Employees at the Starbucks in Bath Beach’s Ceasar’s Bay Shopping Center will begin voting this week on whether to become the coffee giant’s first unionized location in Brooklyn, and local Councilmember Justin Brannan is warning CEO Howard Schultz against tall, grande, or venti interference in workers’ right to organize after various attempts at union-busting in the southern Brooklyn cafe.
Twenty-one employees — “partners” per Starbucks company lingo — at the southern Brooklyn Starbucks outlet will begin voting Friday on whether to unionize with Starbucks Workers United, a Service Employees International Union affiliate that has, so far, successfully organized ten locations of the ubiquitous Seattle-based coffee shop this year after first unionizing locations in Buffalo, against a pervasive and well-funded opposition campaign from corporate headquarters.
