More employees at three New York Starbucks locations have voted to unionize, bringing the total number of unionized Starbucks shops to six in two dozen states, The Associated Press reported.
Starbucks employees at Cheektowaga, Amherst, and Depew agreed in the favor of forming a union in close margin votes, according to the National Labor Relations Board’s tally.
The NLRB board said the close results reflect the company’s efforts to intimidate employees as they voted, including flooding stores with out-of-town managers, according to the AP.
In a statement, Starbucks has denied claims of intimidating employees, saying that its 8,000 U.S.-based stores function best when the company works directly with employees, which Starbucks cited as “partners.”
“As we have said throughout, we will respect the process and will bargain in good faith guided by our principles,” Starbucks said in a statement on Wednesday.
One of the leaders of the unionization efforts Casey Moore said that the company’s efforts are to bully, intimidate employees to not unionize, the AP reported.
“Starbucks has not made this about whether or not you want to vote for a union, they’ve made it about whether you want to keep your job, whether you want to keep your hours, whether or not you want to be bullied at work,” Moore said.
This comes as employees from company locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Long Island have filed petitions last month to form their union with NLRB and organized by the Workers United.
The brand stores are the first to be represented by a union since the 1980s when the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) repped six Seattle, Wa. stores.
The union’s vote count was also delayed for two weeks after the company filed a request to for review with the labor board, arguing that its Buffalo, N.Y. area stores should vote as a group on the issue of unionization, instead of individually in order to avoid labor instability across its brand stores.
The union ruled against Starbucks’ request on Monday, saying it saw no issues, the AP noted.