Union Yes for Mesa Starbucks Workers

Arizona AFL-CIO Executive Director Fred Yamashita celebrates a successful organizing campaign at Power and Baseline Starbucks, calls for labor law reform

MESA, AZ– On Friday, a majority of workers at the Starbucks store on Power and Baseline voted in favor of unionizing, becoming the first location in Arizona and only the third in the United States to join the burgeoning Starbucks Workers United Movement. The vote marks the end of a months-long, anti-union pressure campaign from the world’s largest coffeehouse chain that began soon after Mesa store employees filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last November. 

“Today, Mesa Starbucks workers took a historic step in becoming the first Starbucks corporate store in Arizona to unionize, joining hundreds of union Starbucks workers at Fry’s Food Stores, Safeway Grocery Stores, and Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. To successfully organize in the face of a legally questionable pressure campaign is an incredible accomplishment, and stands as a testament to the power of worker solidarity,” said Fred Yamashita, Executive Director of the Arizona AFL-CIO.

“Although this successful organizing campaign is an exciting victory for working Arizonans everywhere, we cannot continue to allow anti-union corporations like Starbucks to threaten and intimidate organizing workers without consequence. Now more than ever, working people need our leaders in the United States Senate to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which will strengthen the NLRB by allowing it to penalize bad-faith employers and empower workers to exercise our freedom to bargain collectively,” Yamashita continued.

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