On August 30, 2021, three Starbucks stores in and around Buffalo, New York, filed union election petitions with the National Labor Relations Board.
In the eight months since, close to 250 other Starbucks stores have followed, driving a surge in union election petitions not seen since 2015. The NLRB reported that union election petitions were up 57% in the first half of the 2022 fiscal year, compared with the year before. Starbucks petitions account for nearly a quarter of all petitions filed since January.
