and in other countries, for more than half-a-century — particularly in the private sector. As recently as the early 1970s, 1-in-4 private sector workers in the US was a member of a trade union. Today it's closer to 1-in-16.
Don't call it a comeback
It would be silly to take one data point at one Starbucks and call an end to a decades-long trend of declining union membership, but this isn't the first time this year that unions have caught public attention. Battles to unionize at Amazon warehouses in Alabama and Staten Island have made national headlines this year, and the US labor market is at an interesting crossroads - with job resignations at an all-time high, and many industries reporting a shortage of workers.
