Workers United News

The liberal workers the company has long attracted are expanding a union campaign to other cities after a landmark victory in Buffalo.

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post wins the January Sidney Award for “The worker revolt comes to a Dollar General in Connecticut,” a deeply reported piece that chronicles a struggle for job security and respect at an outpost of the discount retailer.

After three stores in Buffalo held elections, the process has snowballed, with more than a dozen more stores across the country filing to hold elections.

A sudden swarm of snooping supervisors. An anti-union meeting where the union-buster speaker lies about its purpose—and a worker calls the speaker out on it. Writing up another worker for going to visit his sick mother in the hospital. Welcome to some of the abuses Starbucks has visited upon its 30 workers at its store at 6807 East Baseline Road in Mesa, Ariz., because, as one said, they dare to vote to unionize.

A Starbucks location in Eugene was the first in Oregon to file a union petition with the National Labor Relations Board last week, the first step toward a unionization vote.

Workers at four Starbucks stores across the country filed petitions for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the course of the last week, the latest in a swelling wave of labor activism that has swept the coffee giant since workers at one location in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize a month ago.