Workers at a Starbucks at Fremont Boulevard and Phoenix Avenue in Seaside went to the polls on Nov. 18 and ultimately chose the status quo – by a margin of 11 votes to 8, employees rejected an attempt to unionize.
The Fremont and Phoenix shop filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board on Oct. 6, becoming the first Starbucks in Monterey County to do so. Shift supervisor Liona Averill helped lead the effort.
“Better treatment of the employees is of course what we’re going for,” Averill told the Weekly in late October. Some observers think the unionization trend is all about employee pay, she said, but to Averill, the promise of unionization is in a better overall quality of life – more robust staffing, more inclusive healthcare, etc. Starbucks corporate has maintained that unionization is unnecessary and that employees and the corporation are “better together as partners, without a union between us.”
The Fremont and Phoenix store is a bit of an outlier in having lost its election. According to tracking from More Perfect Union, 345 stores in 39 states have filed to unionize since the nationwide effort began in December 2021. Just 59 Starbucks stores have lost an election.
On Nov. 23, the organizers filed an “objections to an election” document with the NLRB. Either party can file an objection when they believe something unfair or illegal took place during the election process. In order to be upheld, the petitioner must prove that the action impacted the results of the election. The NLRB will review the objection and in an extreme case could throw out the election results, forcing a re-do.