Sam Allard / Scene
Rally against union busting at W. 6th Starbucks
Two more Cleveland-area Starbucks stores have voted unanimously to unionize. Workers at the Mayfield and Lee location in Cleveland Heights (8-0) and at the Clifton Boulevard location in Cleveland near the Lakewood border (10-0) have been voting by mail over the previous month. The National Labor Relations Board tallied the results Tuesday afternoon.
There are now three local Starbucks stores that have voted to unionize. The two new locations join the W. 6th location in Cleveland's Warehouse District downtown, whose baristas voted to unionize in May. In all three elections, the vote was unanimous.
Workers at a fourth Northeast Ohio location, on Euclid Avenue in University Circle, have been voting by mail as well. Those are scheduled to be counted Friday. That store was the site of a demonstration last week, where Starbucks workers and labor allies rallied against the dismissal of an organizer and against union-busting generally.
The demonstration followed a rally at the W. 6th Starbucks the week before. There, workers called out management for union-busting tactics, including slashing the hours of veteran employees and terminating others.
Despite the rhetoric and actions from Starbucks corporate, workers in Cleveland have responded resoundingly in support of unionization.
"We're not quitting, we're not resting, we're not stopping," an employee said at the W. 6th rally. "This will get bigger. We will win the union. We will keep making a difference. They won't know what hit them. "
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