The National Labor Relations Board announced ... that it had certified a victory for a union at a second Starbucks store in the Buffalo area, where votes were tallied in December [2021] but remained inconclusive as the union challenged the ballots of several employees it said did not work at the store.

... The board agreed with the union that the challenged ballots should not count, giving the union a 15-to-9 win. None of the other roughly 9,000 company-operated Starbucks locations in the United States have a union.

Labor experts have said that establishing a second unionized store in the same market could provide a significant boost to the union, Starbucks Workers United. The union is part of Workers United, an affiliate of the giant Service Employees International Union.

... A company spokesman said that Starbucks was evaluating whether or not to appeal and that it believed its employees’ voices should be heard.

... “Today we put an end to Starbucks’s delay attempts and formed our union,” Alexis Rizzo, a shift supervisor at the second unionized location, said in a statement, adding: “We demand that Starbucks stop their union busting in Buffalo and across the nation immediately. No other partners should have to endure what we went through to have a voice on the job.”

Starbucks has denied that it has sought to intimidate employees, but it has said it prefers that its employees not unionize.