Re: Starbucks asks labor board to halt mail-in union ballots

[Mail-in ballot cheating...]

In article <t2fvqd$3jhl1$3...@news.freedyn.de>
<governo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Democrats and their union lapdogs have just got caught cheating again
> using mail-in ballots.
>

New York (CNN Business)Starbucks is requesting a suspension of
mail-in ballots at unionization votes currently going on at its
stores across America. The coffee chain is accusing National
Labor Relation Board employees in Kansas and elsewhere of
misconduct in handling these mail-in votes, actions it said has
skewed results in favor of unionization.

The NLRB workers in question "engaged in highly improper,
systemic misconduct involving Starbucks and Workers United," the
company's general counsel wrote in a letter to the NLRB.
Starbucks said an NLRB whistle-blower alerted the company to the
alleged misconduct.

Starbucks has been attempting to fend off a growing unionization
movement for several months now. As of Friday, the NLRB has
certified votes to unionize at 199 Starbucks stores, and votes
against unionizing at 36. So far, there have been election
petitions at 314 stores overall.

Starbucks charges that NLRB employees allowed some pro-union
workers to vote in person, although it had been decided that
ballots would be submitted via mail. Some workers missed the
deadline to vote by mail but weren't offered the option to vote
in person, Starbucks alleged, encouraging a pro-union result.

The coffee chain also alleged that the NLRB workers gave the
union information like when and how many ballots it received in
the mail.

"In light of these types of misconduct by NLRB personnel, we
request the Board immediately suspend all Starbucks mail-ballot
elections nationwide ... until there has been a thorough
investigation," Starbucks said in the letter.

Starbucks is asking that the results of an investigation by the
board into the alleged misconduct be made public, and that
"safeguards to prevent future misconduct" are put in place
before moving forward. In the future, it wants elections to be
held in person.

"The NLRB does not comment on open cases," said Kayla Blado,
director and press secretary at the NLRB's office of
congressional and public affairs, in a statement on the letter.

"The agency has well-established processes to raise challenges
regarding the handling of both election matters and unfair labor
practice cases," she said. "Those challenges should be raised in
filings specific to the particular matters in question." Blado
noted that any questions raised in these channels would be
"carefully and objectively" considered by the board.

Stores voting to unionize make up just a fraction of the roughly
9,000 company-operated Starbucks (SBUX) stores in the United
States. However, Starbucks has been taking the efforts seriously.

Starbucks has made clear that it wants a direct line of
communication with employees and that a union would get in the
way. It has said that it can't guarantee that workers in a union
will have access to certain benefits offered to non-union
employees. And in May, Starbucks said it was concerned that the
White House left it out of a meeting with union representatives.

Union organizers say that the coffee chain has been acting
unfairly, and that the NLRB letter is another example of the
company acting in bad faith.

"This is Starbucks yet again attempting to distract attention
away from their unprecedented anti-union campaign," Starbucks
Workers United said in a statement. "Ultimately, this is
Starbucks' latest attempt to manipulate the legal process for
their own means and prevent workers from exercising their
fundamental right to organize." Starbucks says it respects
employees right to seek a union.

The NLRB has also accused the company of unfairly punishing
workers who want to unionize. The board said Friday that it is
currently processing 284 unfair labor practice cases against
Starbucks, which aren't all necessarily related to election
petitions.

In the letter, Starbucks noted that "the NLRB General Counsel
and other Board personnel have repeatedly stated that Starbucks
has committed more than one hundred 'unfair labor practice'
violations," but that "these statements are contradicted by the
fact that the Board to date has not made any finding regarding
the merits of any Starbucks violation."

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/business/starbucks-union-
nlrb/index.html