Senior Vice President, Employment Policy Division, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
On May 8, workers at a Starbucks café in Rochester, NY, filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) to decertify the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) front group, known as Starbucks Workers United. The SEIU had won an election in April 2022 by a vote of 13-11. Another decertification petition was filed two days later at a store in Manhattan.
A decertification petition means that a sufficient group of workers in the store have decided they want to get rid of their union. The two petitions in New York are the second and third decertifications to have been filed in as many weeks. A location in Buffalo, which was one of the first stores to unionize, also has filed for decertification.
Challenges to Decertification
A major challenge for a successful decertification is that unions are allowed to file what are known as “blocking charges.” A union can file a slew of unfair labor practices charges (ULPs) against the business where the decertification is taking place, and the NLRB will not hold the decertification election until those ULPs are dealt with. This is a frequently used tactic, and its effect is to deprive workers of a choice on the question of union representation. The Trump-era Board attempted to solve this problem by allowing decertification elections to move forward in some circumstances...
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