Starbucks Strategy for Responding to Union Elections Is Dealt a Setback

The National Labor Relations Board dealt a blow to Starbucks’s legal strategy in response to a growing union campaign on Wednesday, rejecting the company’s argument that workers seeking to unionize in a geographic area must vote in a single union election.

In a ruling involving an election in Mesa, Ariz., the board noted the longstanding presumption that a single store is an appropriate unit for a vote — as union supporters have insisted.

Starbucks workers at more than 100 stores nationwide have filed for union elections and workers at two stores in Buffalo have already unionized.

Unions typically prefer smaller elections, which tend to increase their chances of winning, albeit on a smaller scale. Workers United, the union seeking to represent Starbucks employees, has complained that Starbucks has repeatedly resisted store-by-store elections despite gaining little traction on the issue as a way to delay votes and stop the union’s momentum.

Starbucks has argued that the elections should be marketwide because employees can work at multiple locations and because the stores in a market are managed as a relatively cohesive unit.

Before Wednesday’s ruling, the board had been unmoved by that argument in Buffalo as well. But unlike the earlier ad hoc decision in Buffalo, the action in the Arizona case sets a binding precedent and will likely make it more difficult for Starbucks to raise such objections going forward.

Nonetheless, the company indicated it would continue to press the issue. “Our position since the beginning has been that all partners in a market or district deserve the right to vote on a decision that will impact them,” Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, said in a statement, using the company’s term for its employees. “We will continue to respect the N.L.R.B.’s process and advocate for our partners’ ability to make their voices heard.”

In the short term, the board decision means that a vote count at a Starbucks store in Mesa can go forward after being postponed last week.