BELLINGHAM, Wash. – Workers at two Bellingham Starbucks went on strike early on Friday, August 12th, joining fellow employees of the corporation across the country.
Workers at the Cordata Center and the Iowa and King streets drive-thru had both voted to unionize earlier this summer, much to the chagrin of interim CEO and founder Howard Schultz, who has blasted union organizing at the company’s stores.
Cascadia Daily News reports that the local workers are claiming they have been denied benefits and had their hours cut without any bargaining.
The picketing began at 5 am and will continue throughout the day, and the Iowa and King store is closed.
At least 55 stores in 17 different states are striking.
And Starbucks is attempting to quash a growing number of those unionization efforts.
On Monday, August 15th, the company asked the National Labor Relations Board to temporarily suspend all union elections at its U.S. stores.
Starbucks said that a government official told them about numerous issues in the NLRB’s St. Louis office while it was overseeing an election at a Starbucks store in Kansas earlier this spring.
The regional office made special arrangements for pro-union workers to vote in person at its office, even though the store election was supposed to be handled by mail-in ballot.
Starbucks also claimed that regional officials disclosed confidential information to the union, including which ballots had arrived in the mail to be counted.
More than 220 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late last year.